Conservative political experts pointed to President-elect Trump’s decisive victory Tuesday as a main reason anti-Trump protests have been more muted compared to 2016.
While some protests have taken place across the country since Tuesday, their focus has not been solely on Trump, and the turnout has not been the same as when thousands took to the streets in 2016 after Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.
In Seattle, for example, where demonstrators protested on election night, the focus was more on the war in Gaza, and both Democrats and Republicans were chastised by demonstrators. A protest Wednesday night in Chicago similarly focused on that war and was only loosely connected to Trump’s win.
Meanwhile, people around the country have taken notice of the more muted protests compared to 2016.
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“It’s strangely quiet,” Daily Wire reporter Kassy Akiva noted Wednesday on X, one day after the election. “I don’t see any major protests being planned right now.”
“I have to say, Williams College was very quiet today. Certainly no demonstrations, no collective mourning, no whining or crying that I saw,” observed political science professor Darel Paul.
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“There’s not going to be anyone out there saying this time that [Trump] is an illegitimate president,” political strategist David Kochel pointed out. “He certainly has a much more legitimate stake in the office, because he will end up winning the popular vote. And I do think there’s some tension in the country when a candidate doesn’t win the popular vote but wins the Electoral College, and he doesn’t have that tension this time.”
Others, including Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the co-author of “Next Gen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It,” agreed with Kochel’s point about Trump’s decisive victory resulting in a more muted protest response.
“We haven’t seen the same level of hysteria yet that met Trump’s first victory,” Gonzalez said. “Trump’s first victory was a bigger surprise to the body politic, to the system, because nobody expected him to win. This time, he had won before.”
“It is hard to gin up discord when the win was so significant,” Tea Party Patriots Citizen Fund Chairwoman Jenny Beth Martin added.
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Gonzalez and others, however, did note that while the protest response to Trump’s victory may be lighter than what was seen in 2016, that could change once he begins enacting policy changes.
“I think it’s important to use the word ‘yet,’ because I think that we will see the same level of out-of-control hysteric opposition to Trump,” Gonzalez said.
Aron Boxer is a former special education teacher and the founder of the Connecticut-based Diversified Education Services. He describes himself as a moderate conservative and said he agreed with Gonzalez’s take that protests could heat up in the future.
“There’s been some pretty inflammatory rhetoric coming from Adam Kinzinger, Leticia James, Gavin Newsom and even Kamala when she spoke the other night and said that they’re going to fight. Listening to their words, it really sounds like they’re almost giving the public a little wink and a nod, encouraging them to speak up,” Boxer said.
“It seems like they’re trying to kind of rally the troops … and I think that these things do take some time to take shape.”
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