Trump has returned with a vengeance but a 2017-like ‘Resistance’ protest is missing in US

When Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017, opponents marched in pink knitted “pussy hats” while protesters abroad plastered streets with images of the new US president as “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader.

Spool forward eight years – after his entanglements with the law, two impeachments and divisive pardons of violent criminals – and the vibe among the anti-Trump resistance movement isn’t so much “A New Hope” as its darker sequel, “The Empire Strikes Back.”

Although there has been sporadic protest, the United States has seen almost none of the mass mobilization that made opposition to Trump in 2017 the largest social movement in a half-century.

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Even in Congress, Democrats have been more inclined in recent weeks to talk about “working with” Trump – noting his popular vote victory – rather than going after the Republican at every opportunity.

“Resistance alone is a failed strategy. If it worked, Trump wouldn’t be president,” said political consultant Andrew Koneschusky, a former press secretary to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Democrats ran a campaign of resistance last cycle and it barely made a dent.”

Trump, 78, sparked outrage after winning a tight 2016 election despite disparaging Mexicans, boasting about groping women on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape and facing numerous sexual misconduct allegations.

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Democrats see as much to worry about this time around, and yet analysts have noted a palpable lack of the anger that came with his first term.

The new Resistance

There has been some limited action by Democratic leaders in California to counter Trumpism, mainly behind-the-scenes strategy sessions, and “The People’s March” in Washington last weekend was reasonably well attended.

But it was tiny compared to the 500,000-strong 2017 “Women’s March.”

Even liberal Hollywood seems cowed, with the political spotlight moving away from the music and movie stars who backed Kamala Harris in 2024 to the Tinseltown legends like Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson who have joined Trump’s team.

Koneschusky suggested that opposition was shifting to a more focused approach that targets specific aspects of Trump’s populist “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) agenda, in the courts as much as in news studios.

“The Resistance hasn’t vanished – it has evolved. It has moved from the streets to the courts. Well-crafted legal challenges have replaced protests and public displays of opposition,” he told AFP.

He pointed to more than 20 Democratic states suing to block Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship and civil society groups like the ACLU girding for a variety of legal fights.

“The lawsuit, rather than the protest, is the new Resistance,” he said.

Veteran political strategist Mike Fahey added that those who organized against Trump in 2024, only to see him win anyway, have hit a wall, and that exhaustion rather than apathy is paralyzing opposition.

But he agreed that much of the opposition was simply less performative than in the past – and not necessarily less effective.

The guts to fight

“Instead of relying on the sorts of large, dramatic demonstrations that characterized the early weeks of Trump’s presidency, these organizations have begun to stage far more sophisticated and less visible public events to work their will,” he said.

While Trump’s victory last November was painful for Democrats, many believe that presenting Trump as an avatar of all society’s ills – or shrieking that every tweet was a threat to democracy – was counter-productive.

Peter Loge, the director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, said smart opponents were tuning out the noise coming from Trump’s Truth Social feed to focus instead on specific policy impacts.

“One way to think about it is like an amusement park or nightclub. When the lights are flashing and the noise is blaring it’s easy to get caught in the show,” he told AFP.

“Smoke machines, disco balls and laugh tracks drive attention and resources, but ultimately it is about how people live their daily lives – and that’s policy.”

Some groups that opposed Trump first time around reject the idea that his narrow popular vote victory gave him a broad mandate, pointing out that more people voted against him than for him in November.

“Democrats can’t afford to cower behind half measures or excuses,” said Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of progressive lobby group Indivisible.

“If they don’t have the guts to fight this now, when it’s all on the line, they’ll be handing Trump and MAGA Republicans exactly what they want: a propaganda victory that will embolden their assault on our freedoms.”