Trump didn’t declare defeat in Minneapolis; he switched to a smarter strategy
What he did was take a pragmatic look at the current board and adjust the pieces so that he can win the midterm.
Andrea Widburg | February 14, 2026
In a perfect world, given Minnesota’s refusal to work with ICE to remove the worst criminal illegal aliens, the Trump administration would have moved in and hunted down as many as possible to detain and then repatriate them.
As you know, this perfect thing happened. After that, the perfect world became less perfect.
Also, in a perfect world, when the screaming minions of leftism took to the streets to harass ICE agents in ways that far exceeded observation and speech, both federal and local law enforcement would have arrested them en masse.
Then, the feds would have doubled down, sending in even more ICE agents, perhaps backed by federal troops to keep the peace. Every single illegal alien in Minnesota would have been detained. That’s how you quash civil unrest, which is what was happening in Minneapolis.
But we don’t live in a perfect world, and none of that happened. Instead, Donald Trump appeared to retreat. Tom Homan, who is now in charge, announced that the highly visible ICE raids would stop. Dems and doomsayers played this as a huge win for Dems and a defeat for Trump on his most well-supported issue: illegal immigration.
No wonder worried people see a lost midterm as a foregone conclusion. To them I say, au contraire. This is Donald Trump, the pragmatist, doing the smart thing.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/02/trump_didn_t_declare_defeat_in_minneapolis_he_switched_to_a_smarter_strategy.html
