The split-screen presidency

Foreign capitals saw what Trump could not: power staged, not exercised.

(C-SPAN screengrab)

By Brian O’Neill

The deployment of troops to Los Angeles last weekend seemed, at the time, like the defining image of President Donald Trump’s second term. A militarized response to domestic protest. Thousands of federalized National Guard troops were positioned to secure federal buildings amid widespread protests that were largely peaceful—with isolated clashes near enforcement zones—following sweeping immigration raids. For many Americans—and for allies and adversaries watching abroad—it recalled the breach of Lafayette Square in June 2020, only this time without a check. No Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to temper Trump’s worst instincts. No Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley in combat fatigues offering public regret. Just a president unbound, dispatching troops into a major U.S. city and calling it restoration.

That was the image two Sundays ago: Trump crossing a threshold. Not yet autocracy, but a deliberate sketch of its outlines—testing how far he could go, and how little resistance remained.

By this past Sunday, the defining picture had shifted. This past week didn’t reinforce the power Trump tried to project. It undercut it. His immigration crackdown collapsed into retreat. His Israel policy spiraled into unintended escalation. Protests, peaceful, organized, and nationwide, swelled. And, by Saturday night, what was meant to be a show of national unity—a military parade staged on Constitution Avenue—had become a footnote to a split screen filled with missile strikes and nationwide dissent.

The week began with Trump proclaiming a breakthrough on China—a trade framework supposedly hammered out in London. But it quickly became clear that the deal amounted to little more than a rebranding of last month’s Geneva agreement, with tariffs largely unchanged and China’s critical rare-earth exports merely restored to previous levels. U.S. negotiators touted progress, but to get it, they rolled back proposed visa restrictions on Chinese students and pulled back from the AI chip ban.

Beijing, for its part, gave up little of strategic value. China didn’t just walk away with intact supply chains and a reprieve on export limits—it walked away having reaffirmed that these negotiations will happen on its terms.

By midweek, Trump retreated from the core premise of his second-term immigration crackdown. A policy billed as targeting criminal aliens had escalated into indiscriminate raids across farms, packing plants, and urban job sites—the very sweep that triggered the protests in Los Angeles and turned the city into a referendum on his enforcement campaign. After warnings from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and pressure from donors, Trump announced a carveout for the agriculture and hospitality sectors, rebranding those workers as “very good, long-time” contributors. Raids continued elsewhere, and the reversal felt less like a recalibration than a pressure valve.

On Friday, Israel carried out a sweeping assault on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure—an operation that Trump had publicly hoped to avert through diplomacy. But, as with Ukraine, his claim of persuasive leverage collapsed under pressure. The strike unfolded without U.S. coordination, leaving the administration scrambling to respond. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first message—“The United States was not involved”—betrayed just how far removed Washington was from events on the ground.

We all woke up Saturday to scenes of escalation—missile strikes in Israel, retaliatory warnings from Iran, and growing signs that the conflict was widening. Israeli officials claimed success. Tehran promised more. The president, again, responded from the margins: reiterating that the United States had no role in the attack, issuing a vague warning to Iran, and returning to his familiar claim that he could lead both sides to “a deal.”

The pageantry of diplomacy was still intact. The power behind it was not. It was the clearest reminder yet: Trump doesn’t negotiate peace—he watches war unfold.

But that wasn’t the image that held on Saturday. The day didn’t center on official statements or military displays. It belonged to the protests. From late morning through dusk, television screens filled with images of dissent—marches building city by city, from Brooklyn to Denver, Atlanta to Houston, Phoenix to Seattle. Protesters moved peacefully across time zones, not with spontaneity, but with intent. They carried signs, staged sit-ins, blocked traffic. Some cities turned tense, but most stayed focused. And by the time West Coast demonstrators took to the streets, those images were running alongside footage of Trump’s military parade.

The split screen told the story—no commentary required. On one side: a static ceremony—tanks rolling past a half-filled reviewing stand, a president appearing more tired than triumphant. On the other: a nation in motion. What Trump intended as an affirmation of strength landed instead as a reminder of isolation. The parade didn’t unify the country. It didn’t change the subject. It arrived just as the networks were already pivoting back to Israel, back to the protests, back to the hunt for an alleged political assassin in Minnesota (who was apprehended Sunday night).

Commentaries are rarely accurate when they declare a pivotal moment. That task is best left to historians. But this past week offered a sequence of developments worth recording in any serious national security journal. It was not a Watergate resignation, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the morning of Sept. 11. But it was a week in which the administration’s governing image—long cultivated, aggressively projected—could no longer conceal its diminished weight.

None of this means Trump is finished. He still has cards to play, and he’s never hesitated to steamroll those he sees as disloyal or in the way. But those seated across from Trump 2.0—in NATO meetings, G7 summits, or back-channel negotiations in the West Wing—see him more clearly with each passing week, this one especially. The aura continues to thin. What once passed as dominance is increasingly read as performance. And that shift in perception—quiet, steady, and spreading—is its own kind of reckoning.

And the American people? Too soon to tell. But while the president staged a parade, the most sustained national response was protest, not applause. If there’s a quiet signal worth noting from the past week, it’s the persistence of that instinct: democratic, durable, and still visible—even as the institutions around it grow brittle.

Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech.

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