Here’s a scary bit of analysis. Greg Sargent at TNR spoke with journalist Michael Cohen about Trump and the polling. The gist of the conversation is that Trump is really in a bubble and is simply believing what his very extreme inner circle tells him. He’s just another elderly Fox viewer and it’s why he lost his shit over all these 100 day polls. He apparently didn’t know that his policies are unpopular. His reflexive caterwauling about “fake news” was even more hysterical than usual.

Cohen and Greg note that Trump actually doesn’t seem to understand that the Supreme Court ruled against him in the Abrego Garcia case, saying his lawyers (and Stephen Miller) told him it was the opposite. I agree with them that Trump seemed genuinely confused (although he’s also wiley enough about all this to throw his lawyers under the bus.)

They think, as do I, that Stephen Miller is the shadow president and is the one driving the bus on immigration. I would argue that he’s driving it on foreign policy and some of the tariff stuff too. Anything that touches foreigners is in Miller’s wheelhouse.

This is concerning:

Sargent: It looks to me like Stephen Miller is starting to sense that the Supreme Court is going to rule against them in the end—in a final way—on Abrego Garcia. If that happens—as you say, they have been following some court orders—they’ve really dug in hard behind this idea that Abrego Garcia is never coming back. Period. If we bring Abrego Garcia back, it will mean capitulating to the liberal media and to all the hated liberals who think the law should be enforced. So that can’t happen. So I think Stephen Miller is trying to steel Trump for the eventual need to defy the Supreme Court in one way or another, and the way he will try to get there is by essentially telling him, Everyone else is lying to you. The court has told you that it’s really OK for you not to bring him back.

Cohen: I think there’s a lot to that argument, and I think it’s quite possible that you’re right about that. But I think…. Let me go back a second. When they refuse to abide by the Supreme Court ruling to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, I assume they were doing this because they think this is a winning issue for them, on immigration. And if there’s any place they’re going to defy the courts, it’s going to be on immigration and deportation because they think this plays in their favor. Look, the polling suggests it’s not actually; it suggests that this is actually really hurting Trump. But I think the view inside the White House is, This is our issue.

In fact, Miller says it. In that Oval Office meeting with the El Salvadoran president, he says, This is a 90–10 issue for us. He literally says those words, so I think he thinks this is a winner for them. That was what I was assuming was happening. They were just going to [say], OK, we’re going to abide by court orders, but not here because this is a good issue for us. I don’t think that’s what’s happening now.

Now, I think that Miller wants the president to take the position that on this issue—on deportation issues—the Supreme Court cannot tell him what to do.And he’s made this argument. He said that the power to conduct foreign relations is unimpeachable, and the Supreme Court cannot interfere, which is how Miller interprets the case, the decision—which is also clearly incorrect. So I think you might be right, that he’s steeling him for a moment in which he’s going to continue to violate a court order, continue to ignore the court, and do so, for Trump’s case, out of ignorance.

Now, the thing is that what worries me about this is that the court, looking at this could conclude, Right now the White House is refusing to abide by this order to facilitate his return. Do we really want to go there again and say to the White House again, You need to do this? Because if they don’t, if the White House continues to say, No, we are not going to abide by this order, does it then fundamentally weaken the credibility of the Supreme Court, and does it lead to the court basically looking like a paper tiger? I think that’s a real concern. If I’m on the court, forgetting the ideological makeup of the court, that’s a legitimate concern. The court has no enforcement mechanism whatsoever on their orders. It basically relies on political norms.

So if they think that Trump’s not going to abide by his political norm, they might just rule in such a way that gives Trump some political out on this issue. I think it’s a real concern, and maybe that’s what Miller’s trying to accomplish here. To my mind, there is no question that Stephen Miller, not Donald Trump, is driving the stubbornness of the White House in abiding by the Supreme Court order. It’s not Trump doing this. This is Stephen Miller who’s doing this.

Sargent: Right. If I understand you correctly, and I think this makes a lot of sense, it’s basically Stephen Miller bluffing the Supreme Court—

Cohen: Yes. Exactly right.

Sargent: —by saying, over and over, No, we won before the Supreme Court. He’s essentially saying to the Supreme Court, We’re going to roll over you if you don’t give us a way to claim victory at the end of the day here. This is why, by the way, I think two things are really important: (1) the fact that his aides are lying to him about public opinion, and (2) that the public opinion is about the abuses of power on immigration in particular. Because what we’re learning from this polling is that Stephen Miller is wrong.

When they abuse their power on immigration and act lawlessly and send people to black sites and snatch people off the streets, the public reacts badly. They’re not seeing it through just the prism of, Oh, Trump is just dealing with illegals. Stephen Miller calculated that they would see it that way, but Americans aren’t seeing it that way. They’re seeing it in terms of the lawlessness. So when the polls show that the lawlessness is unpopular, and when Trump’s own people deceive him about what those polls are showing, they’re essentially trying to get to the place where the lawlessness continues.

. . .