OPINION:
It’s one of the many harsh realities of politics that you can be a victim of your own success.
When it comes to President Trump’s record on immigration, that appears to be happening in part because he and his team have lost the narrative on the issue with Americans. The good news is, according to Gallup, “concern about crime, drug use, immigration, and the availability and affordability of energy have decreased,” since the end of Joseph R. Biden’s presidency.
The bad news is that the most controversial policy initiative of the second Trump administration, namely, the removal of millions of illegals has not benefited from a sustained, coordinated campaign to combat criticism from the left that should have been anticipated.
Berating a biased reporter, as Karoline Leavitt did earlier this month, may make for a good clip for clickbait purposes, but it doesn’t win the battle. If the facts are on your side, then they are the best possible weapons in the communications war.
To reclaim the narrative, the White House should immediately start issuing daily releases of the arrests, existing criminal records and new accusations against illegals detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, providing full transparency. This must be proactive, pushing the data to the press and social media constantly.
Additionally, they must continually remind audiences that ICE uses federal laws to justify their operations, and those laws have been on the books for years.
Reinforcing the message is critical. Remind the American public about the number of illegals let in by the Biden administration’s open border, the number arrested for committing crimes in the U.S. or having existing criminal records, the types and numbers of said crimes and the total costs to our welfare, schools and law enforcement of rampant illegal immigration.
The first set of data makes clear that ICE is performing a necessary enforcement of the law to remove dangerous criminals from American streets, and the latter set informs the public of the staggering fiscal impact on taxpayers.
Roughly the same number of immigrants came to the U.S. during the four years of the Biden administration as came legally through Ellis Island from the opening of the facility through its closure in the 1950s. Most Americans have no idea or don’t remember.
Localize the press strategy. ICE, along with the FBI, U.S. Border Patrol and others, should be holding daily briefings about operations in various cities for local media. Those briefings should provide full transparency on the progress of each operation, including specifics about the criminals arrested.
To bolster the credibility of the proceedings, no Trump political appointees or politicians should be involved in these briefings. It’s easy for CNN to ignore the arrest of an illegal accused of rape, burglary, assault or DUI. It’s harder for a local affiliate news station to bury.
Get more people singing from the same song sheet. Localized and national data and talking points also should be provided to every member of Congress and online influencers for their amplification.
Here’s the hardest part.
After nearly a decade of Mr. Trump being his best spokesperson, audiences are beginning to tune him out. This is a natural occurrence and not necessarily a reflection of whether people support his policies.
Especially in our time of bitterly divisive politics, politicians are often the worst messengers for their own causes.
The president is also a vision guy. He sets a tone and general direction. He is great at making broad statements. No one can legitimately argue that, as a force for that vision, he has been remarkably successful.
Still, Mr. Trump isn’t a details person. He is not big on statistics and policy specifics. That kind of data, which is necessary to reclaim the narrative, should be left to those whose direct knowledge allows them to speak more capably about the impacts of the immigration enforcement policy. The president giving another hourlong speech won’t move the needle.
President George W. Bush made this mistake during his second term when it came to the Iraq War. I wrote about it extensively in my book “Tough Sell” about wartime communications during the period. As the public’s patience and support for the Iraq mission waned, the White House closed ranks, severely limiting the number of voices communicating about the mission.
It was a disastrous decision. Every few weeks, the administration rolled out some senior official to play defense on Iraq policy. By late 2004, the president and other senior officials had lost credibility to such a degree that the entire war on terrorism strategy was also being undermined by the press.
What was lost in the daily reporting on sectarian violence that overtook the media coverage was everything else the administration was doing in Iraq and in more than 100 other nations to interdict radical Islamic terrorism.
The big advantage Trump 2.0 has over Bush 2.0 is that the latter had little in the way of a proactive domestic agenda. Mr. Bush’s second term was easily swamped by missteps in Iraq and, later, Hurricane Katrina and the financial crisis.
Mr. Trump should focus on his tax cuts, health care reform plan and other domestic initiatives and leave the immigration messaging to the agencies involved. Every day that he talks about Greenland and immigration enforcement rather than economic issues is a lost day Republicans can scarcely afford.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV.
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