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Wile E. Democrat – Super Genius – HotAir

March 24, 2026
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Saturday's Final Word – HotAir
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Political strategy is something that usually takes a little bit of time to analyze. And often, after a year or two, or even a decade or two, only at a distance in the rearview mirror can that strategy be analyzed in more context to make a fair determination of whether or not it the strategy was prudent. 

38 days ago, or two pay cycles ago, Senate Democrats deployed a game plan to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement by holding the rest of the Department of Homeland Security, and ultimately, Americans, hostage until Democrats get what they want – hands off remaining illegal aliens in the country. What they’ve gotten instead is an undeniable and absolute public relations disaster. 

As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill passed in reconciliation and signed by President Trump last year, ICE was padded with extra funding, covering them for the next couple of years despite the regular budgeting allotment the agency was to receive in the current DHS appropriation bill Democrats are filibustering. 

Democrats, believing the entire country had turned on ICE after the shootings of two protesters in Minneapolis, overplayed their hand, like they usually do. Once President Trump replaced both Border Patrol director Greg Bovino, leading the agency that actually runs the Minneapolis operations for detaining and deporting violent illegal aliens, and then Kristi Noem at DHS, the wind quickly left the sails of the ‘ICE needs to be defunded’ movement. Border czar Tom Homan took over in Minneapolis, and local authorities, both civil and police, in the Twin Cities began to cooperate. There have not been the sensational headlines to keep the narrative of ICE being out of control alive, because even left-wing media moved on from it.   

The long game Democrats are playing, of course, isn’t so much that they’re trying to defund ICE. They are consciously attempting to prevent any further erosion of potential voters. And whether they deny it or not, their actions speak volumes. There is a bloc of illegal votes being cast, especially in blue states, and elected Democrats are terrified to see them go away. That’s why they’re blocking the DHS appropriations bill, and that’s why they’re blocking the SAVE Act with everything they have. They view both bills as an existential threat to them as a political party. 

Over the weekend, among the many effects of another Democrat-made government shutdown, albeit a partial one this time, is that the percentages of TSA agents nationwide not showing up to work continued to skyrocket. Not getting paid, with no hope in the immediate future of that status changing, will do that. Countless numbers of agents have sought work in the private sector, where Democrats can’t shut those businesses down every time they throw a tizzy. And few people can blame them for doing so.  

The result at major airports, especially ones that airline carriers use as hubs, was TSA screening lines that exceeded four and a half hours in some instances. Here’s just a sample of what the country faced at the hands of Democrats trying to protect the potential voting rights of illegal aliens. Again, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has not hidden their objective here. Several times, both in press conferences and on the Senate floor, he’s called for a compromise that includes a path to citizenship, or outright amnesty, for those here illegally. That path, or amnesty, turns them into voters, and presumably, Democratic ones. 

In New York at JFK International:





In Austin:

At O’Hare in Chicago: 

In Houston: 

You get the point. Atlanta was a nightmare. LAX is always a nightmare on a fully-staffed day. The last week has been beyond ridiculous. 

And then, Donald Trump had an idea. How about we put ICE agents in at the airports to replace the lost TSA agents, and let the Democrats choke on that for a while? 

Put ICE agents at the airports, and have them take off their masks, and then let’s see how scary the American people think they really are. Let’s conduct a real-time experiment to see if the vaunted Democratic messaging machine, aided and abetted by their Pravda media outlets in Resistance media, is all that and a bag of chips.   

Turns out, it isn’t. 

Within hours, ICE agents began serving as the equivalent of replacement players during a football strike. But instead of the players’ union or the owners causing the drama, it’s the union’s political benefactor causing the drama – the Democratic Party. And in a funny development only Democrats could not see coming, the lines began moving. So much so, in fact, that even media outlets like CNN had to report it. 





Tom Homan said lines are already getting shorter, and more ICE agents are being deployed to more airports. 

Democrats thought they had a winner of an issue, and the punishment American travelers were suffering under made them downright giddy, because they honestly believed those travelers would take it out on Republicans for not caving on ICE funding and giving Democrats the win. 

Rachel Bade, in her Subtack column, quoted several Democrats about their pleasure with how the shutdown was going before President Trump made his move to send in ICE agents. 

Once the decision was made, however, there was a noticeable difference in tone from the giddy Senate Democrats. Dick Blumenthal, the aptly-named senior senator from Connecticut, prophesied this doom on X over the weekend. 

New Jersey Senator Cory “Spartacus” Booker went to LaGuardia and yelled at no one in particular, other than media sycophants, to not believe your lying eyes, that ICE agents weren’t there to make lines shorter. He was actually calling for ICE to leave and for the lines to back up longer again. Only then would Republicans finally give up. 





The big question? What do people stuck in the lines think about ICE stepping in? 

Of course, it’s not universal happiness in the nation’s airports. Here’s one notable dissenter who doesn’t like ICE Nazis. 

You know what I love so much about this? She’s complaining about ICE presence at Newark…in front of a baggage claim carousel. That wouldn’t be where ICE agents are rushing to help now, would it? I know airlines are looking for ways to cut corners, but they haven’t resorted to Airplane! super-economy class, where people come out on the conveyor belt and go around in circles until they find their bag. This preciously misguided progressive is obviously not a ticketed passenger. She’s a paid protester who wasn’t paid enough to get a boarding pass and show up anywhere near the TSA checkpoint where people are waiting. Instead, she’s complaining to people who already made it safely through security from wherever they originated, and the ICE Nazis didn’t put them on trains for the one-way to Dachau. Every single person she’s addressing was not arrested, deported, or shot and killed by ICE. She’s making her case to the thousands of people who know from recent personal experience she’s gaslighting them. 

The fever swamp wing of the Senate Democrats, perfectly encapsulated in Senator Chris Hayes of Connecticut, is not about ready to give up. He knows who his constituents are and what they want. Here’s a little tip. It’s not American citizens living in Connecticut he’s talking about. 





Expect this clip to be in every contested House and Senate seat for the Republicans this summer and fall. He doesn’t care most about legal voters in Connecticut; he cares the most about the illegal ones. 

“And it has failed for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans in this country.” – Senator Chris Murphy (D) CT

As for the rest of the Democratic Conference in the Senate, it seems the appearance of ICE, in spite of the fearmongering, is getting things back to normal. More rapidly in some airports than others, but order is definitely being restored. If nothing else, they work outer lines and crowd control so that the precious few remaining TSA agents can concentrate on *checks notes* inspecting people’s identification to ascertain whether the people claiming to fly are who they say they are before allowing them to board the planes. 

Some of the Democrats have realized they’re back in a box canyon yet again, and they want out. Again. It’s a contest now to see who’s calling Trump’s phone more in a panic to make a deal – whatever’s left of Iranian regime leadership or Senate Democrats. 

The President said as much in Memphis Monday morning. 

So now, the Democrats want to settle. They want a deal. They pitched Majority Leader John Thune a complete cave on every agency within DHS, funding them all in an amendment to the overall appropriation bill, and in return, carve out ICE by itself to debate later. Republicans brought the proposal to the President. No deal. He’s winning. He knows it. He knows he can squeeze them for a better deal.  

For months, the White House tried to negotiate in good faith with the Iranian regime, telling them it would be in their best interest to give up on their nuclear and missile programs, cut off financing of the proxy terrorist groups, and in return, they’d get to live long enough to see another day. They chose not to take that deal. Most of them are now dead, and the very few that remain, perhaps including the current commander of the Quds Force, are allegedly really anxious to make a deal. 

Democrats in the Senate did not want to negotiate. They thought they had the upper hand. Twelve times, the Republicans brought the cloture motion up to get to final passage of the DHS appropriations bill, legislation that was formed in the House Appropriations Committee, passed on the House floor, and passed through the Senate Appropriations Committee. It’s gone through bipartisan regular order. There is zero reason for Trump to give Democrats a win now. They’re scrambling, and he knows it. If Cory Booker is in an airport screaming out a Jedi mind trick about these aren’t the ICE agents you’re looking for, that’s not a sign of strength on the argument. 

Donald Trump increased the pressure on Senate Republicans, too. At the Memphis Crime summit on Monday, he not only called on Senate Democrats to give up on the shutdown stunt, but he also called on Republicans to put an end to the legislative filibuster rule once and for all and get the SAVE America Act passed. 





In the end, I’m unconvinced there are 51 Republicans in the Senate who are ready to pull the trigger on that, yet. But it’s undeniable that the pressure on them is building to do so. 

As for the Democrats, it’s worthy to sum up the strategy to date. 

  • Claim as your top priority the defunding of ICE, which already has funding via a supplemental to the One Big Beautiful Bill for years. 
  • Shut down the Department of Homeland Security, which sidelines the Coast Guard and TSA, neither of which has anything to do with ICE.
  • After being used as pawns for another month without pay, the second time in a year this has happened, TSA agents leave the federal government for gainful employment in the private sector.
  • Screening lines swell immediately to the staffing shortage, topping 4 1/2 hours in some cases.
  • Trump deploys ICE agents to airports. Lines begin moving again.
  •  The agency Democrats vilified and held the country hostage in order to defund looks like heroes for stepping in and alleviating a crisis. 
  • As an extra bonus, now that the borders are secure, ICE agents have direct access to the places that are the next likeliest entry points into the country for would-be illegal aliens – airports.

The donkey was first used as the mascot for the Democratic Party in Andrew Jackson’s campaign of 1828. But it wasn’t until Thomas Nast, the cartoonist, used it in the early 1870’s when it became popular and stuck. And when the party features such characters as Chuck Schumer, Mazie Hirono, Dick Blumenthal, and Chris Hayes, it’s very apt to refer to today’s left-wing party by the donkey’s more coarse and vulgar synonym. 

But might I suggest that when you analyze the party’s strategery in the era of Donald Trump, perhaps a more fitting mascot ought to be this lovable fellow from 1952.

By the way, regardless of what happens to the SAVE Act and DHS funding, if this is the predictive hysteria and positive result ICE has on America’s airports, just wait until ICE monitors the lines in blue state polling places in November for the Midterms. 

That’s going to be epic. 







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