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Trump Retreats After Alex Pretti's Killing · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 1: safe like SimpliSafe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I'm Tom Yeditor. On today's show, Lovett is joining us
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: from Minneapolis, where he's been talking to protesters and residents
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: about the latest on the ground there. We're going to
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  Speaker 1: talk about that, about how the political blowback from the
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  Speaker 1: second American killed by federal agents is finally causing at
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  Speaker 1: least a partial retreat by Trump in the White House.
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  Speaker 1: And we'll also get into how Democrats in Congress are
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  Speaker 1: planning to use this week's government funding deadline as leverage
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  Speaker 1: to demand changes to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
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  Speaker 1: But first, by now you all know and have probably
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  Speaker 1: seen footage of federal agents killing 37-year-old Alex Preddy of Minnesota.
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  Speaker 1: an ICU nurse who was filming the agents on his
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  Speaker 1: phone and helping a protester who'd been pepper sprayed when
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  Speaker 1: the agents tackled him to the ground, removed a gun
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  Speaker 1: they found on Preddy, and then shot him at least
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  Speaker 1: 10 times. Preddy is the second American citizen federal agents
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  Speaker 1: have killed in Minneapolis. And somehow the government's immediate response
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  Speaker 1: might have been even more offensively dishonest and sickeningly cruel
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  Speaker 1: than their response to Rene Good's killing. Stephen Miller smeared
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  Speaker 1: Pretty as a domestic terrorist and a, quote, assassin who
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  Speaker 1: had planned to murder law enforcement, which J.D. Vance retweeted.
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  Speaker 1: Christine Ohm, Greg Bovino, and other assorted dipshits followed suit.
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  Speaker 1: Here is some of what they said immediately after the killing.
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  Speaker 3: The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted.
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  Speaker 3: This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to
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  Speaker 3: do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.
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  Speaker 4: When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological
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  Speaker 4: reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that
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  Speaker 4: is the definition of domestic terrorism. This individual who came
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  Speaker 4: with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation
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  Speaker 4: of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism.
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  Speaker 4: That's the facts. This is a violent riot when you
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  Speaker 4: have someone showing up with weapons and are using them
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  Speaker 4: to assault law enforcement officers. With respect, it feels as
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  Speaker 4: though in some ways you're blaming the victim here.
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  Speaker 1: The victims are the border patrol agents.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not blaming the border patrol agents.
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  Speaker 1: The victim are the border patrol agents.
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  Speaker 3: You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to
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  Speaker 3: any sort of protest that you want.
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  Speaker 2: It's that simple. You don't have that right to break
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  Speaker 2: the law. We do have a second amendment in this
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  Speaker 2: country that.
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  Speaker 1: Jonathan, have you ever gone to a protest? I mean.
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  Speaker 2: Have you gone to a protest? I mean, I've... No, actually,
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  Speaker 2: as a reporter covering it.
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  Speaker 5: Okay, I've been to a protest.
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  Speaker 1: Guess what?
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  Speaker 5: I didn't bring a gun.
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  Speaker 1: I brought a billboard. We can set aside which protest
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  Speaker 1: Scott Besson attended where he brought a billboard, but.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, not enough caviar at 11 Madison Park.
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  Speaker 1: I think he was. You think it was a soybean type,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: a soybean-related thing? I'm seeing it being in.
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  Speaker 2: The Bush v. Gore, kind of the Brooks Brothers riots
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  Speaker 2: in Palm Beach.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good call. So we are going to
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  Speaker 1: spend some time on the blowback from this response that
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  Speaker 1: we just witnessed. I do think it's worth spending a
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  Speaker 1: minute on how you guys feel, not only about the
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  Speaker 1: murder of Alex Preddy, but what the government said and
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  Speaker 1: the storyline they tried to push in the immediate aftermath,
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  Speaker 1: which I can't seem to stop thinking about. Tommy, you
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  Speaker 1: want to start?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, you know, you and I did a
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  Speaker 6: quick reaction to this for the Posse of America YouTube
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: on Saturday, and we were watching the videos in real time.
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  Speaker 6: And I think, you know, my initial reaction was horror
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  Speaker 6: and then rage at the way they were smearing this
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  Speaker 6: man and then just like heartbreak for his family and
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  Speaker 6: the people who witnessed it in the community and everyone
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  Speaker 6: in Minnesota who's living through this. And I think in
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  Speaker 6: the days since we had that conversation, we've learned more
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  Speaker 6: about who this guy was, who Alex Pretty was and
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  Speaker 6: what he was doing and what happened that day. And
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  Speaker 6: most guys want to say that I think he's a
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  Speaker 6: hero and that he like his death was an unjustifiable,
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  Speaker 6: senseless murder, but that he was acting heroically. Not only
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  Speaker 6: is this a guy who by day cares for veterans
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  Speaker 6: at a VA hospital, in his free time, he decided
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  Speaker 6: to put his body on the line at these protests
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  Speaker 6: in the freezing cold, bear witness, you know, film these
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  Speaker 6: ICE and CBP thugs when they're beating up people in
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  Speaker 6: this community. And then his last act was trying to
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  Speaker 6: help a woman who had just been brutally assaulted by
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  Speaker 6: a CBP officer. He was trying to cover her and
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  Speaker 6: put his body in the way of her so she
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  Speaker 6: wouldn't be beaten further. And like, I hope- His last
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  Speaker 6: words were, are you okay?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 6: And like, I think we'd all like to think that
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  Speaker 6: in a situation like that, that we'd have the courage
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  Speaker 6: to act in the way he did. And I hope
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  Speaker 6: people take as much inspiration from him as they do outrage.
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  Speaker 6: And like with respect to J.D. Vance and Kristi Noem
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  Speaker 6: and Bovino, they're the opposite of Alex Pratt. You know,
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  Speaker 6: like they are cowards. They are disgraced liars. They aren't
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  Speaker 6: willing to risk anything to do what is right. They
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  Speaker 6: will only do what it takes to get more power
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  Speaker 6: for themselves. And so they're going to have to answer
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  Speaker 6: to voters and to their consciences and to God if
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  Speaker 6: they actually believe in one. And so, look, it's self-evident
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  Speaker 6: that Alex Pratt was never a threat.
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  Speaker 1: He was not a terrorist. He was being brutally assaulted.
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  Speaker 6: By half a dozen big armed men before he was
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  Speaker 6: executed with 10 bullets. Not only was he only holding
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  Speaker 6: his phone, he had his other hand up. He did what,
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  Speaker 6: for years, conservatives have told mostly young black men in
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  Speaker 6: this country that the way you avoid getting killed by
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  Speaker 6: the cops is you have both hands up like this.
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  Speaker 6: And he did both of those things. And he was
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  Speaker 6: executed in cold blood in the middle of the day
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  Speaker 6: on the street in front of dozens of people. So
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  Speaker 6: it is an enraging, horrifying tragedy. And he's a hero.
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  Speaker 6: And I hope people remember him that way.
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  Speaker 1: Love it. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: The, the, the, the fact that you have officials in
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  Speaker 2: the administration that are basically responsible for immigration policy, basically
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  Speaker 2: immediately without any real information, no more information than, than,
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  Speaker 2: than we did. Basically it was within minutes, I think
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  Speaker 2: describing someone as an assassin based on nothing. And then
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  Speaker 2: both Bovino and Noam land on this line, like maximum damage,
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  Speaker 2: some form of maximum damage to law enforcement, again, without
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  Speaker 2: any evidence. The fact that they were willing to assert that, uh,
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  Speaker 2: before they knew anything just shows how kind of corrupt
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  Speaker 2: they are and, and irresponsible they are and unfit they are. Um,
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  Speaker 2: But boy, how unlucky for them that Alex Preddy turns
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  Speaker 2: out to be an incredible person, like truly like the
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  Speaker 2: best of us. What bad luck for them that this
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  Speaker 2: guy is a hero because you shouldn't have to be
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  Speaker 2: a hero to not have the government lie about you
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  Speaker 2: when you're shot dead in the street by agents of
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  Speaker 2: the state. You shouldn't have to be the best of
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  Speaker 2: us to be treated with respect. It is a terrible
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  Speaker 2: story for them that this man spoke movingly at the
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  Speaker 2: deaths of veterans, don't A lot of people have noted this,
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  Speaker 2: that Preddy became a nurse in 2021, which meant that
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  Speaker 2: he saw what was unfolding in COVID and decided that
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  Speaker 2: he wanted to be in the medical profession. But Noam
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  Speaker 2: and Pavino and all these people, they'll lie about anybody.
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  Speaker 2: They're lying about people all the time. They've been lying
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  Speaker 2: about people they've grabbed off the street. They've been lying
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  Speaker 2: about people they've put in detention. There's just only some
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  Speaker 2: of those stories where it's so egregious and the person
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  Speaker 2: so obviously deserving of more that it gets this kind
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  Speaker 2: of attention. And so the tragedy, right, is that this
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  Speaker 2: wonderful and beloved person was gunned down because of poorly trained, angry, twitchy, aggressive,
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  Speaker 2: federal agents who feel beholden to and protected by Donald
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  Speaker 2: Trump and his goons. We went to the memorial where
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  Speaker 2: he had been killed. And you just see so many
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  Speaker 2: people who they're just standing there in silence, just really
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  Speaker 2: unable to move. A lot of people have never been
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  Speaker 2: to anything like that before. They've never felt this before.
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  Speaker 2: They've never experienced anything in their communities like this before,
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  Speaker 2: like so wrenched by this. And it's all just so.
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  Speaker 2: completely avoidable. And the like the lying about it, you know,
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  Speaker 2: like I've seen a bunch of people like scratching their
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  Speaker 2: chins to complain about all the ways in which everyone
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  Speaker 2: but Noam and Bovino and all these people are ultimately
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  Speaker 2: responsible and ICE is ultimately responsible and the Border Patrol responsible.
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  Speaker 2: But the lying is escalation. The lying is a form
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  Speaker 2: of ratcheting up the, the, the tension. And it's only because,
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  Speaker 2: because pretty is such a, like a tribune to, to
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  Speaker 2: good values that they've kind of had to blow up
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  Speaker 2: in their faces.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I want to talk about the line because I think
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  Speaker 1: it is the most chilling part to me because I
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  Speaker 1: think we are so used to, because we now have a, a,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: reality TV show presidents. We have a bunch of Fox
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: pundits running the cabinet. We are so used to like, well,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: we're all in this political warfare with each other. And
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: so one side lies and the other side lies. These
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: are the people in charge of the federal government, which
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  Speaker 1: is the most powerful entity on the planet. They control Just,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: you know, enough manpower, enough weaponry to destroy the whole world.
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  Speaker 1: This is the Department of Homeland Security. It's not immigration officials.
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  Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security is supposed to protect the country.
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  Speaker 1: And they are lying and lying easily, callously, without even blinking,
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  Speaker 1: without even seeming like they feel like, oh, shit, we
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  Speaker 1: got to cover our asses. They're lying so easily about
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  Speaker 1: something that they know was filmed at multiple different angles.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not like they thought they could get away
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  Speaker 1: with this. They're just lying, thinking, like, I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: just say whatever the fuck I want. And who the
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  Speaker 1: hell cares about that? And that, to me, is, like,
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  Speaker 1: the most chilling part. And they just kept going. And, like,
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  Speaker 1: they all jump in. Did you see Pete Hegseth? Our
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  Speaker 1: defense secretary jumped in with a post saying, who's from Minnesota,
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  Speaker 1: who was born in Minnesota, that said, ICE greater than
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  Speaker 1: sign Minnesota.
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  Speaker 6: Also, why is Scott Besson commenting on what CBP and
• 12:03
  Speaker 6: ICE are up to?
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  Speaker 1: You're the Treasury Secretary. I don't know. That's not my job.
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  Speaker 1: Don't comment on it. Fucking Vice President of the United
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  Speaker 1: States retweeting Stephen Miller. His boss. Exactly, Tommy, which is
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  Speaker 1: like all this stuff about they're all doing it because
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: they're all afraid of Miller. I mean, they're afraid of Trump,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: but they know that Miller's the enforcer because Trump's busy
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: with his ballroom and a whole bunch of other shit.
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  Speaker 1: He's doing his Melania thing, his screening of Melania. And
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  Speaker 1: Miller's the real boss. And so when Stephen Miller says, oh,
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  Speaker 1: this is an assassin, they're all like, oh, we all
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: gotta jump in, right? J.D. Vance then on Sunday tweets
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  Speaker 1: his fucking story that he told last week about, oh,
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  Speaker 1: these ICE agents in Minnesota, they were having dinner. And
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: then suddenly everyone, a mob came in and they locked
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the door and they felt scared for their lives. They're like,
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  Speaker 1: what were they? It was like, did Reigns of Castamere
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  Speaker 1: start playing? It was like this fucking red, like the
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: door locked from the inside. Did they just casually get
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: up and walk out, you know? But he was like,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: he basically told that story to say that like Minnesota
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: officials have created this chaos so they can have moments
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: like yesterday where someone tragically dies and politicians get to
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: grandstand about the evils of enforcing the border. And I'm like,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: That is, like, you are so fucked up. Like, J.D. Vance,
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  Speaker 1: forget about, like, his values, his morality. Like, to tweet
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: something like that after someone is murdered, like, you need
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: to see someone for help. Like, you're fucking psychologically nuts.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, and just, like, the casual, like, the callousness and
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: the total disregard for the truth, it really just, like,
• 13:29
  Speaker 6: saps your faith in government and humanity. But then the
• 13:32
  Speaker 6: efforts to blame the victim... are just like Cash Patel, right?
• 13:35
  Speaker 6: He says, you can't bring a gun to a protest.
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: They're trying to suggest that, you know, that he is,
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: Alex Pratt is at fault because he brought a gun
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  Speaker 6: to this protest. And it's like, are you fucking kidding me?
• 13:44
  Speaker 6: Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people at a protest. You guys
• 13:47
  Speaker 6: lionized him. You treated him, you made him into a hero.
• 13:50
  Speaker 6: Cash Patel specifically offered to raise money for Kyle Rittenhouse
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: to sue the media about his reputation. And by the way,
• 13:57
  Speaker 6: he made these comments on a white nationalist podcast with
• 13:59
  Speaker 6: a guy named Stu Peters. Stu Peters is so vile.
• 14:02
  Speaker 6: And so anti-Semitic that he sold a meme coin called J-Proof, i.e.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Jewish proof.
• 14:07
  Speaker 6: And then Kash Patel later lied to the Senate and
• 14:09
  Speaker 6: pretended he didn't know who Stu Peters was despite being
• 14:12
  Speaker 6: on his show eight times. I think that aside there,
• 14:14
  Speaker 6: I think just like tells you about the character of
• 14:16
  Speaker 6: the people in these government positions.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Kash Patel is the FBI director.
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  Speaker 6: And he got that position because he was willing to
• 14:22
  Speaker 6: lie and say whatever it took to get power.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And that's where we're at. And it's just like we–
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: The conclusion from this, which is a conclusion most of
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: us have drawn years ago, but especially true now, it's
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: like we cannot trust a single thing that our government
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: tells us. Especially DHS. About anything, especially DHS. But like,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: you know, we just had, you know, the story last
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: week about the five-year-old boy who they took from his
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: family and is now somewhere in a detention facility in Texas,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: maybe sent to Mexico now that they're reinstating the Remain
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: in Mexico policy, this five-year-old. And they tried to tell
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: us the father abandoned him. The mother didn't want him.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: And all these lies, and they're trying to argue, but
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: it's like, we can't believe any of that. We're supposed
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: to believe that the agent who killed Rene Good had
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: internal bleeding. We're supposed to believe that the car hit him.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: We're supposed to believe there were two rounds of ammo
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: that Alex Prady brought with him, too. They haven't produced
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: any pictures of the ammo. I think if they had that,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: they would... We can't believe anything. We cannot believe anything
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the government says right now.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: There's something about Vance that... unrelated story about the lunch incident.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And it was dinner don't worry it was the dinner
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: incident you can interrupt people's lunch it was the.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Main meal uh that and then they're like the the
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: the work hit the phrase so they can have moments
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: like this so they can have moments like this.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Because he would do that, that's why. Because Trump and
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Vance would use stuff to have, would want moments like
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: this for their political end. So they think that we
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: would do the same thing too?
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: But then it's like, so I'm sorry, is the tension
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: that took place where Alex Preddy was killed elevated because
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: of an unrelated incident that took place at this other restaurant?
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Are you saying that you hold a separate protest accountable
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: for the ways in which you were bothered by what
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: happened at the previous? Is Alex Pretty responsible for other
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: people's acts? Are those ICE officers that killed Alex Pretty,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: are they not responsible because of something that happened to
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: an unrelated group of people? Like hold individuals responsible for
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: their conduct. Like what happened in this moment? We all
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: watched it. We all saw it with our own eyes.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: What the fuck does what happened at a restaurant have
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: anything to do with that? Unless you are doing some
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: kind of collective punishment of protesters in which, because some
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: protesters have done things that you don't like, whatever you're
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: describing it as, whoever you're mischaracterizing it, what does that
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: have to do? with the rights of an individual to
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: record people, to try to prevent someone from being hurt,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: from not being murdered on the street with bullets in
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  Speaker 2: the back. Like, it has nothing to do with anything. Like,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: the overall context, like, what the fuck are you talking about?
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's the whole two, like, what about,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: you know, where's the uproar about Lake and Riley or
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: any of the people who've been murdered by undocumented immigrants?
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: It's like, Well, the people who murdered them should be
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: held accountable to the fullest extent of the law and
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: sent away for their lives. And if someone has a
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: criminal record and is violent, then you should deport them
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: if you can. And if they're a U.S. citizen, then
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: you should charge them with a crime and have a
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: jury convict them. What are you talking about? By the way,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: you can go even further than that.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Go further. I'll go further than that. And if the
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: immigration system is broken.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: right?
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: If the immigration system is not safe, we should fix it.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: We should have better laws. That does not mean people
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: surrender their basic rights. That doesn't mean we have to
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: have an inhumane deportation policy of people that happen to
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: have been in the wrong restaurant at the wrong time.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: What is the connection here? It's like the refusal to
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: just look at the thing in the face. Kash Patel,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Pete Hegseth, I don't think these people have... These are
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: not like deeply held beliefs. And I don't even think
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: sometimes they're saying these things because they're trying to like
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: own the libs. Like they're just saying what they think
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: they're supposed to say to stay on side. And they
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: just happened in this case to be so warped by
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: their media environment, by their fear of their boss, by
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: the fact that they haven't really thought about their deeper
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: moral convictions in seemingly a very long time, too busy.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: too overwhelmed, too incompetent, that they misread this situation because
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: it was so egregious, because they've gotten away with it
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: or think they've gotten away with it in so many
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: other circumstances in the first year of this administration.
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: And look, it just, it is a bigger deal when
• 18:50
  Speaker 6: the state executes an American citizen, right? Like we have
• 18:52
  Speaker 6: an implicit contract with the state that the state is
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: allowed to use violence or to detain us, right? To
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: take away our freedoms and our liberties, right? So we
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: have certain rights. And in the White House position is
• 19:01
  Speaker 6: basically that ICE and CBP, they can murder American citizen,
• 19:05
  Speaker 6: They can posthumously slander him or her. They can call
• 19:08
  Speaker 6: him a terrorist. They can remove evidence from the crime scene.
• 19:10
  Speaker 6: They could block state and local investigations.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: And then they can.
• 19:13
  Speaker 6: Hide the shooter's identity, even though that person is staying
• 19:16
  Speaker 6: on the job. And the fucking don't tread on me
• 19:19
  Speaker 6: crowd is now like, you know, like spank me, big
• 19:22
  Speaker 6: government daddy, you know, like, thank you, sir.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: May I have another?
• 19:24
  Speaker 6: It's like, I don't, how do you, whatever happened to
• 19:27
  Speaker 6: that libertarian DNA? Like, where did all that go? When
• 19:29
  Speaker 6: did we become just like pro police state authoritarianism?
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Like it, whatever you have it. You have an in-group
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: that the law protects and you have an out-group that
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: must be dealt with. That's their only law. That's the
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: only law.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: First principles whatsoever.
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Like, hey, this person is an agent of the state.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: If you believe the killing is justified, he did it
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: on behalf of the state. If it's not, he did
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: it as an individual. We need to understand the difference.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: That's why you learn the person's name. That's why, because
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: he was operating on behalf of the state. And if
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: he was, then he should be protected. And if he wasn't,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: he needs to be held accountable. Like that is how
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: it works. And like, there's no, like, no, you don't
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: get to, that's not doxing when a federal official kills
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: somebody in the street. That's not what that means.
• 20:31
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• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I remember being surprised in the wake of Rene Good's
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: killing at some of the polls showing that like more
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: than 70 percent of Americans had seen the actual video.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: This was like right after. It's probably higher now. Pretty's
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: killing already seems to have broken through in a way
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I don't think anything has in Trump's second term, at
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: least in terms of prominent people speaking out who've been
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: quiet up until now. Trump supporters criticizing the administration, just
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: normal people posting about it, talking about it, getting outraged.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Just one example. Here's what happened at the Minnesota Timberwolves game.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: They played the Warriors this weekend. They held a moment
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: of silence for Pretty right before the game.
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: We extend our love, support, and heartfelt sympathies to Alex's
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: family and friends in our community during this difficult time.
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: Please join us in honoring the life and memory of
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: Alex Pretty with a moment of silence.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: If you couldn't hear it, that was everyone screaming, fuck ICE.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Hard to know if this will last. It certainly feels
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: like it could be an inflection point. What do you
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: make of the response from everyone who's not a Trump
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: dead ender on this? Tommy? Well, there's some polling.
• 25:08
  Speaker 6: 58% of voters say ICE has gone too far. There's
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: a new Reuters Ipsos poll. Trump's approval on immigration is
• 25:12
  Speaker 6: 39% approved, 53% disapproved.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: That's quite bad.
• 25:16
  Speaker 6: I do think it's an inflection point. I hope it's
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: an inflection point, but I really do. think it is
• 25:19
  Speaker 6: because the voters wanted a secure border they want violent
• 25:21
  Speaker 6: criminals deported no one wanted this like everyone knows this
• 25:23
  Speaker 6: is wrong and from a cultural standpoint i really i
• 25:26
  Speaker 6: personally am seeing a breakthrough like in my feeds like
• 25:28
  Speaker 6: uh nba players john randall who was a hall of
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: fame defensive tackle played 11 seasons for the vikings he
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: was tweeting about this there's like a vikings beat reporter
• 25:37
  Speaker 6: a guy on twitter who's like a minnesota you know
• 25:40
  Speaker 6: uh twin super fan like my buddy joel corti who
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: um founded this company chase bliss they make guitar pedals
• 25:46
  Speaker 6: like he's posting stuff on it you know it's like
• 25:48
  Speaker 6: people you know through all all throughout your life. And
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: it's usually people being like, I never use this account
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: to talk about politics because I hate talking about politics,
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: but this is different. You're also seeing Republicans willing to
• 25:59
  Speaker 6: break with Trump. Like there are some usual suspects, Rand Paul,
• 26:03
  Speaker 6: Tom Tillis, Murkowski. They're going a little further than usual,
• 26:06
  Speaker 6: but even like James Comer, who's a, you know, dyed
• 26:09
  Speaker 6: in the wool MAGA guy. He's saying I should get
• 26:12
  Speaker 6: out of Minnesota. Greg Abbott said, yeah, Texas governor says
• 26:16
  Speaker 6: ICE needs to recalibrate.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: It's, it's, decisions in Minnesota.
• 26:19
  Speaker 6: A bunch of high profile MAGA like media people, even
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: like formerly paid propagandists from the Russian government are criticizing
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: ICE and Trump. The New York Post editorial said, quote,
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: the hasty misleading rhetoric coming out of the administration needs
• 26:32
  Speaker 6: to stop. The American people didn't vote for these scenes
• 26:35
  Speaker 6: and you can't continue to order them to not believe
• 26:37
  Speaker 6: their lying eyes. So I do think like that is
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: a lot of pressure from the right.
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Love it. What's your sense?
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I think I think it's broken through. It's
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: been interesting watching the kinds of people that try to
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: defend Trump at every turn or find the intellectual way
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: to not defend him while still managing to make sure
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: they're doing their job of making this about the way
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: the left is causing it in some fashion, how they've
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: kind of run up against some weather in this. And
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I do think if you're not in the kind of
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: daily political battles about how we argue over all kinds
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: of videos and images and seeing the opposites, even those
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: who want to be deferential to law enforcement, when you
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: watch this video, the Rene Good video, on top of
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: all the other videos we're seeing, it's one thing for
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: people who are maybe instinctively more defensive of law enforcement
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: to defend police acting professionally. But what ICE or Border Patrol,
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: what they look like in these moments, they just look
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: like a gang. And they're scrambling and they're running up
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: and they're pushing people. They're not acting like police. They're
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: just not. Like you can have all kinds of criticism
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: of police that is deserved. These people are not acting
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: like police. They're not deescalating. You see a lot of
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: criticism from cops, by the way, law enforcement officials, both
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: locally and nationally saying, This is not how a professional
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: police force acts because you're supposed to deescalate. You're supposed
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: to step back. You're not supposed to make things worse.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: And you see like the number of videos you see
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: of somebody from ICE or BPB, we put them together,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: but they are different. Kind of running up and just
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: shoving somebody, grabbing somebody. And then because now, and then
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: somebody maybe grabs back or falls, whatever, an agent falls.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Now there's two people on top of each other. So
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: six more agents come in and now they're part of
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: this scrum. Like a little bit of like what happened with,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: with Pretty. And it just doesn't look like police. It
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: looks like gangs. They're acting like gangs. And so I
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: think that is visceral for everybody, including people that are
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: less political, less anti-comp, more pro-law enforcement. Like, I think
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: that is part of what makes these images so powerful.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, remember after they killed Renee Goode, You could
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: hear the man who shot her, the agent who shot her, say,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: fucking bitch. And then now, after this, there were two
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: agents fist-bumping, high-fiving after the Preti murder as well.
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: Sickening.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: There was also a doctor who filed this in the
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: affidavit for the court case that we'll talk about in
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: a bit, but said that he, once again, just like
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: in the Rene Good killing, tried to rush and provide
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: medical care for Preti. And they wouldn't let him because
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: he'd have his license on him. And then finally they
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: let him in. And he said it was weird is
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: that he was late on his side, which is not
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: what you do when there's like a gunshot victim. And
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: then he saw that the, um, the agents, the border
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: patrol agents were counting the bullet holes. That's why they
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: had pretty on his side, as opposed to trying to
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: help him with medical care. They were counting bullet holes.
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: Well, they're also looking for a gun and they realized
• 29:32
  Speaker 6: there was no gun on him because he had been
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: disarmed before they executed him.
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: The other Republican I thought was interesting, Chris, Chris Medell,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: who's a Republican candidate for, who was a Republican candidate
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: for governor in Minnesota and the pro bono lawyer for
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Ross, the agent that killed Renee Good, dropped out
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: of the race, said, I can't look my daughters in
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the eye and say I'm running as a Republican when
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: they're pulling over Hispanics and Asians because of the color
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: of their skin and what they look like. I did
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: not sign up for that. That was the end of
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: his candidacy. So, Some of the tech people are finally
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: speaking up, some of the next tier tech folks. I
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: did see one guy from OpenAI as an exec there,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: James Diet, which is a pretty damning tweet. He said,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: there's far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and executing civilians
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: in the streets. tells you what you need to know
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: about the values of our industry. Yeah. Fuck yeah.
• 30:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the fucking all-in pod crowd, they think the real
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: problem is a 5% wealth tax on billionaires.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Chamath was literally tweeting about that all weekend while this
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: was happening. This is your buddy Donald Trump. You didn't
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: have a fucking word to say about this? The real
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: victims are the billionaires. Do we think Tim Cook.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Was on Do Not Disturb during the screening and so
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: he only saw it after?
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: What Levitt's referencing here is that Donald Trump on Saturday
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: night after the killing held a screening of of the
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: new Melania doc. That, you know, there was a little
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: bit of a drug deal there.
• 30:52
  Speaker 6: Amazon paid $ 40.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Billion for it. Yeah. $ 40 million. And, you know, and
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Tim Cook went. That was great.
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: Why?
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: A couple executives.
• 30:57
  Speaker 6: It's on a competing streaming service. Why is he going
• 30:59
  Speaker 6: to the premiere of a documentary on a competing streaming service?
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I guess Tim Cook and Apple just wanted to show
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: support for the president who just presided over, you know,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: federal agents who executed the second American citizen in a
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: matter of weeks.
• 31:11
  Speaker 6: A riveting documentary for everyone who always wondered, what is
• 31:14
  Speaker 6: the first lady up to in the 20 days before
• 31:17
  Speaker 6: she becomes president? officially first lady in her inauguration.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Directed by Brett Radner, a person we all missed. That
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Hollywood was clamoring for more work from him.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Trump himself. And I do think it's
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: notable that we have waited until now to talk about Trump,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: which I think just goes to show that he has,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, at the beginning of this, he sort of
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: was in the background a bit. It is pretty clear
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: now that he, and at least some people in the
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: White House, have realized that, at least from a pure
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: political standpoint- They have royally fucked this up. Trump announced
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Monday that he's sending border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: who will be replacing Greg Bovino, who is finally leaving
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: the city with at least some of the Border Patrol
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: forces under his command. And Nick Miroff at The Atlantic
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: has just reported that Bovino has been removed from his
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: role as Border Patrol commander at large and will return
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: to his former job in El Centro, California. where he's
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: expected to retire soon. This is according to a DHS
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: official and two people who have knowledge of the change.
• 32:20
  Speaker 6: What a world where we're like, oh, yes, we got Homan.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: We got rid of Bovino. We got Homan, guys.
• 32:26
  Speaker 6: Just the guy with the 50 grand in the kava bag.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: That's like a relief. Well, remember how this all went down, too,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: is that it was first Homan, and then there was
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: all this sort of reporting about this internal scuttlebutt over, like,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Tom Homan wasn't extreme enough. for Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Corey Lewandowski, of course, the brains behind the operation at DHS.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Behind something, yeah. And so, you know, Homan wasn't tough enough, right? Because,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: of course, Homan is an Obama administration holdover from way back.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: He was some mid-level ice guy or senior ice guy there.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: And so Homan wasn't tough enough. And so they kind
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: of demote Homan, or at least he's out of view.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: They get Bovino on the ground. with his SS coat
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: and his phalanx of agents that he needs to have
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: around him even when he's going into Target to take
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: a piss. He's a big, tough guy. And so then
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: it's Bovino. And remember after Goode was killed and Homan
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: is in one of those first interviews and he's like,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: I think there should be a full investigation. Like, I
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: think we should not call it domestic terrorism. And then
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: suddenly he's like back on the talking point. So Homan,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: they all see Homan as like a cuck, right? Homan
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: is a real... Yeah. Homan's a real beta to them,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: which is fucking nuts.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Lewandowski and Noem, they don't like Homan. There's like a
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: tension there, right?
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: Right. Yeah.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: So now Homan is back in. And I guess this
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: is the last of Greg Bovino for a while. Trump
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: also said on Monday that he had a, quote, very
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: good call with Tim Walz and that they, quote, actually
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: seem to be on a similar wavelength. I'm sure Walz
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: laughed at that. The Walz office said that Trump agreed
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: to allow for an impartial Investigation into Freddie's killing that
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: involves Minnesota state officials, which they had originally been trying
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: to keep out of it. And they and they did
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: for goods investigation, lack thereof, not a real investigation into
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: goods murder. And that also Trump agreed to, quote, look
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota. And
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: of course, there's that reporting that some of the Border
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Patrol is going to leave with Bovino. Also, apparently, right
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: before we recorded, Trump talked to Fry, Jacob Fry as well,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: and they had the mayor of Minneapolis, and they were
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: supposed to have like a productive call as well, according
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to Fry. There were also hearings on Monday on both
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: of the points that Walz and Trump talked about in
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: these record cases brought by the state of Minnesota by
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Attorney General Keith Ellison. One asking a judge to stop
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: the ICE surge and the Border Patrol surge immediately, and
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: one demanding that the Department of Homeland Security preserve all
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: the evidence from the scene of Preddy's death. You know,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: the judge seemed... reluctant or sort of torn on whether
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: they could actually stop this enforcement operation during the hearing.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Though the one thing that was really getting the judge
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: was Pam Bondi's letter that she sent basically saying, we'll
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: take out our agents only if these conditions are met.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: And one was, we want your SNAP, your food stamp rolls.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: And one was, we want access to your voter rolls.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: So weird. Yeah. And then we want more cooperation on
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: law enforcement. And so The judge was like, it does
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: seem a little weird that there's basically a demand of
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: meeting certain conditions before you stop terrorizing a population. It's
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: not what the judge said, but that was basically the
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: feeling there. So we'll wait for rulings on that. And
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: then White House held a press briefing, their first press
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: briefing since the killing on Monday. Caroline Leavitt was asked
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: at her briefing about Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem calling
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Pretty a domestic terrorist and an assassin. And she said
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: that Trump doesn't characterize him that way. Did not defend Miller.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Did not defend him. She hung him out to dry.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Did not.
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: The bar is so low, right? Like, but also didn't criticize,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Just sort of.
• 36:05
  Speaker 6: She didn't condemn him, but she definitely were like, they're
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: on an island and I'm signaling that Donald Trump has
• 36:10
  Speaker 6: not said that.
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: And seemingly wouldn't say that. I mean, yeah. I can't
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: imagine any white house press secretary, unless the person was
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: fired to actually, you know, make the criticism right there.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: But I thought that, that was, that surprised me because
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Caroline Levitt's never done that.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: No, she was, I was actually like, she was, it
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: was actually more circumspect than, than, than usual.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Trump, of course, aside from some of these posts spent
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: the weekend, a lot of other posts over the weekend,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: he was posting about his ballroom, basically saying it's unstoppable.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Now you can't stop me now from building this ballroom.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Uh, He was hosting the screening, of course, the Melania screening.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: He threatened to, again now, to make bad polls a
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: criminal offense. So his head's in the right place. You
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: guys have thoughts on the evolving nature of the Trump
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: White House response to Prattie's killing in this seeming retreat
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: from Trump in the White House?
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah, look, Trump has been, as you said, he's been
• 37:04
  Speaker 6: horrible at times. But I also think At other times,
• 37:08
  Speaker 6: his reaction has seemed more human than J.D. Vance or
• 37:10
  Speaker 6: Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem or at least more like
• 37:12
  Speaker 6: politically in tune with the moment. And so he definitely
• 37:15
  Speaker 6: seems very much to.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Be in climb-down mode.
• 37:17
  Speaker 6: The fact that he's calling the mayor, the fact that
• 37:19
  Speaker 6: he's calling Governor Walz is significant. Look, I think he
• 37:24
  Speaker 6: is mostly focused on making money and like legacy stuff,
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: like the ego stuff. Like he wants the ballroom. He
• 37:29
  Speaker 6: wants the arc to Trump. He wants to build these
• 37:31
  Speaker 6: monuments to himself. And he wants the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 37:33
  Speaker 6: But he doesn't like when the markets go down. He
• 37:35
  Speaker 6: doesn't like when the stock market dips. He doesn't like
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: getting calls from Republican senators or other allies telling him
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: that his team is screwing up.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: So they're making changes.
• 37:43
  Speaker 6: And, you know, there's been a lot of reporting even
• 37:46
  Speaker 6: before Alex Priddy's murder that there was internal White House
• 37:51
  Speaker 6: disagreement over the political impact of the ice crackdown, specifically
• 37:55
  Speaker 6: in Minnesota. I think there are people in the White
• 37:58
  Speaker 6: House who are monsters, but they can read a poll
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: and they know that this is not helping them.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: In fact, it's backfiring.
• 38:03
  Speaker 6: But their problem is that Stephen Miller doesn't want to
• 38:05
  Speaker 6: give an inch and Stephen Miller is the first among
• 38:07
  Speaker 6: equals in that building. Like Susie Wiles has the title
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: of chief of staff. I'm sorry, but you're not the
• 38:11
  Speaker 6: most powerful person in the White House, nor is J.D.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Vance. It is Stephen Miller.
• 38:15
  Speaker 6: And so we know this because during Signalgate, Stephen Miller
• 38:19
  Speaker 6: basically told J.D. Vance to shut the fuck up and
• 38:21
  Speaker 6: get on the get with the program about bombing Yemen.
• 38:24
  Speaker 6: And so, you know, I think. Clearly, we're seeing, you know,
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: a climb down in Minnesota. Maybe there'll be a change
• 38:30
  Speaker 6: to the way ICE and CBP is deployed. I think
• 38:32
  Speaker 6: people probably understand that another incident like this is inevitable
• 38:35
  Speaker 6: if some change isn't made. I'd still worry, though, that
• 38:38
  Speaker 6: there's going to be a constant kind of back and
• 38:40
  Speaker 6: forth push and pull with Stephen Miller and the people
• 38:43
  Speaker 6: trying to constrain him. I don't know how long term
• 38:45
  Speaker 6: it will be.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Love it. What do you think?
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: So there's sort of there's there's three. There's three things
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: happening to me.
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: One.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Is the policy, the policy of mass deportations, and how
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: you execute on a policy like that. The other is
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: the incredibly aggressive tactics that they've been pursuing in the
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Twin Cities and other places. And then the third is
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: the tenor of the administration and how it talks about
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: what it's doing. Clearly, Trump is trying to do this
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: with the tenor, maybe some surface changes in the aggressiveness
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: of the response, but the mass deportation policy remains. And
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: that's a math problem. That's not even a Stephen Miller problem,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: it's a math problem. I agree he's the driving force
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: behind trying to hit whatever number, a million deportations in
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: a year, but they just can't get just criminals. They
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: don't have it. So they have to go after normal people.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: And there is no way to pursue a mass deportation
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: agenda without causing chaos in communities with immigrants because there
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: are documented immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and citizens from those communities.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: And by the way, they're neighbors and community members and
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: colleagues and people that go to school with their children
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: who are American citizens. And so, you know, he can
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: have a different phone conversation tone with Tim Walz for
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: a day. Well, by the way, still posting that he's
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: going to go after Ilhan Omar and go after the fraud,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: which is ostensibly going after Walz, right? Whatever else he
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: wants to call it. But the reality is, The policy,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: if this is the policy, this is what will happen
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: no matter how they try to kind of massage it.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: It's not an optics problem, it's a math problem. And
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know how they resolve that. There's no real
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: way to resolve it. You can do a mass deportation
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: policy that is less monstrous, I suppose. It's still going
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: to be incredibly disruptive and horrible for these communities. So
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: that to me is still like, what are we talking about?
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: What's Homan gonna do that's different than what Bovino was
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: gonna do? A slightly better tone? Is Homan some fuck?
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: Does he have a great bedside manner? I mean, maybe
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: compared to fucking Bovino, but he's still Tom Homan.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what I worry about is, so imagine what happens
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: on Saturday takes place. Alex Pratt is murdered. And Stephen
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Miller does not tweet that he was a would-be assassin.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Greg Bovino does not give that press conference that we saw.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Christine Ohm does not go out there and say he
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: was a domestic terrorist. They do not have a response
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: as fucking nuts as they had. they announce, all right,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: we're actually going to take this seriously. We believe that,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: you know, this man had a gun on him and
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: we believe he was going to cause violence, but we're
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: going to have a full investigation of this and that's
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: going to be it. And, you know, the outcry then
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: is huge, I would hope, but they probably think at
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: that point they can still send in ICE, send in
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: Border Patrol to the next city and the next city
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: and keep doing this and keep getting away with it. And,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: you know, They're now in Maine. We haven't heard a
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: ton from Maine. We have because we paid really close
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: attention to this. And so, you know, people in Maine,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: but they're in Portland, they're in Lewiston. And ICE and
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Border Patrol, whoever's there, are acting just as monstrous as
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: they've been acting in Minneapolis, not just to immigrants or
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: not just to legal residents, but to protesters as well.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: So you do, and no one, I mean, we don't
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: have good insight into what's happening at the detention centers,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: which are fucking just horrific, the conditions there. or where
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: they're sending people or when they're sending people to third countries,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: not even their own countries, right? Like, so there is
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: so much harm they can keep doing that I do
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: think that it's now going to be incumbent on everyone
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: who has been monitoring this, who's been reporting on this,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: who's been filming this to like keep it up because
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: you're right. Like Trump, Tommy's exactly right. Like Trump just
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: doesn't like, Trump doesn't like the mess, right? He doesn't
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: like seeing a mess on TV. He doesn't like the blowback.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: He doesn't care. It's not like Trump is like, really
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: feeling for Alex Pretty and his family, right? But Trump's like,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: I got other things to care about. I don't want
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: to deal with this shit. Stephen Miller's like, okay, fuck.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: How do I get done what I want to get
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: done without the boss getting mad at me or me
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: getting sidelined or anything else? And I do worry that
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: there's enough of them like Miller and Vance who are
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: smart enough to figure out how to do this in
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: a quieter way. And I do think like sidelining Bovino
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and maybe Noam, we can talk about that, who's just
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: a fucking idiot, is like, that's an easy thing.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is another, you're right. That's all I think right.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: Except the one thing that they can't manifest is a
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: magically more professional immigration bureau because they've staffed it.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: In fact, they'll get a less professional one as time
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: goes on and the new recruits who they keep hiring
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: are going to.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what I mean. Because part of this, again,
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: is like they've staffed up too quickly and they've ramped
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: up too quickly and they've recruited people that are either
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: some combination of unqualified or ill-tempered and poorly trained. And
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: so that will continue, right? That mess is there and
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: they can't talk their way out of that.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Unless these assholes are all just like sitting in
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: an office somewhere at DHS or some field office not
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: doing anything, you know? which seems unlikely.
• 43:53
  Speaker 6: I think all we can really hope for right now
• 43:54
  Speaker 6: is some near-term improvement on the ground. And I do
• 43:57
  Speaker 6: think getting CBP out of these situations sounds like it
• 44:00
  Speaker 6: would make a material difference because they sound like the
• 44:02
  Speaker 6: worst offenders in terms of abusing people, including American protesters.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: I think it's so important for people to know that too,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: is that like, ICE is awful, right? We all know
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: that ICE is awful, but some of the worst, worst
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: abuses have been at the hands of the border patrol people.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: And they should be back at the border where their
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: job is and never in the interior of the country.
• 44:31
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• 46:03
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  Speaker 1: slash Crooked. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. So as for
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: what's happening in the ground in Minnesota right now, it
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: seems protests have remained peaceful. I'm sure a lot of
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: you now have seen the Minnesota National Guard has arrived.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: They are wearing, you know, bright yellow vests so that
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: they people can distinguish them from Border Patrol, which feels
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: like it's like we're in some, you know, developing country
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: civil conflict somewhere that we have now to, you know,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: to two sets of armed agents, one of the state
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: and one from the federal government. But, you know, the
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: guard there handing out coffee and donuts and, you know,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: people are, there's a lot of vigils and everything on
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: the ground, but Lovett, you've been there. So tell us
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: what you've been seeing, who you've been talking to and
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: how people have been reacting.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we went to the Whipple Federal Building, which
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: is where most of the kind of federal operation has
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: been run out of, where there's been a constant presence
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: of protesters. That's also where you've seen some of the
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: confrontations between protesters and law enforcement. And, you know, we
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: talked to two guys from Minnesota, one who's been kind
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: of out here protesting for a while. Another, it was
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: his first time he'd ever been to a protest.
• 48:32
  Speaker 8: Well, the option really to me is do this or
• 48:34
  Speaker 8: do nothing. And I choose to do this. I was
• 48:36
  Speaker 8: talking to my dad and he said, you know, he's
• 48:38
  Speaker 8: worried about me. He says, this isn't your fight. You
• 48:40
  Speaker 8: got kids at home, but I mean, the people who
• 48:43
  Speaker 8: were getting abducted, they got kids at home. And really,
• 48:46
  Speaker 8: I'm not going to go fight anybody. So my options
• 48:48
  Speaker 8: are stay home, pretend it's not happening, or come here
• 48:50
  Speaker 8: and do what I can.
• 48:51
  Speaker 9: Jesus said to love your neighbor. You can't love your
• 48:53
  Speaker 9: neighbor if you stay home. Ignore the issues going on.
• 48:56
  Speaker 9: So he said, yeah, forgive them, Father. They know not
• 48:58
  Speaker 9: what they do. I just want to show that not
• 49:01
  Speaker 9: every Christian support what's going on.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: And it was actually remarkable how many people we met
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: who had went back to their religious faith for why
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: they were out there. And they're like revulsion at what
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: they're seeing and especially from people who claim. to be
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Christian and conservative, that like that was repellent to them,
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: including someone who had been a conservative and been someone
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: who was on the other side, but was converted and
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: like kind of has moved to the left because kind
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: of woke up to what was happening in the country.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: You know, there was a mix of people, some who'd
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: been involved in organizing for most of their lives, some
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: from like native communities that involved in organizations that are
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: as old as the 60s. There were people that had
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: been protesting since George Floyd, and then there were people
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: that had never protested before. But they all agreed that
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: they'd never seen anything like this in the Twin Cities.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: They'd never seen anything like this. One thing I just,
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: I thought was worth saying is, you know, you see
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: polls from people saying ICE is making cities less safe, right?
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: And those are polls of people that aren't there, I mean,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: for the most part. And so they're reacting to the
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: chaos they're seeing. And so that's a kind of aesthetic judgment,
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: like this looks like it's not good, right? It's a
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: good judgment, it's correct. But then you talk to people
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: about what it's actually like and to people that are
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: trying to kind of assist in the communities and they
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: are seeing people afraid to call the police, right? They're
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: seeing people afraid to go to the hospital, afraid to
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: report domestic abuse, afraid to get warm in the cold.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: And that is a community that is less safe because
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: of this chaos, because of the presence of ICE. I
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: tried to talk to, not on camera or anything, some
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: local law enforcement, and they're obviously skittish about the politics
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: of this. They're dragged into this and they're trying. You
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: just see some Minnesota guys, they're from the local police
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: and they're just trying to keep the peace. And I said,
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: this can't be making the community feel safer. I know
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: you're sort of staying out of it. I'm not trying
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: to put you on the spot on the politics. But obviously,
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: if you weren't out here, you'd be doing something else.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: And you watch him struggle to answer that, yeah, look,
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: we've got to be out here because we're worried about
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen with these protests. We're worried about
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: counter protests. We're trying to keep these people safe. We
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: hope people still call 911. We're not immigration enforcement. And
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: we're still answering those calls. But yeah, like if we
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: weren't here, we'd be somewhere else. You feel it. You
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: feel the way in which it's a small thing. But
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: when you're at the Whipple building, there are all these protesters.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: And there's two kind of honks when people pass by.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: There are the locals that are saying, hey, I'm with you.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: And then there were like the ICE guys kind of
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: laying on their horn. And when we were at the
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: Alex Preddy Memorial, there were some like kind of anti-protester,
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: pro-Trump people kind of honking their horns and going by,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: which people were ignoring. But when like a fire truck
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: would go by or a car they couldn't tell who
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: was in it would go by, you see the protesters...
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: kind of looking in the window and saying like, are
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: you one of us? Like, are you from here or
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: are you from ICE? Like, are you with us or
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: are you like, are you from this community or are
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: you part of the outsiders? And you see like, the
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: like fire people in ambulances or like fire trucks or
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: just passersby just going like like waving like I'm just
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: letting you know that I'm here like I'm not I'm
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: sorry like I'm not part of this like I'm from
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: here I'm part of your community I'm not part of
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: this force that's come from the outside and like that
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: that to me is like the feeling that you get
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: when you talk to people which is like And it's,
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: you know, like, like get out, like this idea of like,
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: get out of here. Like this feel like you are not,
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: we don't want you here. That feeling, it's not just
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: like a political statement. It is like a community statement
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: of the pain they're feeling of like, stop doing this
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: to us. Like stop doing what you're doing to this city. Like,
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: we don't want this. Forget immigration enforcement. You are ripping
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: this place apart and it doesn't need to be this way.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: Like that's the feeling you get when you talk to people.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: I'm just, I'm so impressed with the community in Minneapolis, St. Paul,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: and also throughout Minnesota, it just like how they've gone
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: about protesting and organizing. I was talking to Lydia Paul
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Green about this, who's also from Minnesota for Offline last week.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: And she said, yeah, it's just like, I almost don't
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: like calling it protesting because it really is, it's organizing.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: It's like helping your neighbor, being together. And we haven't
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: even covered it. And we probably would have if Saturday
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: hadn't happened. But, you know, on Friday, they held the
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Day of Truth and Freedom. Which is this like just gigantic,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: it was like an economic, it was a one day
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: economic boycott strike plus protest. I think they had like,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: I heard Klobuchar say 50,000 people. And nothing happened. There
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: was no violence. There was nothing on Friday night. It
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: was just peaceful protesting. That many people. Just statistically, that's
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: a really tough thing to pull off. It's also so cold.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: It is so cold.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Dangerously cold. It's not 30 degrees. It's zero or below zero.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: It is unbelievable.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: And then Saturday morning comes and Freddie's murdered. And I
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: was texting with, Emily has a lot of family in Minneapolis,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: and I was texting with Emily's aunt. I was checking
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: on Saturday, and she said there were these vigils that
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: they were holding. And she's like, we just came from
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: one in our neighborhood, and it was like 250 people.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: And she's like, everywhere in both cities, you can just
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: see all over Minneapolis, all the suburbs, these vigils everywhere,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: and they're just like sort of spontaneous. And she said
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: that a friend had texted her, like, if there aren't
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: riots in the Twin Cities tonight, it's because of the
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: vigils on every corner everywhere. It's just like unbelievably, she
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: said it's unbelievable how powerful they were in changing the energy.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: And sure enough, no riots Saturday night, nothing Sunday. You know,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: like it's just for all that the Trump administration has
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: tried to make Minneapolis be, they have just refused to
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: take the bait. And the power of sort of nonviolent
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: organizing peaceful protest and now sort of repelling Trump and
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: Greg Bovino and the border patrol agents from this city,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: because everyone there had the discipline and the love and
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: the energy to be like, we're just going to sit
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: here and we're going to be witness to this. We're
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: not going to back down. We're not going to hide
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: in our houses, but we're also not going to give
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: them what they want is just unbelievably fucking impressive and inspiring.
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: I saw, um, it's, uh, I, there was this, uh, uh,
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: woman at Whipple. We went back, we went you know,
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: to a couple of different places, but then sort of
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: before we recorded this pod, we went back because there
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: was more people at the federal building sort of in
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: the afternoon. And there was this, uh, woman who had
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: a jacket on that said, uh, grannies against ice. And, uh, we'll,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: we'll put in the sound here, but, uh, uh, you know, she's,
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: she's out there just as every, every, as every, uh, uh,
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: SUV comes in and out. She just yells that they
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: all have tiny penises. That's what she wanted to do.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: That's why they're wearing masks. Show people the back of
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: your jacket. It's a granny against ice. What have you
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: been shouting at the passing ice cars when they're going
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: into the Whipple facility there?
• 56:42
  Speaker 7: Oh, just that they've got tiny little winkies and small penises.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Because I'm assuming that's.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: Why they hide their face. You think that's why they're
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: hiding their faces? I think so, yeah. Because of their
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: small winkies. And is Winky, that's a Minnesota term?
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: It's a granny term.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: And what should people who aren't here right now understand?
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: What are they missing about what's happening in the Twin Cities?
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Kindness.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: That's the main thing.
• 57:09
  Speaker 7: I mean, look, we've got people bringing food, people bringing coats,
• 57:13
  Speaker 7: people taking and grabbing, you know, helping the people that
• 57:17
  Speaker 7: get released from detention and bringing them to their homes,
• 57:20
  Speaker 7: giving them phones because they release them without coats.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: So just like a few minutes ago, we found out
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: that in part because of all the backlash that we're seeing,
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: Trump is going to remove Greg Bovino from Minneapolis and
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: the Twin Cities. What do you think about that?
• 57:40
  Speaker 7: I think that's good, but I don't think Tom Holman
• 57:42
  Speaker 7: is going to be any better.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:44
  Speaker 8: Tom Holman, I mean, we've got.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Work prepared for him.
• 57:47
  Speaker 8: We've got money.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: I was about to say, we've got to get some
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: kava bags. Well, I don't have that.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: I just had grocery bags.
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: So we've got some money there.
• 57:56
  Speaker 8: It's play money, but I mean.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: And she's like, but it just sort of goes to
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: the conversation because it's like, Personnel changes, tone changes. Talking
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: to people, what does success look like? It's this ending.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: It's these people being removed from the city. They don't
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: care who's running it from inside the building. They're not
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: going to see that person. They're seeing the impacts. One
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: last thing, too, is just something we've talked about in
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: a couple of previous pods. I was talking to people
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: about how much are they really feeling it, how much
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: of this is centered in a few areas versus something
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: everybody in the community is feeling. To a one, they
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: felt connected to it, whether directly people at their work
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: or friends who have felt it. It has been pervasive
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: and it matters only because Minneapolis isn't a special example.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: It doesn't have a high degree of undocumented immigration. It's
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: not a big city. If they can do this here,
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: they will do this anywhere. There's no place they couldn't
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: justify doing it if they can do it to Minneapolis
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: and St. Paul and that community.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 59:01
  Speaker 6: Ryan said you were introducing yourself to voters as the
• 59:04
  Speaker 6: Gen X Nick Shirley. Is that true?
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Can we drop that audio in right here?
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: I was actually saying I'm the cowardly Will Sansell. That's
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: how I, I'm like without the guts.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Without the tear gas?
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Amazing.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's talk about what might happen next on
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Capitol Hill. Government funding deadline, January 30th. they have been,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: we're not going to go through all the details, but
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: we've talked about this, they're passing department by department bills. Basically,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Senate has to vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: The vote's going to be this Thursday. And House already
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: passed it. And now Senate Democrats have to decide what
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: they're going to do, whether they're going to fund it
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: or not, whether they're going to pass the whole package
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: of bills together, whether they're going to try to strip
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: out the Department of Homeland Security bill because they agree
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: on all the other ones and maybe enforce changes in
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security bill to ICE, to immigration
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: enforcement operations. Basically, now all the Senate Democrats or most
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: of Chuck Schumer has said like they don't have the votes,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: meaning Republicans do not have the votes to pass this bill.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: So the Democrats are going to demand this. And what
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: they are demanding as of Monday is for DHS funding
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: to be separated out from the other bills. And so
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: so far, at least Republicans are like, no, We want
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: to move forward to vote on all the bills and
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: and keep the debate focused on avoiding a shutdown, partial
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: or otherwise. And even if the Democrats do extract some
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: concessions from the Republicans, the House is out this week because,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: you know, if they get concessions, then you have to
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: pass it back through the House again. Anyway, but like,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: you know, even your Jean Shaheen's, your Jackie Rosen's, the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: people who basically provided Republicans the votes to open the
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: government up last time, this time are saying, like, absolutely not.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: We're not going to vote for this unless there are
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: real changes. Schumer was on a call with the caucus Sunday.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: He apparently said the message is going to be restrain
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: reform and restrict ICE. And then, you know, they're going
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: to ask for some reforms. What do we know about
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: the reforms they're asking for, Democrats are asking for? And basically, like,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: can they achieve them?
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 6: I don't know that that slogan sings, you know, I mean, look,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 6: the problem about the kind of conversation about our messaging is,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 6: it inevitably devolves into this like intra democratic party fight
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 6: about the last time we talked about abolishing ice and
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 6: that slogan, whether it was good or bad and whatever
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: happened to that Sean McElwee guy.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: And like, we just, I don't want to have that anymore.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 6: Like I think, I think there's short and longterm message
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 6: issues here or sort of priorities short term, I guess,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 6: as Schumer thinks that a reform message is more politically
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 6: palatable and beneficial. Maybe even thinks he can get some
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 6: Republicans on board, although it sounds like no. Um, the, Also,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 6: like Caitlin Dickerson had a great piece in The Atlantic
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 6: about how the Trump administration has systematically dismantled all these
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 6: inspector general offices and civil rights and civil liberties offices
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 6: within parts of the government that are supposed to investigate
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 6: these kinds of incidents and that we should– Democrats should
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 6: be fighting to fully staff and fund those again. Longer
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 6: term though, like it's just clearly like ISIS, like a
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 6: fundamentally broken organization. It cannot be reformed. There needs to
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 6: be systemic change. I think the thing that always bumps
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 6: me on abolished ICE is that doesn't answer for me
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 6: where CBP goes.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 6: And like CBP, it's not part of ICE. They report
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 6: to the Secretary of Homeland Security. And ultimately, I think
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 6: that is the bigger problem, which is that DHS was
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 6: a fucking stupid, colossal mistake creating that dumb thing.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Joe Lieberman.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 6: Homework for our listeners. Google Department of Homeland Security org
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 6: chart someday. You'll see like the Coast Guard and the
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 6: Secret Service and then FEMA and then the thing about
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 6: weapons of mass destruction.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Like, what is this?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 6: So I think ultimately, Democrats probably need to fight for
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 6: a lot of this immigration work. all these components to
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 6: be pulled out of DHS and put into DOJ where
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 6: at least there's oversight and accountability or something else. But
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 6: in the short term, I think whatever we can do
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 6: to pressure the Republicans on this and Trump on this
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 6: is probably helpful.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: Dan and I have been nerding out about this a
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: little bit, but it's just like there's, you can put
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: all your demands on the table, right? And see if
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: there's enough Republicans to sort of make any kind of
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: incremental changes that honestly are just not going to make
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: a huge difference. The real problem is that ICE has
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: a budget that is the size of the Israeli militaries
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: right now. And that budget they have, no matter what
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: happens with the government funding fight, because it was a
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: statutory appropriation that they got from the big, beautiful bill.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: And so, like, ICE is fine. They're going to do
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: their thing. And there's nothing Democrats can do about it.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: What Democrats can do is we can shut down the
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: government or partial shutdown. And you could shut down Department
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: of Homeland Security. And then I imagine at that point,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: what the administration will do is say, well, ICE is
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: still going to do their thing. And what we'll do is, yeah,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: we'll shut down TSA and then no one will be
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: able to fly anywhere. And we'll shut down FEMA. And,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: you know, then they'll blame Democrats for, you know, emergency
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: management not showing up or long airport delays. And Trump
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: will shut down FEMA anyway.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So they'll do whatever. They'll be a stalemate. And
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: then at some point, you know, I do think it's
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: and I said this last week, I think it's worth
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: like making these demands. And, and, and if we're going
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: through a shutdown, we go through a shutdown just to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: like call attention to the fact that this is fucking
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: bullshit what they're doing. And if you can get them
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: to make some reforms, that's good. I don't think anyone
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: should think that if we just get a few reforms
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: that Democrats are demanding, that that's because Democrats didn't demand
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: more because the truth is no one's abolishing reforming or
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: doing anything until the Democrat is president again. And then
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: if a Democrat is president again, like again, you know,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: my view there is fire literally every single fucking agent that, uh,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump hired, uh, for the agency. I think
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: you could, you need immigration enforcement somewhere, but you're right.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: We have these border patrol cowboys who are out of
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: fucking control. We have ISIS clearly out of fucking control.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: And so basically you need some kind of border security
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: and some kind of immigration enforcement, but like everything that
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: we're seeing now can go away. Like literally the day
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: that a Democrat becomes president and it won't go away
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: until then.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: The, the, And that's the truth.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: There's already been a bipartisan negotiation that has some modest reforms.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: That is what they would be voting on. It's paltry.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: It's not nearly enough. But because the funding for ICE
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: has already been put through, it is not like a
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: normal shutdown in which the shutdown slows them down. Actually,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: these reforms applied on top of the funding would be
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: more effective. Not nearly effective enough. Not nearly as far
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: as we need to go. Not resolving the problem, but
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: would do more than a shutdown would. That's just the truth.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: And we should say that what Democrats, at least 10
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: Senate Democrats have coalesced around this, they're demanding, requiring warrants
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: for arrests. Kind of thought the Constitution required that, but,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: you know, mandating that federal agents identify themselves. And I
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: think body cameras are probably part of that as well.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: and then mandating that, you know, DHS cooperate with state
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: and local investigations into ICE abuses, violence shootings like they
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: did with Rene Good and Alex Prady. Again, all things
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: that should be law, should be in the Constitution, should be,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe a court will decide anyway, but that
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: is what they're calling for. There's also House Democrats, there's
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: about 15 House Democrats, and not just the Progressive Caucus either.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: You know, I saw like Seth Moulton on this and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Pat Ryan and a whole bunch of different people, um,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: calling for an immediate stand down, uh, in interior enforcement
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: until they can fucking fix this bullshit that's happening right now. Um,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't see that going anywhere. I don't
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: see the Trump administration ever agreeing that, but good for
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: them for doing it. And then of course there is the, um,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: and you're even seeing moderates like, you know, Nevada's Jackie Rosen,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: Senator Jackie Rosen calling for Noem to be impeached and
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: that's gaining steam as well. You know, my thought there
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: too is like, great, get rid of Christine Noem. But again, she,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: You know, but she basically just does and says what
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Stephen Miller tells her to do.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 6: Yeah, she's bad at her job. She's a bad person.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 6: I'd love for her to get fired. I'd love for
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 6: her to be impeached. Push for it if you want.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 6: It doesn't solve any underlying problems. It doesn't cut their funding.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 6: It doesn't change anything. I'd like, you know, it's probably,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 6: it's not going to make Trump, it's not going to
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 6: change Trump's mind. Trump's going to be like, oh, Democrats
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 6: hate her?
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, now I like her.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the, like, you know, the, there is this like
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: credibility problem in sort of both directions for Democrats and
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: Senate Democrats led by Schumer, which is, People think they'll cave,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: including the Republicans, right? And so their demands carry a
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: little bit less weight. And then on top of that,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: given the level of corruption in that department, abolish ICE
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: has gone from being kind of a minority view to,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: in some polls, a majority view. And even if you
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: question that, it's obviously... gain a lot more mainstream acceptance
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: as a view. So then why aren't Democrats trying to
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: abolish ICE? And obviously we are not going to be
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: positioned to do that for a long time, but there
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: is another problem under there because like, okay, you want
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: to get rid of ICE. Like what kind of immigration
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: enforcement do you believe in? What kind of immigration support,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: not as a compromise with Republicans for comprehensive immigration reform,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: what do you believe in? interior immigration enforcement should look
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: like at whatever level. Maybe you think there shouldn't be much.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: Maybe you think there needs to be a more humane
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: version of it. I don't know what the answer is,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: but I have no idea what anyone's position on that
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: because we haven't had any kind of full-throated democratic kind
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: of vision on immigration in a very long, long time.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: And so I think this is the credibility problem that
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: Democrats in the Senate fall into over and over again,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: which is they want to signal that they understand that
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: they need to fight but they have their limited tools.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: And then nobody knows what their deeper goal is. They
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: understand that the tactics may be in the short term,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: which they don't trust. But in the long term, what
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: are you trying to get to? Because we want to
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: abolish ICE and we have no idea what you're for.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think to their credit, I think they
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: are angry, like most of the country, want to do
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: something and have limited limited options available to them by
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: being the minority, which is what they are.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: We had Mark Warner. I talked to Mark Warner, which
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: was on the YouTube, and he was initially pretty opposed
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: to stopping this bill to having a shutdown over DHS.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: But I think he's been moved by what he's been seeing.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: And I do think being reasonable and then moved to
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: the stronger position does make it more credible to Republicans
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: as well. So there is that.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And again, it's like, you know, I was in
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: the Senate and someone was like, Well, what are you
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: going to do? I'm like, I'm not going to vote
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: for the bill. Will the government shut down? OK, well,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: you're not going to get what you want. Well, I'm
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: not voting to fund everything that we're seeing on television.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: So if the government shut down, then the government shut down.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: And if Donald Trump wants to do something, he can
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: do something. Well, aren't you mad about the poll? Well, no,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: that's just, you know, like you could just have that position.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: If you want. Now, everyone should realize that, you know,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: it's then it's in Donald Trump's lap and the Republicans lap.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: And we've all seen how that goes. But there you go.
• 1:10:10
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  Speaker 6: The words you use in book reviews, like mordant, are
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  Speaker 6: very funny to me.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, mordant.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it's aimed at people who read books.
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  Speaker 2: I am, actually.
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  Speaker 1: I have to look that up myself.
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  Speaker 2: Especially of humor having or showing a sharp or critical quality. Biting.
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  Speaker 2: I just, mordant sounds, it's a good word. It sounds
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  Speaker 5: Great word.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. It does. But no, it's biting. It's funny.
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  Speaker 1: it's a little fun. Uh, And we need some of
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: that today. Ben Terrace at New York Magazine is out
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: with a big news story trying to get to the
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: bottom of whatever's going on with Donald Trump's health, for
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: which the White House decided to make Trump and a
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: couple of military doctors available for an Oval Office interview,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: along with a bunch of other Donald Trump advisers and
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: cabinet secretaries. It's all incredibly reassuring, of course. Ben opens
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: the piece writing that when he walked into the Oval, quote,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: the president was standing next to a couple of doctors
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: clutching pieces of paper labeled talking points. At one point,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: Caroline Levitt said that when we all see Trump dozing
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: off during meetings, he's not sleeping. He's actively listening. He's
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: engaged in active listening. That's what it is. And then
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: there was this gem where Trump talked about his father,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: his own father, and he said, quote, he had one problem.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: What do they call it? And then Terrace writes, quote,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: Trump pointed to his forehead and then looked to Caroline
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: Leavitt for the word that escaped him. And she said, Alzheimer's.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: And then Trump goes, like, like an Alzheimer's thing. Well,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: I don't have it. Any other favorite parts of this piece?
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: It's quite extensive.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 6: The other part of the Alzheimer's back and forth is
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 6: Trump is asked if he thinks about his father's Alzheimer's much.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: And he says, no, I don't think about it at all.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: You know why?
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 5: He said.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 6: because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever. And telling
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 6: a reporter that you don't think about Alzheimer's at all,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 6: because whatever is kind of a hilariously bad way of
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 6: convincing someone you don't have Alzheimer's.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: It's like, maybe you just forgot.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 6: There's also, I also love that he, he starts the
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 6: interview by threatening to sue New York magazine and says,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 6: there'll be a time when you could write about my
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 6: bad health, but it's not now that might be in
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 6: two or three years at that time, quote, no one
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 6: is going to care. I guess it's like, buddy, You're
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 6: still president in two or three years. If you have
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 6: like declining health and potentially Alzheimer's in two or three years,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 6: it's actually a very big deal. Like the whole story
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: is just fucking hilarious back, like the back and forth
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 6: with Ben Terrace, who writes it brilliantly.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: So the mystery of the Trump MRI and why it
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: was ordered remains. There's a very funny part in the story.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: where Trump says, having that MRI was the worst fucking
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: thing I ever did. I blame them, talking to the doctors.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: They wanted me to take it. And because I took it,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: people want to say, oh, there must be something wrong.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: And then Trump turns to the doctors and says, can
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: you explain why you asked me that? And then the
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: doctor says, we asked him to do it because he
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: had a scheduled trip at Walter Reed. While he was there,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: I asked him if we can complete some additional physical things.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: that we were planning on doing annually. And he was like, okay,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: we'll work it in for the schedules. And it wasn't
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: an MRI. It was a computerized tomography exam of his
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: chest and abdomen. And for not any reason, Trump adds, what?
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: No one ever, what are you talking about, guys? Why
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: did you give him some kind of an MRA-like scan
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: of his chest and abdomen? And my ongoing belief or
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: theory is is that Trump doesn't want anyone to know
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: that this was about his prostate. That is what I
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: think this is. That is my theory about this, that
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: he doesn't want anyone to say it was for prostate.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: And so they all have to talk around it.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: Really? But it was of his chest.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: Chest and abdomen. Going all the way down.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: You had a prostate exam?
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: What? No, no, no, no. Yes, obviously, I know that
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: there's two ways at it. Honestly, I sort of did
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: a lot of prostate exams in sort of my 20s.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. But sort of like in a kind of,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of not a clinical setting.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: Administered?
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: Uh, but, but got it.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: You have a theory you're diagnosing.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: Anyway, I think he didn't want, I think that he
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: doesn't want people to know that he was getting something
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: looked at at his prostate. That's what I think is
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: going on. That's my ongoing theory.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: I think that Ben tears, uh, is a brilliant reporter
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: who got access, uh, to the white house for ostensibly
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: a story about the president's health. And the story he
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: ends up writing is really about just like, aging dictator
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: thinking about uh his death that is that is because
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: he realizes that he doesn't have that much longer than
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: 10 years you know he says at one point when
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: he was at jimmy carter's funeral within 10 years this
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: is going to be me uh you know according to
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: one source in the story and the coterie of sycophants
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: around him who just like live to make sure that
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: they are praising him publicly and curry favor with him
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: so that like they are the chosen one and Marco
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Rubio gives some quotes. At one point, Marco Rubio is
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: asked about his health and he says to Ben Terrace,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: the guy is too healthy. He's too active. Marco Rubio
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: thinks he's too healthy. He's too healthy.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 6: The North Korea shit in this story is amazing. Ben
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 6: Terrace asked three different people a few different people about
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 6: Trump falling asleep in meetings. You read the active listening
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 6: one from Caroline Levitt. Marco Rubio says it's a listening mechanism.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 6: That's his spin on it. And then Will Scharf, who's
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 6: the goober who does the science ceremony, staff secretary, is
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 6: asked about this. And he says he's always awake, always alert,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 6: always knows what's going on. It's not dozing. Sometimes if
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 6: he's thinking about something, and I made that mistake at
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 6: first too, he adopts a pose. So it's a listening
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 6: pose when you close your eyes.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: What's funny too about that too is like the piece
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: does acknowledge that his hearing is getting worse. I want
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: to defend, I'm going to say this. I would like
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: to defend Kristi Noem. When she made that point about
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: the hurricanes, she was joking.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was clearly a joke.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: I think people have tried to suggest that she was like,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: like kind of giving him credit on the end. I
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: think there are enough people without a sense of humor
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: that have not taken that as a joke that I've seen.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think the problem is that you could imagine
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 6: it being real.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? You could. Given the tenor
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: of the other comments. It's a lot about his like
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: legacy and what he's thinking. One Republican operative with ties
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: to the administration said, he doesn't think of legacy in
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: terms of policies enacted. It's buildings he can leave behind
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: and prizes he can win. And then you get a
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: direct quote from Eric Trump saying, he's having more fun
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: building this ballroom than I can possibly tell you. And
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: it's like, this is... Go do that. I mean, reading
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: this on a day like today, we were talking about
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: everything else. I'm like, this is exactly what's going on
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: in there. He's making money. He wants the prizes. He's
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: trying to like rent it. He's talking to Marco Rubio
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: about like, pendants and a chandelier at the state department.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: And he's like, you don't have enough samples. You don't
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: have enough pendants there. And then suddenly he's got 12
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: different samples for Rubio to choose from because he's, he's
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: trying to be a fucking interior decorator. Like this guy
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: is the president of the United States. And all he
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: can think about is what is immediately around him, what
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: he has, the nice things around him, where he can
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: put his name. This is it. Everyone's like, what's his psychology?
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: This is all there is.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: And the thing is, he is so diminished. You go
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: look at the speeches he gave from 2016 to now.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: He's much less able to find words. He's constantly searching
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: for words he can't remember. He's slower. His sentences make
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: even less sense than they did. before, like it all
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: gets categorized into, oh, he's nuts, but he's really like
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: aging in front of our eyes. And that's just something
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: we do now with about, you know, 60% of American presidents.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: We just watch them age before our eyes. And then
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: later we get the reporting about how bad it was.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 6: And they all think that retirement is the same as death.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 6: And they all know somebody who retired and then died
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 6: so that everyone clings. And that's clearly what happened with,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 6: with Biden is clearly what happened with Dianne Feinstein, like
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 6: countless senators. And Trump basically admits it in this piece too.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 6: It's an old father's line of his. Can I read
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 6: you guys one hilarious quote? I thought this was so funny.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 6: So the context for this quote is Trump talking about
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 6: how his parents lived well into their 90s. And he
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 6: says to Ben Terrace, I had this friend whose mother
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 6: died at 49 of a heart attack. His father died
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 6: at 51 of a heart attack.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: He's now 60.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 6: I said, you're fucked. He watches everything he eats, but
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 6: you can't beat genetics. Imagine saying that to your friend.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 6: Their parents died young and the guy's trying to be
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 6: healthy and he says, you're fucked?
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: That's cool. I actually respect that. How much he hates exercise.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: It says that recently after he'd been dealing with swelling
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: in his lower legs and ankles owing to his circulatory condition,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: doctors recommended he walk more. He asked his staff if
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: there was anything else he could do instead. Besides walking? No,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: that's about the lowest lift you can wear.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: We'll dangle you from your fucking ankles in the diplomat,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: in the dip room. What are you talking about? Yeah,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: walk uphill for 15 minutes. It's also like, you know,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: your circulation problem from being so perfect, from having such
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: perfect health.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: And just in case you're wondering whether these doctors are
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: on the level, the piece ends with, he point blank
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: turns to one of the doctors and he's like, you
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: were one of Obama's doctors too. Quick, who was healthier,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: me or Obama? And like instantly the doctor's like, you. You,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: yes sir. Yeah, Donald Trump.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 6: Not the guy 15 years younger.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: I love that. The 235 pound 79 year old man. Yeah,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: I love your point. It's like, he is old. He
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: lives an unhealthy lifestyle.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 6: Like being president's the hardest thing in the world.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: The hand thing is weird. The MRIs are really weird.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 6: If his staff was just normal about it and they
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 6: were like, yep, he's slowing down a bit, but like,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 6: look at his schedule. He just went to Davos, did
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 6: like seven press conference today. I think that would kind
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 6: of be the end of it, but they do this
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 6: North Korea shit where the doctors have to say he's
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 6: healthier than Obama. They got RFK Jr. in the story,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 6: quoting Dr. Oz being like, I tested the hard way
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 6: and this man's testosterone.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: Is off the charts. And it's like, what are we doing?
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: He's a high T guy. It's gross.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 6: And it's like, you know, like if they could just
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 6: chill out, I think people wouldn't care as much. And
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 6: at the same time, like there's all these Democrats who want,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 6: Trump's age to be the same as Biden's age, but
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 6: they kind of forget that Trump isn't running again. So
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 6: there's just not the same level of interest in what
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 6: comes next for him.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Trump isn't running again. And again, Trump has always
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: been about a hundred times crazier than Joe Biden.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: I cannot conceive of what is going on in that
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: White House presidential bathroom when this guy is eating nothing
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: but burnt red meat and and Diet Cokes, he does
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: not exercise. God only knows what kinds of, just like,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: no one, if anyone in, if America could see the
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: shits that this man is taking, the question about him
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: being- What? Then what?
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: Then what?
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: Then what?
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: They'd all be like, he's gotta go.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: He's gotta go.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: This is- That would be it.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: That would be it.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: That's the articles of impeachment would finally move. I think so.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: Just fucking white knuckled it in there. There's no fiber
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: in this fucking diet. There's no fiber.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: I think it's, I honestly think it might be one.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe not much is going on.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: I think this might be one, like basically whenever he
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: goes on those all night truth, social things, that's the
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: shit of the week. That's the one time where he's
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: just grabs the white marble he's had installed and And unleashes,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: unleashes what could, like from the bowels of hell, something
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: God forsaken.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: You ever seen the movie, The Last Emperor?
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 6: When like the, it's about the emperor of China and
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 6: these like, these aides like examine, smell the, the, the new,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 6: King's shits do you think that's what like Stephen Miller
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 6: apparently that's what Rubio and Vance are doing because the
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 6: other thing is he has not decided which of them
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 6: he wants to succeed him and so he tells Vance
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 6: you're my guy and he tells Rubio you're my guy your.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: Farts smell like flowers sir I think they smell more
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: like perfume sir I think they're more like baked cookies.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: Sir meanwhile while they're like praising him in these cabin
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: meetings he's asleep because he's like they're fucking boring he's
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: practicing mindfulness which.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 6: Is right Oh, by the way, CNN's reporting that DHS
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 6: suspended Greg Bovino's access to his social media accounts because
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 6: he spent yesterday responding to people criticizing him.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: Wow. So maybe this guy's really getting slapped around a
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: little bit. I can't believe the first administration official whose
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: social media account has been suspended was Greg Bovino. Really
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: hit him where it hurts, I guess.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: All right, that's our show for today. Love it. Stay
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: safe and warm in Minneapolis. Come back soon. That is
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: our show for today, and Dan and I will be
• 1:26:11
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• 1:26:33
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