Donald Trump paints an inaccurate but frightening picture of an America “ravaged by crime, violence, bloodshed, chaos and tyranny.”
More than two-thirds of Americans seem to agree, saying things in this country are “out of control.” Presiding over that America would be a liability for any incumbent president.
Are some of those Americans thinking about the pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses as they render that judgment? Yes. Seventy-five percent have heard at least a little about the arrests on college campuses, according to a YouGov poll.
Are most Americans thinking about those protests when they say the country is out of control? Probably not most. But how do we know?
Well, to start, only 33 percent claim to have heard a lot about the protests. Moreover, in October 2022, a year before Hamas’s strike against Israel, an even larger number of Americans thought the country was out of control.
But pictures of violent demonstrations that frequently seem as much anti-American as anti-Israel certainly contribute to the false image of a country out of control.
Just 30 percent of Americans think more than half the demonstrations have been peaceful, with 42 percent saying half or fewer have been peaceful. Underlining that these protests are not the central factor in Americans’ thinking, three in 10 say they don’t know what proportion have been peaceful.
Partly it depends on your definitions of violent and peaceful.
Those who were just recently and rightly battling microaggressions should be especially concerned about incitement to murder, which is the leitmotif of the Hamas slogans chanted and displayed at these demonstrations.
When protestors glorify the intifada, knowingly or not, they are praising the terrorist murder of Israelis at pizza shops, bus stops and dance clubs. When they chant “globalize the intifada,” they are asking for Jews to be killed around the world, instead of confining the attacks to Israel.
When a Columbia student is photographed holding a sign adorned with the words “Al-Qasam’s next target” and an arrow pointing to pro-Israel students, is she asking Al-Qasam, a terrorist organization, to murder them or “just” predicting a future attack against them?
When students at George Washinton University convene a “people’s tribunal” where the provost is “sentenced” to the “guillotine” and the president to the “gallows,” they are unambiguously calling for the murder of specific individuals.
There’s nothing remotely peaceful about any of that.
No wonder the demonstrators garner little backing from the American public. Only 28 percent support the “recent pro‑Palestinian protests on U.S. college campuses,” while 47 percent oppose them.
The results are different among younger people, 40 percent of whom support the protests. Among those over 45, support plummets to just 19 percent, with a vast 62 percent opposed.
Seventy-four percent of Muslims support the demonstrators, while a mirror image 72 percent of Jews oppose them.
Some have argued that the recent arrests crossed the line to overreaction. Americans disagree.
Just 16 percent believe university administrators have responded too harshly. Another 20 percent say the response has been “about right” and 33 percent say it has not been harsh enough.
Again, there is a difference in the responses based on age, but the difference is less stark than one might imagine.
Among those under 45, just 22 percent characterize the response as too harsh, while 43 percent call it “about right” or insufficiently harsh. Nearly two-thirds of those 45 and older call the response “about right” or not harsh enough.
And Americans have no intention of meeting protesters’ demands. For example, just 25 percent believe divesting from companies with ties to Israel is justified, while 40 percent say divestment would be unjust.
The 35 percent of those with no opinion on divestment make clear once again that the country is not seized with this issue.
But it is clear that those paying attention reject the protests, want order restored and action taken against those who violate the law.
Many of the recent demonstrations yield dangerous results by making Trump’s gloomy image of America appear prophetic.
Politicians who appear to capitulate to the demands of the mob have much to lose and little to gain — unless your goal is to assist Trump.
Mellman is a pollster and president of The Mellman Group, a political consultancy. He is also president of Democratic Majority for Israel.