In 2016, Donald Trump told supporters, “The only important thing is the unification of the people — because the other people don’t mean anything.” The message was unmistakable: there are “the people,” and there are “the other people.” Only one group counts.
Trump has never pretended to be a unifier. His political power has always depended on sharpening divides, not healing them. What many once dismissed as impulsiveness or incompetence has, over time, revealed itself as something far more deliberate: a governing strategy built on chaos, conflict, and the constant widening of America’s internal fractures.
Analysts have long noted that Trump’s political instincts are rooted in generating conflict. As WBUR reported, Trump’s ability to “manufacture conflict about culture war issues is in overdrive,” a tactic that keeps him at the center of public attention while destabilizing the institutions meant to check him. This chaos is not merely noise; it’s a tool that exhausts the public, overwhelms the media, and blurs accountability.
A Fulcrum analysis goes further, arguing that Trump’s governance “fractures institutions, fuels anxiety, and tests America’s democratic core” by leveraging polarization as a political resource rather than a problem to solve. In this view, chaos is not a failure of leadership — it is the leadership.
Nowhere is Trump’s chaos‑as‑strategy more visible than in his approach to immigration. From the earliest days of his first term, Trump framed immigrants—particularly Latino and Black migrants—as threats to national security, crime, and cultural identity. This framing wasn’t incidental. It created a permanent state of emergency that justified increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics.
In 2025, as his second administration took shape, he escalated the language further, telling a rally crowd that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase that drew condemnation from historians for its echoes of 20th‑century authoritarian movements.
Under Trump, ICE was encouraged to operate with maximal force. Reports throughout his presidency documented racial profiling, neighborhood sweeps, courthouse arrests, and raids that targeted entire communities rather than specific individuals. Civil rights groups and legal observers repeatedly warned that these tactics were designed not only to detain undocumented people but to instill fear across immigrant neighborhoods, chilling cooperation with police, schools, and hospitals.
The recent killings of Alex Jeffrey Pretti and Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents echo this history. Within hours, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem labeled Good a “domestic terrorist” — despite incomplete footage and no independent investigation. CNN’s interview with Noem showed her doubling down on claims of “unpublished evidence,” mirroring the administration’s long‑standing habit of defining the narrative before facts are established.
This is the same playbook used throughout Trump’s immigration agenda:
- Escalate enforcement.
- Justify it with fear‑based rhetoric.
- Defend agents reflexively, regardless of evidence.
- Frame targeted communities as threats.
It is chaos deployed with purpose.
Trump’s political identity depends on the existence of enemies — immigrants, the media, Democrats, “RINOs,” protesters, bureaucrats, and sometimes even his own appointees. Unity would collapse the narrative architecture that sustains his movement.
A unifying president seeks to lower the temperature. Trump raises it. A unifying president tries to build coalitions. Trump breaks them. A unifying president sees political opponents. Trump sees existential threats.
Division is not a side effect of his leadership. It is the fuel.
As the country faces rising polarization, institutional distrust, and political violence, Trump’s strategy of governing through chaos is destabilizing and dangerous. Democracies depend on shared facts, functioning institutions, and a basic level of civic trust. Trump’s leadership style corrodes all three.
The question is no longer whether Trump thrives in chaos. The evidence is overwhelming. The real question is whether the country can withstand another era defined by it — and what citizens can do to strengthen the guardrails that democracy relies on.
That work doesn’t begin in Washington. It begins with people choosing to engage rather than withdraw. It means supporting local journalism that verifies facts instead of amplifying outrage. It means participating in civic life — voting, attending public meetings, serving on boards, and holding leaders accountable through lawful, democratic channels. It means refusing to let disinformation go unchallenged in our own circles, and choosing dialogue over dehumanization even when disagreements run deep. It means reinforcing the institutions that make self‑government possible: independent courts, professional civil servants, nonpartisan election workers, and the peaceful transfer of power. And it means voting in the midterm elections.
Midterms are one of the few structural tools Americans have to rebalance power, impose oversight, and correct course when any administration — regardless of party — operates without meaningful checks. They determine who writes the laws, who conducts oversight hearings, who controls budgets, and who can restrain or enable a president’s agenda. In moments of heightened instability, those levers matter even more.
Voting in midterms is not about endorsing one personality over another. It is about deciding what kind of governance the country will tolerate, what level of accountability it expects, and whether the institutions designed to prevent excess will be empowered or weakened. When turnout drops, the loudest and most extreme voices fill the vacuum. When turnout rises, the system reflects a broader public will — and becomes harder for any leader to bend toward chaos.
Citizens cannot control the rhetoric coming from the White House, but they can control whether they participate in the process that shapes the nation’s future.
Chaos thrives when people feel powerless. Democracy survives when people remember they aren’t.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum, the publisher of the Latino News Network, and twice president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.