Trump Retreats After Alex Pretti's Killing

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Welcome to POD Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

2:08

I'm Jon Lovett.

2:10

I'm Tom Yugator.

2:10

On today's show. Lovett is joining us from Minneapolis where he's been talking to protesters and residents about the latest on the ground there. We're going to talk about that. About how the political blowback from the second American killed by federal agents is finally causing at least a partial retreat by Trump in the White House. And we'll also get into how Democrats in Congress are planning to use this week's government funding deadline as leverage to demand changes to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. But first, by now you all know and have probably seen footage of Federal agents killing 37 year old Alex Preddy of Minnesota. An ICU nurse who was filming the agents on his phone and and helping a protester who'd been pepper sprayed when the agents tackled him to the ground, removed a gun they found on Preddy and then shot him at least 10 times. Preddy is the second American citizen federal agents have killed in Minneapolis. And somehow the government's immediate response might have been even more offensively dishonest and sickeningly cruel than their response to Renee Goode's killing. Stephen Miller smeared pretty as a domestic terrorist and a, quote, assassin who had planned to murder law enforcement, which J.D. vance retweeted. Kristi Noem, Greg Bevino and other assorted dipshits followed suit. Here is some of what they said. Immediately after the killing, the agents attempted.

2:11

To disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage. Massacre law enforcement. When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that is the definition of domestic terrorism.

3:33

This individual who came with weapons and.

3:54

Ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism. That's the facts. This is a violent riot. When you have someone showing up with weapons and are using them to assault law enforcement officers. With respect, it feels as though in some ways you're blaming the victim here.

3:57

The victim.

4:18

The victims are the Border Patrol agents. I'm not blaming the Border Patrol agents.

4:19

The victim are the Border Patrol agents.

4:22

You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple. You don't have that right to break the law. We do have a second amendment in this country that. Jonathan, have you ever gone to a Protestant? I mean, have you gone to a protest? I mean, I've, I. No, actually, as a reporter covering it. Okay, I've been to a protest. Guess what? I didn't bring a gun.

4:24

I brought a billboard. We can, we can set aside which protest Scott Besson attended where he brought a billboard.

4:45

But yeah, not enough caviar at 11 Madison Park. I think he was.

4:51

You think it was a soybean type?

4:55

Soybean related being in there like Bush v. Gore. Kind of the Brooks Brothers riots.

4:57

Yeah.

5:01

In Palm beach or.

5:02

Good call.

5:03

Yeah. So we are gonna spend some time on the blowback from this response that we just witnessed. I do think it's worth spending a minute on how you guys feel not only about the murder of Alex Preddy, but what the government said and the storyline they tried to push in the immediate aftermath, which I can't seem to stop thinking about. Tommy, you wanna start? Yeah.

5:04

I mean, you know, you and I did a quick reaction to this for the Ponti of America YouTube on Saturday, and we were watching the videos in real time and I think, you know, my initial reaction was horror and then rage at the way they were smearing this man. And then just like heartbreak for his family and the people who witnessed it and the community and everyone in Minnesota was living through this. And I think in the days since we had that conversation, we've learned more about who this guy was, who Alex Perddy was and what he was doing and what happened that day. And most guys want to say that I think he's a hero and that he, like his death was an unjustifiable senseless murder, but that he was acting heroically. Like, not only is this a guy who by day cares for veterans at a VA hospital in his free time, he decided to put his body on the line at these protests in the freezing cold, bear witness, you know, film these ice and CBP thugs when they're beating up people in this community. And then his last act was trying to help a woman who had just been brutally assaulted by a CBP officer. He's trying to cover her and put his body in the way of her so she wouldn't be beaten further. And like, I think his last words.

5:27

Were, are you okay?

6:29

Yeah. And like, I. I think we'd all like to think that in a situation like that that we'd have the courage to act in the way he did. And I hope people take as much inspiration from him as they do outrage. And like, with respect to J.D. vance and Kristi Noem Bavino, they're the opposite of Alex Preddy. You know, like, they are cowards. They're disgraced liars. They aren't willing to risk anything to do what is right. They will only do what it takes to get more power for themselves. And so they're going to have to answer to voters and to their consciences and to God if they actually believe in one. And so look, it's self evident that Alex Perddy was never a threat. He was not a terrorist. He was being brutally assaulted by half a dozen big Armed men before he was executed with 10 bullets. Like, not only was he only holding his phone, like he had his other hand up, right? Like he did what? For years, conservatives have told mostly young black men in this country that the way you avoid getting killed by the cops is you have both hands up like this. And he did both of those things, and he was executed in cold blood in the middle of the day on the street in front of dozens of people. So it is an enraging, horrifying tragedy, and he's a hero, and I hope people remember him that way.

6:30

Love it.

7:36

Yeah.

7:38

The.

7:38

Fact that you have officials in the administration that are basically responsible for immigration policy, basically immediately, without any real information. They had no more information than we did, basically within minutes. I think describing someone as an assassin based on nothing. And then both Bevino and Nome land on this line, like, maximum damage, some form of maximum damage to law enforcement. Again, without any evidence. The fact that they were willing to assert that before they knew anything just shows how kind of corrupt they are and irresponsible they are and unfit they are. But, boy, how unlucky for them that Alex Preddy turns out to be an incredible person, like, truly like the best of us. What bad luck for them that this guy is a hero. Because you shouldn't have to be a hero to not have the government lie about you. When you're shot dead in the street by agents of the state, you shouldn't have to be the best of us to be treated with respect. It is a terrible story for them that this man spoke movingly at the deaths of veterans. You know, a lot of people have noted this, that Preddy became a nurse in 2021, which meant that he saw what was unfolding in Covid and decided that he wanted to be in the medical profession. But Noem and Pavino and all these people, they'll lie about anybody. They're lying about people all the time. They've been lying about people they've grabbed off the street. They've been lying about people they've put in detention. There's just only some of those stories where it's so egregious and the person so obviously deserving of more that it gets this kind of attention. And so the tragedy, right, is that this wonderful and beloved person was gunned down because of poorly trained, angry, twitchy, aggressive federal agents who feel beholden to and protected by Donald Trump and his goons. We went to the memorial where he had been killed, and you just see so many people who they're just standing there in silence, just really unable to move. They don't. A lot of people have never been to anything like that before. They've never felt this before. They've never experienced anything in their communities like this before. Like, so wrenched by this, and it's all just so completely avoidable. And the. Like, the lying about it, you know, like, I've seen a bunch of people, like, scratching their chins to complain about all the ways in which everyone but Nome and Bevino and all these people are ultimately responsible, and ICE is ultimately responsible and the Border Patrol responsible. But the lying is escalation. The lying is a form of ratcheting up the tension. And it's only because Preddy is such a. Like a tribune to good values that they've kind of had it blow up in their faces.

7:41

Yeah, I want to talk about the lying because I think it is the most chilling part to me, because I think we are so used to. Because we now have a reality TV show president. We have a bunch of Fox pundits running the cabinet. We are so used to, like, well, we're all in this political warfare with each other. And so one side lies and the other side lies. These are the people in charge of the federal government, which is the most powerful entity on the planet. They control just, you know, enough. Enough manpower, enough weaponry to destroy the whole world. This is the Department of Homeland Security. It's not immigration officials. Department of Homeland Security is supposed to protect the country. And they are lying and lying easily, callously, without even blinking, without even seeming like they feel like, oh, shit, we gotta cover our asses. They're lying so easily about something that they know was filmed at multiple different angles. So it's not like they thought they could get away with this. They're just lying, thinking, like, I'm gonna just say whatever the fuck I want, and who the hell cares about that? And that, to me, is, like, the most chilling part. And they just kept going. And, like, they all jump in. Did you see Pete Hegseth, our defense secretary, jumped in with a post saying, who's from Minnesota, who's born in Minnesota that said, ICE greater than sign Minnesota.

11:08

And also, why is Scott Bessant commenting on what CBP and ICE are up to? You're the treasury secretary. I don't know. That's not my job. Don't comment on it.

12:30

Fucking Vice President, United States. Retweeting Stephen Miller calling him his boss. Exactly, Tommy. Which is like, all this stuff about they're all doing it because they're all afraid of Miller. I mean, they're afraid of Trump, but they know that Miller's the enforcer because Trump's busy with his ballroom and a whole bunch of other shit. He's doing his Melania thing, his screening of Melania, and Miller's the real boss. And so when Stephen Miller says, oh, this is an assassin, they're all like, oh, we all gotta jump in, right? J.D. vance then on Sunday tweets his fucking story that he told last week about, oh, these ICE agents in Minnesota. They were having dinner, and then suddenly everyone. A mob came in and they locked the door and they felt scared for their lives. They're like, were they? It was like, did Reigns of Castamere start playing? He's like, is fucking red, like, the door locked from the inside? Did they just casually get up and walk out? You know? But he was like. He basically. He basically told that story to say that, like, Minnesota officials have created this chaos so they can have moments like yesterday where someone tragically dies and politicians get to grandstand about the evils of enforcing the border. And I'm like, that is like, you are so fucked up. Like, J.D. vance, forget about, like, his values, his morality, like, to tweet something like that after someone is murdered. Like. Like, you need to see someone for help like that. Like, you're. You're fucking psychologically nuts. Yeah.

12:37

And just like. Like the. The casual, like the callousness and the total disregard for the truth, it really just, like, saps your faith in government and humanity. But then the efforts to blame the victim are just like, Kash Patel, right? He says, you can't bring a gun to a protest. They're trying to suggest that, you know, that he is Alex Pareti's at fault because he brought a gun to this protest. And it's like, are you fucking kidding me? Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people at a protest. You guys lionized him. You treated him. You made him into a hero. Kash Patel specifically offered to raise money for Kyle Rittenhouse to sue the media about his reputation. And by the way, he made these comments on a white nationalist podcast with a guy named Stu Peters. Stu Peters is so vile and so anti Semitic that he sold a meme coin called jproof that is Jewish proof. And then Cash Patel later lied to the Senate and pretended he didn't know who Stu Peters was despite being on his show eight times. I think that aside, there, I think just tells you about the character of the people in these government positions. Al Cash Patel is the FBI Director. And he got that position because he was willing to lie and say whatever it took to get power. And that's where we're at.

13:54

And it's just like the conclusion from this, which is a conclusion most of us have drawn years ago, but especially true now is like we cannot trust a single thing that our government tells us, especially dhs, about anything, especially dhs. But like, you know, we just had, you know, the story last week about the five year old boy who they took from his family and is now somewhere in a detention facility in Texas, maybe sent to Mexico now that they're reinstating the remain in Mexico policy. This five year old. And they tried to tell us the father abandoned him, the mother didn't want him, and all these lies and you know, they're trying to argue, but it's like we can't, we can't believe any of that. We're supposed to believe that the agent who killed Renee Goode had internal bleeding. We're supposed to believe that the car hit him. We're supposed to believe there were two rounds of ammo that Alex Preddy brought with him to. They haven't produced any pictures of the ammo. Think if they had that they would, they would. We can't believe anything. We cannot believe anything the government says right now.

14:56

There's something about Vance that, that unrelated story about the lunch incident and it was dinner.

15:51

Don't worry, it was dinner.

16:01

It was the dinner incident.

16:01

You can interrupt people's lunch.

16:02

It was. Sorry, I didn't. It was the main meal that. And then they're like the work at the phrase. So they can have moments like this. So they can have moments like this.

16:03

Because he would do that. That's why. Cause Trump and Vance would use stuff to have, would want moments like this for their political end. So they think that we would do the same thing too.

16:17

But then it's like, so I'm sorry. Is the tension that took place where Alex Preddy was killed elevated because of an unrelated incident took place at this other restaurant? Are you saying that you hold a separate protest accountable for the ways in which you were bothered by what happened at the previous. Is Alex Preddy responsible for other people's acts? Are those ICE officers that killed Alex Preddy, are they not responsible because of something that happened to an unrelated group, Group of people, like hold individuals responsible for their conduct? Like what happened in this moment. We all watched it, we all saw it with our own eyes. What the fuck does what happened at a restaurant have anything to do with that? Unless you are doing some kind of collective punishment of protesters, in which. Because some protesters have done things that you don't like, whatever you're describing it as, whoever you're mischaracterizing it. What does that have to do with the rights of an individual to. To record people, to try to prevent someone from being hurt, from not being murdered on the street with bullets in the back? Like, it has nothing to do with anything. Like, the overall context. Like, what the fuck are you talking about?

16:26

Well, you know, it's the whole. Too, like, what about, you know, where's the uproar about Lake and Riley or any of the people who've been murdered by undocumented immigrants? It's like, well, the people who murdered them should be held accountable to the fullest extent to the law and sent away for their lives. And if someone has a criminal record and is violent, then you should. Should deport them if you can. And if they're a US Citizen, then you should charge them with a crime and have a jury convict them. What are you talking about?

17:43

By the way? You can go even further than that. Go further. I'll go further than that. And if the immigration system is broken, right? If the immigration system is not safe, we should fix it. We should have better laws. That does not mean people surrender their basic rights. That doesn't mean we have to have an inhumane deportation policy of people that happen to have been in the wrong restaurant at the wrong time. Like, what is the connection here? Like, what the fuck are. It's a. It's like the. The refusal to just look at the thing, like, in the face. Like, I don't. Like Cash Patel, Pete Hegseth. Like, I don't think these people have. Like, these are not, like, deeply held beliefs. And I don't even think that. I don't even think sometimes they're saying these things because they're trying to, like, own the libs. Like, they're just saying what they think they're supposed to say to stay on side. And they just happened, in this case, to be so warped by their media environment, by their fear of their boss, by the fact that they haven't really thought about their deeper moral convictions and in seemingly a very long time, too busy, too overwhelmed, too incompetent, that they misread this situation because it was so egregious, because they've gotten away with it or think they've gotten away with it in so many other circumstances in the first year of this administration.

18:06

And look, it just. It is a bigger Deal. When the state executes an American citizen, right? Like we have an implicit contract with the state that the state is allowed to use. Use violence or to detain us, right. To take away our freedoms and our liberties, right? So we have certain rights. And the White House position is basically that ICE and cbp, they can murder American citizen, they can posthumously slander him or her, they can call them a terrorist, they can remove evidence from the crime scene, they could block state and local investigations, and then they can hide the shooter's identity even though that person is staying on the job. And the fucking don't tread on me crowd is now like, you know, like, spank me, big government daddy. You know, like, thank you, sir. May have another. It's like, I don't. How do you. Whatever happened to that libertarian DNA? Like, where did all that go? When did we become just like pro police state authoritarianism? Like, it.

19:18

Whatever you have, you have an in group that the law protects and you have an out group that. That must be dealt with. That is, That's. That's. That's their only law.

20:04

The law. Well, I just also, just to that point from Tommy, though, it's like you realize how. How few people just have any first principles whatsoever, right? Like, hey, this person is an agent of the state. If you believe the killing is justified, he did it on behalf of the state. If it's not, he did it as an individual. We need to understand the difference. That's why you learn the person's name. That's why. Because he was operating on behalf of the state. And if he was, then he should be protected. And if he wasn't, he needs to be held accountable. Like, that is how it works. And like, there's no, like, no, you don't get not doxxing when a federal official kills somebody in the street. That's not what that means.

20:12

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21:01

Well, I mean, there's some polling, like 58% of voters say ICE has gone too far. There's a new Reuters Ipsos poll. Trump's approval on immigration is 39% approved, 53% disapproved. That's quite bad. I do think it's an inflection point. I hope it's an inflection point, but I really do think it is because voters want a secure border. They want violent criminals deported. No one wanted this. Like, everyone knows this is wrong. And from a cultural standpoint, I really, I personally am seeing it breakthrough like in my feeds. Like same NBA players. John Randall, who was a Hall of Fame defensive tackle, played 11 seasons for the Vikings. He was tweeting about this. There's like a Vikings beat reporter, a guy on Twitter who's like a Minnesota, you know, twin super fan, like my buddy Joel Corty, who founded this company, Chase Bliss. They make guitar pedals like he's posting stuff on it. You know, it's like People, you know, through all, all throughout your life. And it's usually people being like, I never use this account to talk about politics because I hate talking about politics. But this is different. You're also seeing Republicans willing to break with Trump. Like, there are some usual suspects. Rand Paul, Thom, Tillis, Murkowski. They're going a little further than usual. But even like James Comer, who's a, you know, died in the wool MAGA guy, he's saying ICE should get out of Minnesota. Greg Abbott said ICE wild.

25:36

Yeah.

26:45

Texas governor says ICE needs to recalibrate its, its decisions. In Minnesota, a bunch of high profile maga, like media people, even like formerly paid propagandists from the Russian government are criticizing ICE and Trump. The New York Post editorial said, quote, the hasty, misleading rhetoric coming out of the administration needs to stop. The American people didn't vote for these scenes and you can't continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes. So I do think, like, that is a lot of pressure from the right.

26:45

Yeah. Love it. What do you, what's, what's, what's your sense?

27:13

Yeah, look, I think, I think it's broken through. It's been interesting watching the kinds of people that try to defend Trump at every turn or find the intellectual way to not defend him while still managing to make sure they're doing their job of making this about the way the left is causing it in some fashion, how they've kind of run up against some weather in this. And I do think if you're not in the kind of daily political battles about how we argue over all kinds of videos and images and seeing the opposite, like, even those who want to be like, deferential to law enforcement, when you watch this video, the Renee Goode video on top of all the other videos we're seeing, it's one thing for people who are maybe instinctively more defensive of law enforcement to defend police acting professionally, but what ICE or Border Patrol, what they look like in these moments, they just look like a gang and they're scrambling and they're running up and they're pushing people. They're not acting like police. They're just not. Like, you can have all kinds of criticism of police. That is deserved. These people are not acting like police. They're not de escalating. You see a lot of criticism from cops, by the way, law enforcement officials both locally and nationally saying this is not how a professional police force acts because you're supposed to de escalate. You're supposed to step back. You're not Supposed to make things worse. And you see like the number of videos you see of, of, of somebody from, from the, from the, from ICE or bpb. We, we put them together, but they are different kind of running up and just shoving somebody, grabbing somebody and then. Because now. And somebody maybe grabs back or falls, whatever, an agent falls. Now there's two people on top of each other. So six more agents come in. And now they're part of this scrum, like a little bit of like what happened with, with Preddy. And it just doesn't look like police. It looks like gangs. They're acting like gangs. And so I think that is visceral for everybody, including people that are less political, less anti cop, more pro law enforcement. Like, I think that is part of what makes these images so powerful.

27:17

I mean, remember after they killed Renee Goode, you could hear the man who shot her, the agent who shot her say, fucking bitch. And then now after this, there were two agents like fist bumping, high fiving after the Preddy murder as well.

29:13

Sickening.

29:29

There was also a doctor who, you know, filed this in the affidavit for the. There's a court case that we'll talk about in a bit, but said that he once again, just like in the Renee Goode killing, tried to rush and provide medical care for Preddy and they wouldn't let him cause he'd have his license on him. Then finally they let him. And he said, what's weird is that he was light on his side, which is not what you do when there's like a gunshot victim. And then he saw that the agents, the border patrol agents, were counting the bullet holes. That's why they had Preddy on his side as opposed to trying to help him with medical care. They were counting. But bullet holes.

29:29

Well, they were also looking for a gun. And they realized there was no gun on him because he had been disarmed before they executed him.

30:01

Yeah. The other Republican I thought was interesting, Chris Medell, who's a Republican candidate for. Who was a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota and the pro bono lawyer for Jonathan Ross, the agent that killed Renee Goode dropped out of the race, said, I can't look my daughters in the eye and say, I'm running as a Republican when they're pulling over Hispanics and Asians because of the color of their skin and what they look like. I did not sign up for that. That was the end of his candidacy. So, like, some of the tech, tech people are finally speaking up. Some of like the, like the next tier Tech folks. I saw. I did see one guy from. From OpenAI as an exec there, James Diet, which is pretty damning tweet. He said there's far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities in executing civilians in the streets. Tells you what you need to know about the values of our industry. Yeah, the fuck yeah.

30:05

Yeah, the fucking all in pod.

30:50

Yeah.

30:52

They think the real problem is a 5% wealth tax on billionaires.

30:53

Chamath was literally tweeting about that all weekend while this was happening. This is your buddy Donald Trump. You didn't have a fucking word to say about this.

30:56

The real victims are the billionaires.

31:01

Do you think? Do you think. Do you think? Tim Cook was on Do Not Disturb during the screening? And so he only saw it after.

31:03

Levitt's referencing here is that Donald Trump, on Saturday night after the killing, held a screening of the New Melania doc that, you know, there was a little bit of a drug deal there.

31:11

Amazon paid $40 billion.

31:22

Yeah, 40 million. And, you know, and Tim Cook went, that was great.

31:24

Why a couple executives on a competing streaming service. Why is he going to the premiere of a documentary on a competing streaming.

31:26

I guess Tim Cook and Apple just wanted to show support for the President who just presided over, you know, federal agents who executed the second American citizen in a matter of weeks.

31:32

A riveting documentary for everyone who always wondered, what is the first lady up to in the 20 days before she becomes officially first lady in her inauguration?

31:41

Directed by Brett Radner, a person we all missed that Hollywood was clamoring for more work from.

31:51

Yeah, let's talk about Trump himself. And I do think it's notable that we have waited until now to talk about Trump, which I think just goes to show that he has. I mean, at the beginning of this, he sort of was in the background a bit. It is pretty clear now that he and at least some people in the White House have realized that, at least from a pure political standpoint, they have royally fucked this up. Trump announced Monday that he's sending border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, who will be replacing Greg Bevino, who is finally leaving the city with at least some of the Border Patrol forces under his command. And Nick Miroff at the Atlantic has just reported that Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol commander at large and will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he's expected to retire soon. This is according to a DHS official and two people who have knowledge of the Change what?

31:58

A world where we're like, oh yes, we got Homan, we got rid of Aveena, we got Homan. Guys, it's just the guy with the 50 grand in the kava bag. That's like a relief.

32:51

Well, remember how this all went down too, is that it was first Homan and then there was all this sort of reporting about this internal scuttlebutt over like Tom Homan wasn't extreme enough for Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski. Corey Lewandowski, of course, the, the brains behind the operation at dhs.

33:00

Something by something.

33:18

Yeah. And so, you know, Homan wasn't tough enough. Right. Because of course Homan is a, is an Obama administration holdover from way back. He was some mid level ice guy or senior ice guy there. He wasn't, you know, and so Homan wasn't tough enough. And so they kind of, kind of demote Homan or at least he's, he's, he's out of view. They get Bavino on the ground with his, you know, with his SS coat and in his, in this phalanx of agents that he needs to have around him. Even when he's going into Target to take a piss. He's a big tough guy. And so, so they have. So then, so then it's Pavino. And remember after Good was killed and Homan is in one of those first interviews and he's like, I think there should be a full investigation, like I think we should not call it domestic terrorism all of a sudden. And then suddenly he's like back on the talking point. So Homan, they all seek Homan as like a cuck, right? Homan is a real. Yeah, Homan's a real. Beta is fucking nuts because Lewandowski and.

33:19

Noem don't, they don't like Homan. There's like a tension there.

34:11

Right, right.

34:14

Yeah.

34:15

So now, so now Homan is back in. And, and I guess this is the last of Greg Bevino for a while. Trump also said on Monday that he had a quote, very good call with Tim Walls and that they, quote, actually seem to be on a similar wavelength. Sure. Walls laughed at that. The Walls office said that Trump agreed to allow for an impartial investigation into Preddy's killing that involves Minnesota state officials, which they had originally been trying to keep out of it. And they, and they did for goods investigation, lack thereof, not a real investigation into goods murder. And that also Trump agreed to quote, look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota. And of course there's that reporting that some of the Border Patrol is gonna leave with Bovino. Also, apparently right before we recorded, Trump talked to Fry, Jacob Fry as well. And they had the mayor of Minneapolis and they were supposed to have, like, a productive call as well. According to Frey, there were also hearings on Monday on both of the points that Wal and Trump talked about. In these were court cases brought by the state of Minnesota by Attorney General Keith Ellison. One asking a judge to stop the ICE surge and the Border Patrol surge immediately, and one demanding that the Department of Homeland Security preserve all the evidence from the scene of Preddy's death. You know, the judge seemed reluctant or sort of torn on whether they could actually stop this enforcement operation. During the. During the hearing, though, the one thing that was really getting the judge was Pam Bondi's letter that she sent, basically saying, we'll take out our agents only if these conditions are met. And. And one was, we want your. Snap, your food stamp rolls. And one was, we want access to your voter rolls.

34:15

So weird.

35:52

Yeah. And. And then we want more cooperation on. On law enforcement. And so the judge was like, it does seem a little weird that there's basically a demand of meeting certain conditions before you stop terrorizing a population. It's not what the judge said, but that was basically the feeling there. So we'll wait for. For rulings on that. And then White House held a press briefing, their first press briefing since the killing. On Monday, Caroline Levitt was asked at her briefing about Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem calling Pretty a domestic terrorist and an assassin. And she said that Trump doesn't characterize him that way. Did not defend Miller. Did not defend.

35:53

She hung him out to try.

36:26

Did not.

36:27

Yeah, it's a. The bar is so low. Right. Like. But also didn't criticize. You know what I mean?

36:28

Just sort of didn't condemn him. But you. Like, she definitely were like, they're on an island. And I'm signaling that Donald Trump has not said that.

36:34

Yeah.

36:41

And seemingly wouldn't say that.

36:41

I mean. Yeah, I can't imagine any White House press secretary unless the person was fired.

36:42

Yeah.

36:48

To actually, you know, make the criticism right there. But I thought that that was. That surprised me because Caroline Levitt's never done that.

36:48

No, she was. It was actually like, she was. It was actually more circumspect than.

36:54

Than.

36:58

Than usual.

36:59

Trump, of course, aside from some of these posts, spent the weekend, a lot of other posts over the weekend, he was posting about his ballroom, basically saying it's unstoppable now. You can't stop me now from building this ballroom.

37:00

Okay.

37:10

He was hosting the screening, of course, the Melania screening. He threatened to again now to make bad polls a criminal offense. So his head's in the right place. You guys have thoughts on the evolving nature of the Trump White House response to Freddie's killing in this seeming retreat from, from Trump in the White House?

37:12

Yeah, look, Trump has been, as you said, he's been horrible at times, but I also think at other times his reaction has seemed more human than J.D. vance or Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem or at least more like politically in tune with the moment. And so he definitely seems very much to be in climb down moan. The fact that he's calling the mayor, the fact that he's calling Governor Walls is, is significant, I think, Look, I think he is mostly focused on making money and like legacy stuff, like the ego stuff, like he wants the ballroom, he wants the arch. Trump wants to build these monuments to himself and he wants to know about peace Prize. But he doesn't like when the markets go down. He doesn't like when the stock market dips. He doesn't like getting calls from Republican senators or other allies telling him that his team is screwing up. So they're making changes. And you know, there's been a lot of reporting even before Alex Preddy's murder, that there was internal White House disagreement over the political impact of the ICE crackdown, specifically Minnesota. I think there are people in the White House who are monsters, but they can read a poll and they know that this is not helping them. In fact, it's backfiring. But their problem is that Stephen Miller doesn't want to give an inch. And Stephen Miller is the first among equals in that building. Like Susie Wiles has the title of Chief of Staff. I'm sorry, but you're not the most powerful person in the White house, nor is J.D. vance. It is Stephen Miller. And so we know this because during Signal Gate, Stephen Miller basically told J.D. vance to shut the fuck up and get on the get with the program about bombing Yemen. And so, you know, I think clearly we're seeing, you know, a climb down in Minnesota. Maybe there'll be a change to way ICE and CBP is deployed. I think people probably understand that another incident like this is inevitable if some change isn't made. I'd still worry though, that there's going to be a constant kind of back and forth push and pull with Stephen Miller and the people trying to constrain him. I don't know how long Term it.

37:33

Will be love it. What do you think?

39:15

So there's sort of, there's, there's three. There's three things happening to me. One is the policy, the policy of mass deportations and how you execute on a policy like that. The other is the incredibly aggressive tactics that they've been pursuing in the Twin Cities and other places. And then the third is the tenor of the administration and how it talks about what it's doing. Clearly Trump is trying to do this with the tenor, maybe some surface changes in the aggressiveness of the response, but the mass deportation policy remains. And that's a math problem. That's not even a Stephen Miller problem. It's a math problem. I agree he's the driving force behind trying to hit whatever number a million deportations in a year. But they just can't get just criminals. They don't have it. So they have to go after normal people. And there is no way to pursue a mass deportation agenda without causing chaos in communities with immigrants, because there are documented immigrants, undocumented immigrants and citizens from those communities. And by the way, they're neighbors and community members and colleagues and people that go to school with their children who are American citizens. And so, you know, he can have a different phone conversation tone with Tim Walsh for a day. Well, by the way, still posting that he's going to go after Elon Omar and go after the fraud, which is ostensibly going after Waltz. Right. Whatever else he wants to call it. But the reality is the policy, if this is the policy, this is what will happen. No matter how they try to kind of massage it. It's not an optics problem, it's a math problem. And I don't know how they resolve that. There's no real way to resolve it. You can do a mass deportation policy that is less monstrous. I suppose it's still going to be incredibly disruptive and horrible for these communities. So that to me is still like, what are we talking about? What's Homan gonna do that's different than what Pavino was gonna do? A slightly better tone is Homan, is Homan some fuck? Does he have a great bedside manner? I mean, maybe compared to fucking Bavino, but he's still Tom Homan.

39:17

Yeah. What I worry about is, so imagine what happens on Saturday takes place. Alex Paredi is murdered and Stephen Miller does not tweet that he was a would be assassin. Greg Bevino does not give that press conference that we saw. Christine Ohm does not go out there and say he was a domestic terrorist. They do not have a response as fucking nuts as they had. They announce, all right, we're actually gonna take this seriously. We believe that this man had a gun on him, and we believe he was going to cause violence. But we're gonna have a full investigation of this, and that's gonna be it. And the outcry then is. Is huge, I would hope. But they probably think at that point they can still send in ice, send in Border Patrol to the next city and the next city, and keep doing this and keep getting away with it. And, you know, they're now in Maine. We haven't heard a ton from Maine. We have, because we paid really close attention to this. And so, you know, people in Maine, but they're in Portland, they're in Lewiston. And ICE and Border Patrol, whoever's there, are acting just as monstrous as they've been acting in Minneapolis. Not just to immigrants or not just to legal residents, but to protesters as well. So you do. And no one. I mean, we don't have good insight into what's happening at the detention centers, which are fucking just horrific. The conditions there or where they're sending people or when they're sending people to third countries, not even their own countries. Right. Like, so there is so much harm they can keep doing that. I do think that it's now gonna be incumbent on everyone who has been monitoring this, who's been reporting on this, who's been filming this, to, like, keep it up. Because you're right. Like, Trump. Tommy's exactly right. Like, Trump just doesn't like. Trump doesn't like the mess. Right. He doesn't like seeing a mess on tv. He doesn't like the blowback. He doesn't care. It's not like Trump is, like, really feeling for Alex Preddy and his family. Right. But Trump's like, I got other things to care. I don't want to deal with this shit. Stephen Miller's like, okay, fuck. How do I get done what I want to get done without the boss getting mad at me or me getting sidelined or anything else? And I do worry that there's enough of them, like Miller, who advance, who are smart enough to figure out how to do this in a quieter way? And I do think, like, sidelining Bovino and maybe Gnome. We'll. We'll talk about that. Who's just a fucking idiot is like, that's an easy thing.

41:25

Yeah, there's a. There is another. You're right. That's all, I think. Right. Except the one thing that they can't manifest is, is a magically more professional immigration bureau because they've staffed it.

43:41

In fact, they'll get a less professional one as time goes on. And the new recruits who they keep hiring are going to.

43:54

Well, that's what I mean, because part of this again, is like they've staffed up too quickly and they've ramped up too quickly and they've recruited people that are either some combination of unqualified or ill tempered and poorly trained. And so that will continue. Right. That mess is there and they can't talk their way out of that.

43:59

Yeah. Unless these, unless these are all just like sitting in an office somewhere at DHS or some field office not doing anything, you know, which.

44:15

Yeah. I think all we can really hope for right now is some near term improvement on the ground. And I do think getting CBP out of these situations sounds like it would make a material difference because they sound like the worst offenders in terms of abusing people, including American protesters.

44:22

I think it's so important for people to, to know that too. Is that like ISIS awful? Right? We all, we all know that ICE is awful. But some of the worst, worst abuses have been at the hands of the border patrol people and they should be back at the border where their job is and never in the interior of the country. Pod Save America is brought to you by Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money allows you to track subscriptions and cancel them within the app with just a few taps, saving you time and helping you avoid charges. You can even categorize automatic transactions across your accounts and customize categories with tags to help shed light on your spending patterns, set budgets and goals, get personalized insights and regular reports on your spending habits. You can even receive real time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances. The Rocket Money app can even consolidate your checking, savings, loans and investment accounts into a single dashboard to give you a clear picture of your finances. We love Rocket Money. Many of us in the office have used Rocket Money because God knows there's just a ton of subscriptions you sign up for. Once you forget about it. Suddenly you're getting a recurring charge. You barely notice that you're getting a recurring charge till you get some email or you look at your bank statement and then it's like, ugh, now you have to wait another year to cancel or you've paid for another year. Such a pain. Rocket Money is super helpful helps cancel all those unwanted subscriptions. Except your subscription, of course, to Crooked Media Friends of the Pod. You're going to want to sign up for that because that's a valuable subscription. And so to make sure you save enough money for that, you're going to want to cancel all your unwanted subscriptions. Trust me. Let Rocket money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join@RocketMoney.com Crooked that's RocketMoney.com Crooked RocketMoney.com Crooked Proxy of America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. You definitely want to address key questions first when you're hiring to make sure that someone is right for your role. Which is why you need ZipRecruiter when you post your job, ZipRecruiter suggests screening questions to help you hone in on top candidates faster. And today you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com Crooked ZipRecruiter's matching technology immediately finds qualified candidates that check all your boxes. ZipRecruiter recommends screening questions you can easily add to get the highest quality applicants. If you want to see who's recently active, ZipRecruiter's filters can show you. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. We have used ZipRecruiter at Crooked for years now. Hiring is really hard and sorting through resumes is really hard. And in ZipRecruiter very much helps by sorting the resumes for you and making sure that they are only presenting you with the top candidates who are the most qualified. Ask key questions and hire faster with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com crooked that's ZipRecruiter.com crooked Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. So as for what's happening in the grinder Minnesota right now, it seems protests have remained peaceful. I'm sure a lot of you now have seen the Minnesota National Guard has arrived. They are wearing bright yellow vests so that people can distinguish them from border patrol, which feels like it's like we're in some developing country civil conflict somewhere that we have now two sets of armed agents, one of the state and one from the federal government. But the guard there handing out coffee and donuts and people are there's a lot of vigils and everything on the ground, but love it. You've Been there. So tell us what you've been seeing, who you've been talking to, and how people have been reacting.

44:36

Yeah, so we went to the Whipple Federal Building, which is where most of the kind of federal operation has been run out of, where there's been a constant presence of protesters. That's also where we've seen some of the confrontations between protesters and law enforcement. And, you know, we talked to two guys from Minnesota, one who's been kind of out here protesting for a while. Another, it was his first time he'd ever been to a protest.

48:27

The option really, to me is do this or do nothing, and I choose to do this.

49:02

I was talking to my dad, and he said, you know, he's worried about me. He says, this isn't your fight. You got kids at home. But, I mean, the people who are.

49:06

Getting abducted, they got kids at home.

49:13

And really, I'm not gonna go fight anybody. So my options are stay home, pretend.

49:15

It'S not happening, or come here and.

49:19

Do what I can. Jesus said to love your neighbor.

49:20

You can't love your neighbor if you stay home.

49:22

Ignore the issues going on.

49:24

So you said, yeah, forgive them, Father. They know not what they do. I just want to show that not.

49:26

Every Christian support what's going on.

49:31

And it was actually like a. Like, remarkable how many people we met who had, like, went back to their religious faith for why they were out there and their revulsion at what they're seeing, especially from people who claim to be Christian and conservative, that was repellent to them, including someone who had been a conservative and been someone who was on the other side but was converted, has moved to the left because woke up to what was happening in the country. There was a mix of people, some who'd been involved in organizing for most of their lives, some from, like, native communities that involved in organizations that are as old as the 60s. There were people that had been protesting since George Floyd, and then there were people that had never protested before, but they all agreed that they'd never seen anything like this in the Twin Cities. They'd never seen anything like this. One thing I just. I thought was worth saying is, you know, you see polls from people saying ICE is making cities less safe. Right? And those are polls of people that aren't there. I mean, for the most part. And so they're reacting to the chaos they're seeing. And so it's a. That's a kind of aesthetic judgment. Like, this looks like it's not good, right? It's a good judgment. It's correct. But then you talk to people about what it's actually like and to people that are trying to kind of assist in the communities. And they are seeing people afraid to call the police. They're seeing people afraid to go to the hospital, afraid to report domestic abuse, afraid to get warm in the cold. And that is a community that is less safe because of this chaos, because of the presence of ice. I, I, like, I tried to talk to, not on camera or anything, some local law enforcement, and they're obviously, like, skittish about the politics of this. Like, they're dragged into this and they're trying. You just see, like, these are Minnesota guys. They're from the local police, and they're just trying to keep the peace. Right. And I said, this can't be making the community feel safer. I know you're sort of staying out of it. I'm not trying to put you on the spot on the politics, but obviously if you weren't out here, you'd be doing something else. And you watch him struggle to answer that. Yeah, like, look, we've got to be out here because we're worried about what's going to happen with these protests. We're worried about counter protests. We're trying to keep these people safe. We hope people still call 911. We're not immigration enforcement, and we're still answering those calls. But, yeah, like, if we weren't here, we'd be somewhere else. You feel it. You feel the way in which it's a small thing, but when you're at the Whipple Building, there are all these protesters and there's two kind of honks when people pass by. There are the locals that are saying, hey, I'm with you. And then there are, like the ICE guys kind of laying on their horn. And when we were at the Alex Preddy Memorial, there were some, like, kind of anti protester, pro Trump people kind of honking their horns and going by, which people were ignoring. But when, like a fire truck would go by or a car, they couldn't tell who was in it would go by, you see the protesters kind of looking in the window and saying, like, are you. Are you one of us? Like, are you from here or are you from ice? Like, are you with us or are you, like, are you from this community or are you part of the outsiders? And you see like the, like, fire people in ambulances or like fire trucks or just passersby just going like, like waving, like, I'm just letting you know that I'm here. Like, I'm not. I'm sorry. Like, I'm not part of this. Like, I'm from here. I'm part of your community. I'm not part of this force that's come from the outside. And like that, that to me is like the feeling that you get when you talk to people, which is like. And it's, you know, like, like, get out. Like this idea. Like, get out of here. Like, this feel like you are not. We don't want you here. That feeling, it's not just like a political statement. It is like a community statement of the pain they're feeling of, like, stop doing this to us. Like, stop doing what you're doing to this city. Like, we don't want this. Forget immigration enforcement. You are ripping this place apart and it doesn't need to be this way. Like, that's the feeling you get when you talk to people.

49:32

I'm just so impressed with the community in Minneapolis St. Paul and throughout Minnesota. Just like how they've gone about protesting and organizing. I was talking to Lydia Paul Greene about this, who's also from Minnesota, for offline last week and she said, yeah, it's just like, I almost don't like calling it protesting because it really is. It's organizing. It's like helping your neighbor being together. And we haven't even covered it and we probably would have if Saturday hadn't happened. But you know, on Friday they held the day of truth and Freedom, which is this like just gigantic. Was like an economic. It was a one day economic boycott strike plus protest. I think they had like, I heard Klobuchar say 50,000 people and nothing happened. There was no violence. There's no. There was nothing on Friday night. It was just peaceful protesting. That many people. That is like just statistically that's like a really tough thing to pull off.

53:53

It's also so cold.

54:46

And then I can't. Dangerously cold. It was like, it's not 30 degrees, it's zero or below zero. It is unbelievable.

54:49

And then Saturday morning comes and Preddy's murdered. And I was texting with Emily, has a lot of family in Minneapolis. And I was texting with Emily's aunt. I was checking on Saturday. And so there's. There were these vigils that they were holding. And she's like, we just came from one in our neighborhood and it was like 250 people just. And there she's like everywhere in both cities. You can just see all over Minneapolis, all their suburbs. You just these vigils everywhere. And they just like, sort of spontaneous. And she said that a friend had texted her, like, if there aren't riots in the Twin Cities tonight, it's because of the vigils on every corner. It's just, like, unbelievably. She said, it's unbelievable how powerful they were in changing the energy. And sure enough, no riot Saturday night, nothing Sunday. You know, like, it's just for all that. For all that the Trump administration has tried to make Minneapolis be. They have just refused to take the bait. And the power of sort of nonviolent organizing, peaceful protest, and now sort of repelling Trump and Greg Bevino and the Border Patrol agents from this city, because everyone there had the discipline and the love and the energy to be like, we're just gonna sit here and we're witness to this. We're not gonna back down. We're not gonna hide in our houses, but we're also not gonna give them what they want is just unbelievably fucking impressive and inspiring.

54:59

Yeah, I saw. It's. I. There was this woman at Whipple. We went back. We went to a couple different places, but then sort of before we recorded this pod, we went back because there was more people at the federal building, sort of in the afternoon, and there was this woman who had a jacket on that said, granny's against ice. And we'll put in the sound here. But, you know, she's out there. Just as every. Every. As every SUV comes in and out, she just yells that they all have tiny penises. That's what she wanted to do. That's why they're wearing masks. Show people the back of your jacket. It's a granny against ice. What have you been shouting at the passing ICE cars when they're going into the Whipple facility there? Oh, just that they've got tiny little winkies and small penises.

56:19

Because I'm assuming that's why they hide their face.

57:16

You think that's why they're hiding their faces? Yeah, because of their small winkies. And is winky. That's a Minnesota term. It's a granny term. What should. People who aren't here right now, what are they missing about what's happening in the Twin Cities?

57:19

Kindness.

57:36

That's the main thing. I mean, look, we've got people bringing food, people bringing coats, people taking and grabbing, you know, helping the people that get released from detention and bringing them.

57:38

To their homes, giving them phones because.

57:50

They release them without coats. So just like, a few minutes ago, we found out that in part because of all the backlash, that we're seeing Trump is going to remove Greg Bevino from Minneapolis and the Twin Cities. What do you think about that?

57:51

I think that's good, but I don't.

58:10

Think Tom Holman is going to be any better.

58:11

Yeah.

58:13

Tom Holland.

58:14

We've got worker care. We should, we've got, we got money.

58:14

I was about to say we got to get some kava bags. Well, I don't have that. We just, I just had grocery bags. So we've got some money there. It's play money. But I mean, and she's like, but was. What was. It was just sort of goes to the conversation because it's like personnel changes, tone changes. Like talking to people like, what are they? What does success look like? What, what is. It's this ending. It's these people being removed from the city. They don't care who's running it from inside the building. They're not going to see that person. They're seeing the impacts. And one last thing, too, is just something we've talked about in a couple of previous pods. Like, I was talking to people about, like, how much are they really feeling it? Like, how much of this is centered in a few areas versus something everybody in the community is feeling. And to A1, they felt connected to it, whether directly people at their work or friends who have felt it. Like it has been pervasive and like it matters only because, like, Minneapolis isn't like a special example. It doesn't have a high degree of undocumented immigration. It's not a big city. Like, if they can do this here, they will do this anywhere. There's no place they couldn't justify doing it. If they can do it to Minneapolis and St. Paul and that community.

58:18

Love it. Ryan said you were introducing yourself to voters as the Gen X Nick Shirley, is that true?

59:31

Yeah, that's right.

59:36

Can we drop that audio in right here?

59:37

I was actually saying I'm the, I'm, I'm the cowardly Will Sansel. That's how I, I'm like, without, without.

59:40

The guts, without the tear gas.

59:48

Yeah. Amazing. All right, let's talk about what might happen next on Capitol Hill. Government funding deadline, January 30th. They have been. We're not going to go through all the details, but, you know, we've talked about this. They're passing department by department bills. Basically. Senate has to vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The vote's gonna be this Thursday and House already passed it. And now Senate Democrats have to decide what they're gonna do, whether they're gonna fund it or not. You know, it's whether they're gonna pass the whole package of bills together where they're gonna try to strip out the Department of Homeland Security bill because they agree on all the other ones and maybe enforce changes in the Department of Homeland Security bill to ice, to Immigration enforcement operations, basically. Now all the Senate Democrats, or most of the Chuck Schumer has said, like, they don't have the votes, meaning Republicans do not have the votes to pass this bill. So the Democrats are going to demand this. And what they are demanding as of Monday is for DHS funding to be separated out from the other bills. And so so far, at least Republicans are like, no, we want to move forward to vote on all the bills and, and keep the debate focused on avoiding a shutdown, partial or otherwise. And even if the Democrats do extract some concessions from the Republicans, the House is out this week because, you know, if they get concessions, then you have to pass it back through the House again anyway. But, like, you know, even your Jeanne Shaheens, your Jackie Rosens, the people who basically provided Republicans the votes to open the government up last time this time are saying, like, absolutely not. We're not gonna vote for this unless there are real changes. Schumer was on a call with the caucus Sunday. He apparently said the message is gonna be restrain reform and restrict ice, and then, you know, they're gonna ask for some reforms. What do we know about the reforms they're asking for? Democrats are asking for and basically, like, can they achieve them?

59:50

I don't know that that slogan sings. You know, I mean, look, the problem about the kind of conversation about our messaging is it inevitably devolves into this, like, intra Democratic Party fight about the last time we talked about abolishing ice and that slogan, whether it was good or bad, and whatever happened to that Sean McElwee guy? And, like, we just. I don't want to have that anymore. Like, I think. I think there's short and long term issues here or sort of priorities. Short term. My guess is Schumer thinks that a reform message is more politically palatable and beneficial. Maybe even thinks he can get some Republicans on board, although it sounds like no. Also, like, Caitlin Dickerson had a great piece in the Atlantic about how the Trump administration has systematically dismantled all these inspector general offices and civil rights and civil liberties offices within parts of the government that are supposed to investigate these kinds of incidents and that we should. Democrats should be fighting to fully staff and fund those. Again, longer term, though, like, it's just clearly, like, ICE is like a fundamentally broken organization. It cannot be reformed. There needs to be systemic change. I think the thing that always bumps me on abolished ICE is that doesn't answer for me where CBP goes. You know what I mean? And like cbp, it's not part of ice. They report to the, to the Secretary of Homeland Security. And ultimately, I think, like, that is the bigger problem, which is that DHS was a fucking stupid, colossal mistake creating that dumb thing. Thank you, Joe Lieberman. Homework for listeners. Google Department of Homeland Security Org chart. Someday you'll see, like, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service and then fema. And then the thing about weapons of mass destruction, like, what is this? So I think ultimately Democrats probably need to fight for a lot of this, immigration, all these components to be pulled out of DHS and put into doj, where at least there's oversight and accountability or something else. But in the short term, I think whatever we can do to pressure the Republicans on this and Trump on this, probably helpful.

1:01:43

Dan and I have been nerding out about this a little bit, but it's just like there's. You can put all your demands on the table, right, and see if there's enough Republicans to sort of make any kind of incremental changes that honestly are just not going to make a huge difference. The real problem is that ICE has a budget that is the size of the Israeli militaries right now. And that budget they have, no matter what happens with the government funding fight, because it was a statutory appropriation that they got from the big beautiful bill. And so, like, ICE is fine. They're gonna do their thing and there's nothing you wanna hear, but there's nothing Democrats can do about it. What Democrats can do is we can shut down the government or partial shutdown, and you could shut down Department of Homeland Security. And then I imagined at that point, what the administration will do is say, well, ICE is still gonna do their thing. And what we'll do is, yeah, we'll shut down TSA and then no one will be able to fly anywhere and we'll shut down fema. And, you know, then they'll blame Democrats for, you know, emergency management not showing up, or long airport delays and other problems.

1:03:28

Trump wanna shut down FEMA anyway, right?

1:04:36

Yeah, there's. So, like, they'll do whatever. They'll be a stalemate. And then at some point, you know, I do think it's, and I said this last week, I think it's worth, like, making these demands and, and, and if we're going through a shutdown. We go through a shutdown just to, like, call attention to the fact that this is fucking bullshit, what they're doing. And if you can get them to make some reforms, that's good. I don't think anyone should think that. If we just get a few reforms that Democrats are demanding, that that's because Democrats didn't demand more. Because the truth is no one's abolishing, reforming, or doing anything until a Democrat is president again. And then if a Democrat is president again, like, again, you know, my view, there is fire literally every single fucking agent that, that Donald Trump hired for the agency. I, I think you could, you, you need immigration enforcement somewhere. But you're right, we have these border patrol cowboys who are out of control. We have. ICE is clearly out of control. And so basically, you need some kind of border security and some kind of immigration enforcement. But, like, everything that we're seeing now can go away, like, literally the day that a Democrat becomes president. And it won't go away until then.

1:04:37

Yeah.

1:05:40

And that's the truth.

1:05:42

Like, there's already been a bipartisan negotiation that has some modest reforms. Right. That is what they would be voting on. It's paltry. It's not nearly enough. But because the funding for ICE has already been put through, it is not like a normal shutdown in which the shutdown slows them down. Actually, like a. These, these reforms applied on top of the funding would be more effective. Not nearly effective enough. Not nearly as far as we need to go. Not resolving the problem, but would do more than a shutdown would. That's just the truth. Now, I, I could.

1:05:43

And we should say that. What, what, what? Democrats, what. At least 10 Senate Democrats have coalesced around this. They are demanding, requiring warrants for arrests. Kind of thought the Constitution required that. But, you know, mandating that federal agents identify themselves, and I think body cameras are probably part of that as well. And then mandating that, you know, DHS cooperate with state and local investigations into ICE abuses, violence, shootings, like they did with Renee Good and Alex Pareti. Again, all things that should be law should be in the Constitution, should be. You know, maybe a court will decide anyway, but that is what they're calling for. There's also House Democrats, there's about 15 House Democrats, and not just the Progressive Caucus either. You know, I saw like, Seth Moulton on this and Pat Ryan and a whole bunch of different people calling for an immediate stand down in Interior Enforcement until they can fucking fix this bullshit that's happening. Right now, you know, I don't see that going anywhere. I don't see the Trump administration ever agreeing that. But good for them for doing it. And then of course, there is the, and you're even seeing moderates like, you know, Nevada's Jackie Rosen, Senator Jackie Rosen, calling for Noem to be impeached. And that's gaining steam as well. You know, my thought there too is like, great, get rid of Kristi Noem. But again, she, you know, but she basically just does and says what Stephen Miller tells her to do.

1:06:16

Yeah, she's better job. She's a bad person. I'd love for her to get fired. I'd love for her to be impeached. Push forward if you want. It doesn't solve any underlying problems. It doesn't cut their funding. It doesn't change anything. I like, you know, it's probably, it's not going to make Trump, it's not going to change Trump's mind. Trump's big. Oh, Democrats hate her. Okay, now I like her.

1:07:28

Yeah, the, like, you know, the, there is this like credibility problem in sort of both directions for Democrats and Senate Democrats led by Schumer, which is people think they'll cave, including the Republicans. Right. And so their demands carry a little bit less weight. And then on top of that, given the level of corruption in that department, abolish ICE has gone from being kind of a minority view to in some polls, a majority view. And even if you question that, it's obviously gained a lot more mainstream acceptance as a view. So then why aren't Democrats trying to abolish ice? And obviously we are not going to be positioned to do that for a long time. But there is another problem under there because like, okay, you want to get rid of ice, like, what kind of immigration enforcement do you believe in? What kind of immigration support? Not as a compromise with Republicans for comprehensive immigration reform. What do you believe Interior immigration enforcement should look like at whatever level? Maybe you think there shouldn't be much. Maybe you think there needs to be a more humane but version of it. I don't know what the answer is, but like, I have no idea what anyone's position on that because we haven't had any kind of full throated Democratic kind of vision on immigration in a very long, long time. And so like the, the whole, like, I think this is like the credibility problem that Democrats in the Senate fall into over and over again, which is they want to signal that they understand what they, that they need to fight, but they have their limited tools and Then nobody knows what their deeper goal is. Like, they understand the tactics maybe in the short term, which they don't trust. But in the long term, like, what is your. What are you trying to get to? Because we want to abolish ICE and we have no idea what you're for.

1:07:44

Yeah, yeah, it is. And I don't. I think, you know, to their credit, I think they are angry. Like most of the country want to do something and you know, have limited, limited options available to them by being the minority. And I should say, like, which is what they are.

1:09:30

We had Mark Warner, I talked to Mark Warner was on the YouTube and he was initially pretty opposed to stopping this bill to have it having a shutdown over dhs. But I think he's been moved by what he's been seeing. And I do think being reasonable and then moved to the stronger position does make it more credible to Republicans as well. So there is that.

1:09:47

Yeah. And again, it's like, you know, I was in the Senate and someone was like, well, what are you gonna do? I'm like, I'm not gonna vote for the bill. Will the government shut down? Okay, well, you're not gonna get what you want. Well, I'm not voting to fund everything that we're seeing on television. So if the government shut down, then the government shut down. And if Donald Trump wants to do something, he can do something. Well, aren't you mad about the politics? Well, no, that's just, you know, like you could just have that position.

1:10:10

Yeah.

1:10:31

If you want. Now everyone should realize that, you know, then it's in Donald Trump's lap and the Republicans lap. And we've all seen how that goes. But there you go. All right, two quick notes. You know, we've been pushing you guys to subscribe to Friends of the pod. This is our subscription only service here at Crooked Media. And by the way, if you subscribe, you're supporting independent progressive media, which is super important. And to return the favor, we're putting a lot more stuff behind the paywall this year. We just launched a couple weeks back Open Tabs, which is our new POD Save America newsletter. It is fantastic. And now this Thursday, we are launching POD Save America Only Friends. It is a new bi weekly show featuring a rotating cast of the three of us and other hosts of your favorite crooked shows. It is POD Save America Only Friends. You can only get it if you are a subscriber and you will get to hear all the fun stuff that we didn't get to talk about here on Pod Save America. And more and other secret stuff that you won't even know about unless you're a subscriber. You also get a ton of access as a subscriber to ad free episodes, bonus pods and a great community of fellow Crooked listeners across the country. And you get to be pretty proud that you're supporting independent progressive media. So to get Open Tabs newsletter and POD Save America only Friends and all kinds of other great stuff. Subscribe to friends of the pod@crooked.com friends also, crooked is publishing a brand new book. It's from one of our favorite political writers, Jason Zengerly. It's called Hated by All the Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind and it is now out. You can buy it today. Tommy interviewed Jason a few episodes back about the book. It is Fantastic by Tucker Carlson. It's a great read, getting excellent reviews right now. So go get your copy and you can check out Jason's book signing tour dates by heading to crooked.com books the.

1:10:32

Washington Post called it mordant, insightful, vigorously reported, and yet deliciously entertaining. That's a really good review. It's also funny. The words you use in book reviews like mordant are very always very funny.

1:12:19

Yeah, mordant.

1:12:29

Well, it's aimed at people who read books.

1:12:29

Are you looking that up? I am actually it up, especially of.

1:12:31

Humor having or showing a sharp or critical quality. Biting. I just. Mordant sounds. It's a good word. It sounds like a bad word.

1:12:34

Great word. Yeah, it does.

1:12:41

It does.

1:12:42

But no, it's. It's biting, it's funny, it's insightful, it's really well reported and it's a really fast read. You're going to love it. So pick it up.

1:12:43

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1:14:17

One other thing we want to touch on before we go just because it's a little fun and we need some of that. Today, Ben Terrace at New York Magazine is out with a big news story trying to get to the bottom of whatever's going on with Donald Trump's health, for which the White House decided to make Trump and a couple of military doctors available for an Oval Office interview, along with a bunch of other Donald Trump advisers and cabinet secretaries. It's all incredibly reassuring, of course. Ben opens the piece writing that when he walked into the Oval, quote, the president was standing next to a couple of doctors clutching pieces of paper labeled talking points. At one point, Caroline Levitt said that when we all see Trump dozing off during meetings, he's not sleeping, he's actively listening. He's engaged in active listening. That's what it is. And then there was this gem where Trump talked about his father, his own father. And he said, quote, he had one problem at a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting what do they call it? And then Terrace writes, quote, trump pointed to his forehead and then looked to Caroline Levitt for the word that escaped him. And she said Alzheimer's. And then Trump goes like an Alzheimer's thing. Well, I don't have it any other favorite parts of this piece. It's quite extensive.

1:14:48

The other part of the Alzheimer's back and forth is Trump has asked if he thinks about his father's Alzheimer's much And he says, no, I don't think about it at all. You know why? He said, because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever. And telling a reporter that you don't think about Alzheimer's at all, because whatever is kind of a hilariously bad way of convincing someone you don't have Alzheimer's. Like, maybe you forgot. There's also. I also love that he. He starts the interview by threatening to sue New York magazine and says, there will be a time when you can write about my bad health, but it's not now. That might be in two or three years. At that time, quote, no one is going to care. I guess it's like, buddy, you're still president in two or three years. If you have, like, declining health and potentially Alzheimer's in two or three years, it's actually a very big deal. Like, the whole story is just fucking hilarious.

1:16:05

Back.

1:16:49

Like the back and forth with Ben Terrace, who writes it brilliantly.

1:16:50

So the mystery of the Trump MRI and why it was ordered remains. There's a very funny part in the story where Trump says, having that MRI was the worst fucking thing I ever did. I blame them talking to the doctors, they wanted me to take it. And because I took it, people want to say, oh, there must be something wrong. And then Trump turns to the doctors and says, can you explain why you asked me that? And then the doctor says, we asked him to do it because he had a scheduled trip at Walter Reed while he was there. I asked him if we can complete some additional physical things that we were planning on doing annually. And he was like, okay, we'll work it in for the schedules. And it wasn't an mri. It was a computerized tomography exam of his chest and abdomen. And for not any reason. Trump adds, what? No one ever. What are you talking about, guys? Why did you. Why did you give him an. Some kind of an mra, like, scan of. Of his chest and abdomen? And my ongoing belief or theory is that Trump doesn't want anyone to know that this was about his prostate. That is what I think this is. That is my theory about this, that. That he doesn't want anyone to say it was for prostate, and so they all have to talk around it. And really, that is why.

1:16:54

But it was as if it was.

1:18:08

Of his chest, chest and abdomen. You go, they. They going all the way down going.

1:18:09

You had a prostate exam?

1:18:15

What?

1:18:16

No, no, no, no, no. But yes, obviously, I know that there's two ways at it.

1:18:17

You can get.

1:18:20

I'm honestly, I sort of did a lot of prostate exams in my. Sort of my twenties.

1:18:21

But the. Jesus Christ.

1:18:25

But sort of like in a kind of, you know, in a sort of. Not a clinical setting administered or. But. But Got it.

1:18:27

You have a theory. You're diagnosing him anyway.

1:18:37

That's my thing.

1:18:39

I think he didn't want.

1:18:40

I think that he doesn't want people to know that he was getting something looked at at his prostate. That's what I think is going on. That's my ongoing theory.

1:18:41

I think that Ben Teres is a brilliant reporter who got access to the White House for ostensibly a story about the President's health. And the story he ends up writing is really about just like aging dictator thinking about his death, that is cuz he realizes that he doesn't have that much longer. Ten years, you know, he says at one point when he was at Jimmy Carter's funeral, within 10 years this is gonna be me. You know, According to one source in the story and the coterie of sycophants around him who just like live to make sure that they are praising him publicly and curry favor with him so that like they are the chosen one. And Marco Rubio quotes that are Marco. At one point, Marco Rubio was asked about his health and he says to Ben Terrace, the guy is too healthy, he's too active. He's too. Marco Rubio thinks he's too healthy, he's too healthy.

1:18:48

The North Korea shit in the story is amazing. Like there's so he. Ben Terrace asked three different people or a few different people about Trump falling asleep in meetings. You read the. The active listening one from Caroline Levitt. Marco Rubio says it's a listening mechanism. That's his spin on it. And then Will Scharf, who's the goober who does the ceremony staff secretary is asked about this and he says he's always awake, always alert, always knows what's going on. It's not dozing sometimes if he's thinking about something, and I made that mistake at first too. He adopts a pose. So it's a listening pose when you close your eyes.

1:19:42

What's funny too about that too is like the piece does acknowledge that his hearing is getting worse. Yes, I will. I want to defend. I'm gonna say this. I would like to defend Kristi Noem. When she made that point about the hurricanes. She was joking.

1:20:15

Oh, yeah.

1:20:32

It was clearly a joke.

1:20:33

I think people have tried to suggest that she was like kind of giving him credit on the. I think there are enough people without a sense of humor that have not taken that as a joke that I've seen.

1:20:34

Yeah. I think the problem is that you could imagine it being real. You know what I mean? Given the tenor of the other comments.

1:20:44

It'S a lot about his, like, legacy and what he's thinking. One Republican operative with ties to the administration said he doesn't think of legacy in terms of policies enacted. It's buildings he can leave behind and prizes he can win. And then you get a direct quote from Eric Trump saying he's having more fun building this ballroom than I can possibly tell you. And it's like, this is.

1:20:49

Go do that.

1:21:09

I mean, reading this on a day like today, when we were talking about everything else, I'm like, this is exactly what's going on in there.

1:21:10

Exactly.

1:21:15

He's making money. He's wants the prizes. He's trying to, like, rent. He's talking to Marco Rubio about, like, pendants and a chandelier at the State Department, and he's like, you don't have enough samples. You don't have enough pendants there. And then Suddenly, he's got 12 different samples for Rubio to choose from because he's. He's trying to be a fucking interior decorator. Like, this guy is the president, United States, and all he can think about is what is immediately around him, what he has the nice things around him, where he can put his name.

1:21:15

This is it.

1:21:43

Everyone's like, what's his psychology? Who's this? This is all. This is all there is.

1:21:44

And. And the thing is, like, he is so diminished. You know, you go look at this, like, the speeches he gave from 2016 to now. He's a much like kind of his, his, his. He's much less able to find words. He's constantly searching for words he can't remember. He's slower. His sentences make even less sense than they did before. Like, it all gets categorized into, oh, he's nuts. But he's really, like, aging in front of our eyes. And that's just something we do now with about, you know, 60% of American presidents. We just watch them age before our eyes. And then later we get the reporting about how bad it was.

1:21:48

And they all think that retirement is the same as death, and they all know somebody who retired and then died, so that everyone clings. And that's clearly what happened with. With Biden. That's clearly what happened with Dianne Feinstein, like, countless.

1:22:26

And Trump basically admits it, and he says, too.

1:22:35

It's an old father's line of his. Can I read you Guys, one hilarious quote. I thought this was so funny. So the context for this quote is Trump talking about how his parents lived well into their 90s. And he says to Ben Teres, I had this friend, his mother died at 49 of a heart attack. His father died at 51 of a heart attack. He's now 60. I said, you're fucked. He watches everything he eats. But you can't beat genetics. Imagine saying that to your friend. Their parents died young, and the guy's trying to be healthy and says, you're fucked up.

1:22:38

The other is how you respect that, how much he hates exercise. It says that recently, after he'd been dealing with swelling in his lower legs and ankles owing to his circulatory condition, doctors recommended he walk more. He asked his staff if there was anything else he could do instead besides walking. No, that's a. That's about the lowest lift you can get. Well, dang.

1:23:04

Will dangle you from your fucking ankles. In the Diplomat in the. In the dip room. What are you talking about? Yeah, walk uphill for 15 minutes. It's also like, you know, your circulation problem from being so perfect, from having such perfect health.

1:23:23

And just in case you're wondering whether these doctors are on the level, the piece ends with, he point blank turns to one of the doctors and he's like, you, you were one of Obama's doctors too quick. Who was healthier, me or Obama? And like instantly the doctor's like, you, you.

1:23:37

Yes, sir. Yeah, Donald Trump, not the guy 15 years ago.

1:23:53

I love that.

1:23:56

The 235 pound, 79 year old man. Yeah. And love to your point. It's like, like he is old. He lives an unhealthy lifestyle. Like being president's the hardest thing in the world. The hand thing is weird. The MRIs are really weird. If his staff was just normal about it and they were like, yep, he's slowing down a bit. But like, look at his schedule. He just went to Davos, did like seven press conference today. I think that would kind of be the end of it. But they do this North Korea where the doctors have to say he's healthier than Obama. They got RFK Jr. In the story, quoting Dr. Oz being like, I tested the hard way and this man's testosterone is off the charts.

1:23:56

It's like, what are we doing? He's a high T guy.

1:24:26

It's gross. And it's like, you know, like, if they would just chill out, I think people wouldn't care as much. And at the same time, like, there's all these Democrats who want Trump's age to be the same as Biden's age, but they kind of forget that Trump isn't running again. So there's just not the same level of interest in.

1:24:29

Yeah.

1:24:45

What comes next for him.

1:24:45

Yeah, Trump isn't running again and again. Trump has always been about 100 times crazier than Joe Biden. That is. That is another.

1:24:47

I cannot conceive of what is going on in that White House presidential bathroom when this guy is eating nothing but burnt red meat and Diet Cokes. He does not exercise. God only knows what kinds of. Just like no one, if anyone. If America could see the shits that this man is taking. The question about him being.

1:24:53

Then what? Then what? Then what?

1:25:19

They'd all be like, he's gotta go. He's got to go. This is.

1:25:21

That would be it.

1:25:24

That would be it.

1:25:25

That's. The articles of impeachment would finally move. That's what we think.

1:25:26

So. I think so. Just fucking white knuckle it in there. There's no fiber in this fucking diet. There's no fiber. I think it's. I honestly think it might be one.

1:25:29

Maybe not much is going on.

1:25:39

That's what I'm about to say. I think this might be one. Like, basically whenever he goes on those all night truth social things, that's the shit of the week. That's the one time where he just grabs the white marble he's had installed and unleashes. Unleashes what could like from the bowels of hell. Something God forsaken.

1:25:40

Have you ever seen the movie the Last Emperor when. Like, it's about the emperor of China and these, like, these aides, like, examine. Smell the new king's shits.

1:26:01

Do you think that's what, like Stephen Miller and those. That's. Apparently that's what Rubio and Vance are doing. Because the other thing is he has not decided which of them he wants to see succeed him. And so he. He tells Vance, you're my guy. And he tells Rubio, you're my guy.

1:26:11

Of course, he does smell like flowers, sir. I think they smell more like perfume, sir. I think they're more like baked cookies, sir.

1:26:22

Meanwhile, while, while they're like praising him and in these cabinet meetings, he's asleep because he's like, they're fucking boring.

1:26:31

Yeah, he's practicing mindfulness, which is Right.

1:26:37

Oh, by the way, CNN is reporting that DHS suspended Greg Bevino's access to his social media accounts because he spent yesterday responding to people criticizing his.

1:26:39

Him wow.

1:26:48

So maybe this guy's really getting slapped around a little bit.

1:26:49

I can't believe the first administration official whose social media account has been suspended was Greg Bevino.

1:26:52

Really hit him where it hurts, I guess.

1:26:58

Unbelievable crowd.

1:27:00

All right, that's our show for today. Love it. Stay, stay safe and warm in Minneapolis. Come back soon. That is our show for today. And Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilic, Frank and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengle is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Kirill Pelaviev, David Toles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

1:27:02

Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, the Three Questions with Andy Richter. Each week I invite friends, comedians, actors and musicians to discuss these three questions. Where do you come from, where are you going, and what have you learned? New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bowe and Ted Danson, Tig Notaro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more. You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter Call in Show episodes where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating, disasters, bad teachers, and lots more. Listen to the three Questions with Andy Richter Wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which are connected, and each one more.

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Expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful.

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