On September 14, nearly 50 Venezuelan migrants were flown from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard without their full consent in a move orchestrated by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Before the flight, the Venezuelans — most of whom were in Texas legally as asylum seekers — had been told that flying to another state would qualify them to receive employment opportunities, housing, education, and help with their immigration proceedings. Upon arriving in Martha’s Vineyard, the migrants, some of whom still had court dates in San Antonio, were stranded and unable to contact the people who had brought them there. Meanwhile, the residents of Martha’s Vineyard had received no warning of their arrival. The move was met with widespread backlash: A civil rights firm is representing around 30 of these migrants in a federal class action lawsuit against DeSantis, the White House called the move a “cruel, premeditated political stunt”, and Florida business owners have questioned the move, pointing out that the presence of immigrants in Florida could have been helpful in the face of the nation-wide labor-shortage. Additionally, Democrats in Congress, such as Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), have called DeSantis “soulless” for jeopardizing the well-being of innocent people in a political stunt.
Despite this criticism, DeSantis has only become more popular since September 14, both as a governor and as a potential candidate for the 2024 presidential election. Where a USA/Suffolk poll from January had Trump beating DeSantis by 7 percent in a Florida presidential primary, their latest assessment from September 15 has DeSantis leading by 8 percent. Since beginning his campaign, DeSantis has raised over $177 million, breaking the record for money raised by a gubernatorial candidate. While the stunt received negative backlash, it earned him the attention he desired to discuss imigration issues prominent in his state and mobilized the right to rally in his defense. In part, this support reflects broad American opinions on how we should treat immigrants — a FiveThirtyEight poll found that nearly half of Americans approved of DeSantis’ decision to send the Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. More insidious, however, is the increasingly common phenomenon underlying DeSantis’ actions: the use of alarming and inhumane political stunts to garner the support of those dissatisfied with the status quo, a strategy only aided by media coverage of the events.
To see this strategy in action, one needs not look further than a likely 2024 presidential primary opponent: former President Donald Trump. In the 2016 election, Trump received 15 percent more free media coverage than Hillary Clinton because, to viewers, he was different, outrageous, and controversial. Over his time as president, he promised a wall between the United States and Mexico, referred to Haiti and countries in Africa as “shithole countries,” enacted a ban on Muslims entering the country, and popularized the racist term “China Virus” in reference to Covid-19. In all of these cases, Trump kept his message simple and his racism clear. And, as a result, he was met with outrage from the left and a strong defense from the right. In his footsteps followed Margorie Taylor Greene, who was elected to Congress in 2020, after suggesting that Black people are “slaves to the Democratic party” and claiming she would be “proud” to see confederate monuments if she were black. Since her election, she has supported banning Pride flags, claimed the Uvalde shooter was transgender, and pushed to “defund the FBI” after the Mar-a-Lago search. And yet, this May she won her primary election easily and is expected to hold her seat in Congress in the November election. These statements, though clearly offensive to some, have managed to gain traction and, in their wake, popularity for Greene, Trump, and DeSantis.
These stunts, however, are driven more by publicity than by American thought. For example, 79 percent of Marjorie Taylor’s own party actually supports law enforcement efforts, suggesting that her calls to defund the FBI do not actually reflect what her constituents want but instead are so outrageous that the attention they elicit prompts her supporters to rally around her. A study from 2021 found that Trump’s “outrageous behavior” in the 2016 election helped him politically. More notably, though, the study found no evidence that individuals with racist beliefs were more likely to support Trump than those without. In other words, Trump did not garner support from voters because they liked what he was saying, but rather because they liked how he was saying it. A different study from 2017 also found that Trump was only able to gain so much support because he “explicitly violates the norm,” not because his supporters were ideologically conservative.
The mainstream media played a significant role in Trump’s 2016 win, as outlets on the left and right continually covered his political events simply because it increased their ratings. A quick internet search shows that every major news outlet covered DeSantis’ latest stunt, with some, like CNN and the Washington Post, criticizing it multiple times. In doing so, they are allowing DeSantis to position himself as an opponent of the establishment and a challenger to the status quo, just as they did Trump. However, news outlets on different sides of the political spectrum have contributed to the popularization of inflammatory politicians in varying ways. Left-wing platforms have a tendency to react with self-righteous outrage. On September 15, nearly every single MSNBC show rehashed what happened in Martha’s Vineyard. While they rightfully called out the inhumanity behind the act, their use of condescending phrases such as “I wish I was kidding” or calling DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott “schoolboys who need to be spanked,”motivates the opposition. Right-wing news outlets, on the other hand, position themselves as defenders against the establishment. On multiple occasions DeSantis has provided Fox News with exclusive access to his political maneuvers. Both in May 2021, when he signed a bill to restrict voting rights and most recently when he claimed credit for transporting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, he did so exclusively on Fox News. In return, right-wing pundits lauded his act as one that sheds light on Democrats’ hypocritical immigration policy, reinforcing the perception that the right-wing is addressing the widespread dissatisfaction of the American people.
This dissatisfaction with America’s political systems and government is valid and sourced in the real social and economic problems faced by every-day Americans. However, rather than address those problems, politicians have fallen into a destructive pattern. Certain right-wing politicians, like Trump, DeSantis, and Greene, capitalize on voters’ feelings of alienation to claim, often with forceful and racist rhetoric, that they will change things. The left then responds with outrage and moral superiority instead of addressing any underlying issues at play. This prompts right-wing media to portray the left as dismissive, furthering support for the politicians like Trump, who don’t actually fix the root issues. Thus, the cycle repeats, with the dissatisfied none the better and those targeted by political stunts even worse off.