Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 2: Good morning, everybody, Happy Wednesday. Great to see.
Speaker 4: M Thanks for thanks for being here. Crystal Well. Ryan
Speaker 4: is in can kuon for his annual Fish show show.
Speaker 2: Oh I forgot that's what he's got going on this week.
Speaker 4: Very excited. Yeah, but he's like tech Cruse, we got
Speaker 4: a storm and.
Speaker 2: He's outing here coon. That's true. That is true. A
Speaker 2: lot to get to you this morning. There was an
Speaker 2: attack on ilhan Omar at a town hall last night.
Speaker 2: Dude came up sort of charged at her and squirted
Speaker 2: some foul smelling liquid on her. We still don't know
Speaker 2: what that is, but we'll give you the latest. We've
Speaker 2: got a Trump reaction for that. We've got a lot
Speaker 2: of new details in the killing of Alex Purtty. We
Speaker 2: also had a new shooting involving either ICE or Border
Speaker 2: Patrol or one of the federal agencies out in Arizona.
Speaker 2: Ken Klippenstein is going to join us with some of
Speaker 2: his latest reporting. He's been getting all kinds of leaks
Speaker 2: as he does. I mean, this is what Ken does.
Speaker 2: But in any case, he's both got a bunch of
Speaker 2: current ICE agents who are speaking out and who are
Speaker 2: upset about how things are going. He also has some
Speaker 2: indications that while the figureheads at the top of the
Speaker 2: operation in Minneapolis have changed, the tactics don't appear to
Speaker 2: so a lot to get to with him. We had
Speaker 2: Trump in Iowa. I know you paid close attention to
Speaker 2: his speech as Iowa, among other places, not too happy
Speaker 2: with Trump's economic stewardship at this point, Emily.
Speaker 4: That's all he said, Crystal.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know a little bit of a different
Speaker 2: perspective there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, big pictures that he's supposed to be on an
Speaker 4: economic messaging tour and you could see that in the
Speaker 4: text of the speech that he was obviously deviating from
Speaker 4: as one does. And so is is he going to
Speaker 4: be able to focus for the midterms on pitching his
Speaker 4: economic message? Spoiler alert, probably not well.
Speaker 2: Speaking of that, we didn't get this in the show,
Speaker 2: but I just saw before we started he's making new
Speaker 2: threats to Iran. So yeah, hard to stay focused when
Speaker 2: you're constantly starting new wars all around the world. Speaking
Speaker 2: of which, we have a wrongful death lawsuit in the
Speaker 2: case of some of the people who were killed in
Speaker 2: those boat attacks, so we can give you the details
Speaker 2: and the significance of that one. Some dire warnings from
Speaker 2: a top AI CEO that are definitely worth paying attention to.
Speaker 2: And we're going to break down the latest for you
Speaker 2: guys with regards to Sudan, some you know, typical, very
Speaker 2: dire and very grim news, but also some positive things
Speaker 2: going on there as well. So you know, Ryan and
Speaker 2: Emily really wanted to keep you guys updated. I do
Speaker 2: as well, So we'll do our weekly segment to give
Speaker 2: you the very latest on what is the worst humanitarian
Speaker 2: crisis in the entire world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Crystal, let's start with Minnesota.
Speaker 2: Indeed. So we had some Trump comments yesterday with regard
Speaker 2: to specifically the killing of Alex Pretty. That was pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: We also had some some infighting coming to the surface
Speaker 2: between the various characters who involve Christy Noan versus Steven Miller,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But let's go ahead and start with some
Speaker 2: of those comments from Trump.
Speaker 4: Do you think he was acting as an assassin in Minneapolis?
Speaker 4: Mister Pretty, your deputy chief of staff said that you
Speaker 4: don't think so. I think.
Speaker 5: I think that you know, we can't we can't walk
Speaker 5: in with Jones.
Speaker 2: What about the Second Amendment?
Speaker 5: Listen, he didn't walk into John We can't hear what.
Speaker 4: But I think it's very unport.
Speaker 2: But it stepped down the assessment from some of your
Speaker 2: own officials that Alex Pretty is a domestic terrorist or assassin.
Speaker 5: Well, I haven't heard that, but certainly shouldn't have been
Speaker 5: carrying a gun. But all of hey, look, bottom line,
Speaker 5: everybody in this room, we view that as a very
Speaker 5: unfortunate incident. Okay, everyone, unless you're you're a stupid person,
Speaker 5: very very unfortunate incident. I don't like that he had
Speaker 5: a gun. I don't like that he had two fully
Speaker 5: loaded magazines. That's a lot of bad stuff. And despite that,
Speaker 5: I say, that's a very.
Speaker 2: Unfortunate, incredible Zoe Emily effectively there, you know, saying he
Speaker 2: would not characterize Alex pretty as an assassin, but effectively
Speaker 2: saying he was killed because he had a gun, right.
Speaker 4: And I think Dana lash obviously used to be a
Speaker 4: spokesleone for the NRA quote tweeted that and said something
Speaker 4: one of his comments and said something like, please make
Speaker 4: this administration stop talking about the Second Amendment. Like someone
Speaker 4: just tell them they're not allowed to talk about the
Speaker 4: Second Amendment anymore. But you could see in Trump both
Speaker 4: sides of his dueling political instincts, or his doing personal
Speaker 4: and political instincts. His personal instinct is to say, hey,
Speaker 4: he you know, this guy doesn't like me. He brought
Speaker 4: two magazines. He's an agitator. And then on the other side,
Speaker 4: you can see he recognizes there's an obvious problem and
Speaker 4: that's why people are even asking the question on an
Speaker 4: obvious political problem for him. And I don't know what
Speaker 4: he thinks about the substance of problem, but he at
Speaker 4: least recognizes there's a political problem for him, which is
Speaker 4: why the swirl right now of rumors about Christy Nome.
Speaker 4: It's why that's even being asked in the first place,
Speaker 4: because conservative media, Daily Wire, Daily Caller are reporting that
Speaker 4: the tensions inside the administration between the Homan camp and
Speaker 4: the Nome camp are absolutely real. They have been real
Speaker 4: for some time, and you can see with Nome stepping
Speaker 4: back and Homan going to Minneapolis meeting with Jacob Fry
Speaker 4: and Tim Walls yesterday, that it's genuinely possible he demotes
Speaker 4: her in one way or another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think he's looking for escape goat. And
Speaker 2: you know the fact that there is pressure, that there
Speaker 2: have been some at least you know, top level or
Speaker 2: cosmetic changes, I think is incredibly significant. At the same time,
Speaker 2: we have to keep our eye on whether, you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of systematic problems with this approach are actually altered,
Speaker 2: and you know, that's something I'm very skeptical of and
Speaker 2: we can talk to Ken about. And also, I mean,
Speaker 2: it does fit a pattern of whenever something goes wrong
Speaker 2: for Trump that people can't deny that, you know, MAGA
Speaker 2: can't deny it's never his fault, right, It's always, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's this person, it's that person. He's getting bad advice,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And so I see a lot of that
Speaker 2: with this as well. There was another speaking of Trump's psychology.
Speaker 2: This was a very interesting insight into Trump's psychology. Not
Speaker 2: that this will necessarily surprise people, but he indicated he
Speaker 2: may actually feel a little bit worse about Renee Goods
Speaker 2: murder because of the fact that her parents were big
Speaker 2: Trump supporters. So let's go ahead and take a listen
Speaker 2: to that one.
Speaker 5: And I'm not sure about his parents, but I know
Speaker 5: her parents were big Trump fans. Makes me feel bad anyway,
Speaker 5: But I mean, I guess you could say even worse.
Speaker 5: They were tremendous Trump people, Trump fans, and you know
Speaker 5: the daughter was she was I don't know if you
Speaker 5: could say radicalized. Maybe radicalized maybe not. I don't know,
Speaker 5: but I hate to see it. I hate to see that.
Speaker 2: I mean, just what can you even say about that?
Speaker 2: He's ranking how badly he feels about these various killings
Speaker 2: from his own agents based on the proximity to Trump fans.
Speaker 4: Not surprising at all. And we're going to talk a
Speaker 4: little bit later in this block about how he responded
Speaker 4: to what happened to ilhan Omar last night. As well
Speaker 4: but worth noting. Actually this was in political playbook I
Speaker 4: was reading just before we started. They had an interesting
Speaker 4: anecdote from I think it was the President of Slovakia
Speaker 4: who said, who was after everything went down last week?
Speaker 4: And make sure that I had this exactly right? He said,
Speaker 4: as the Prime Minister of Slovakia. He said that a
Speaker 4: meeting with Donald Trump left him shocked by the US
Speaker 4: President's state of mind. He told EU leaders at a
Speaker 4: summit after a meeting with Trump. And this is according
Speaker 4: to five European diplomats briefed on the conversation. This man
Speaker 4: is Robert Fico and he is, as Politico says, one
Speaker 4: of the few EU leaders to frequently support Trump's stance
Speaker 4: on Europe's weakness. He was concerned about the US president's
Speaker 4: quote psychological state, according to to diplomats, and then Fico
Speaker 4: used the word quote dangerous to describe how the US
Speaker 4: President came across during their face to face meeting. So
Speaker 4: that is from a leader who's who's pro Trump worth.
Speaker 2: Not very sort of like MAGA adjacent kind of a guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he spoke it. I'm pretty sure you spook at
Speaker 4: one of the Sea PACs in the last year Wow.
Speaker 2: So do you take that as he's actually sort of unhinged,
Speaker 2: that he's you know, this is like age decline? What
Speaker 2: do you read into that?
Speaker 4: My read is that it is age decline. You know,
Speaker 4: I think our standard of age decline is watching the
Speaker 4: dramatic decline of Joe Biden. But not everything that's age
Speaker 4: decline is going to look as dramatic as Joe Biden's
Speaker 4: decline looked in front of everybody as it was playing out.
Speaker 4: So I think it's that's my best guess because when
Speaker 4: we've seen him, and I think, you know, some of
Speaker 4: us have talked about this, Crystal you, I, Sager and
Speaker 4: Ryan have talked about this, he seemed different a little bit.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's always None of that surprised me that
Speaker 4: he just said about, like, for example, the family of
Speaker 4: Renee Good versus the family of Alex Pritty. I don't
Speaker 4: find that particularly surprising. But he does just seem lower
Speaker 4: energy in some of his public appearances.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let's go ahead and put up this next development,
Speaker 2: which is we have very few details about, but is
Speaker 2: one to watch. There was a man shot in what's
Speaker 2: described as an incident involving border patrol in Arizona man
Speaker 2: who the FBI said has a criminal history of human smuggling,
Speaker 2: was shot and wounded by Border Patrol agent in Arizona
Speaker 2: on Tuesday after allegedly firing at agents. According to officials,
Speaker 2: Patrick Gary Schlegel, a thirty four year old Arizona and resident,
Speaker 2: was shot around seven thirty am in Aravaka. I don't
Speaker 2: know how to say that, sorry, guys, about ten miles
Speaker 2: north of the US Mexico border. He was shot after
Speaker 2: a footchase following a traffic stop related to an active
Speaker 2: alien smuggling matter. So that is what the government is saying.
Speaker 2: The government has often just flat out lined in these cases.
Speaker 2: So that might be what happened, it might not be
Speaker 2: what happened. But if we can put this next piece
Speaker 2: up on the screen, we now have a track record
Speaker 2: of more than a dozen shootings involving ICE and various
Speaker 2: DHS agents. Per the Washington Post, there were sixteen different
Speaker 2: DHS shootings. You had quite a number where they initially
Speaker 2: charged the people who either were shot or shot at.
Speaker 2: For example, in the case of Miramar Martinez in Chicago,
Speaker 2: that's when we followed very closely. They claimed the agent
Speaker 2: was blocked in by ten vehicles that she uh. The
Speaker 2: initial rapport was, well, she grabbed a gun. Now she
Speaker 2: did have a weapon much like Alex Pretty that she
Speaker 2: was legally permitted to carry. She never touched the gun.
Speaker 2: Body camera footage came out and they dropped the charges
Speaker 2: and walked away from them. That has happened in a
Speaker 2: number of cases where you had these shootings from ice
Speaker 2: or from CBP agents where they initially claim that you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to arrest this person, We're going to file
Speaker 2: charges because they did something that provoked this was self defense,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And they've had to go on and drop
Speaker 2: the charges because once you know, you actually have to
Speaker 2: go to court and prove the claims that they're making,
Speaker 2: they are unable to do.
Speaker 4: So that's a good point that their spin is actually
Speaker 4: I think sometimes their spin is is rather clever, but
Speaker 4: it is about galvanizing their own side so that people,
Speaker 4: I mean, this is what spin is, but it's so
Speaker 4: intentional that it's about sort of muddying the waters and
Speaker 4: galvanizing their their own side in a way that makes
Speaker 4: it hard for some of these narratives to take off,
Speaker 4: because I mean, some of the narratives have been misleading
Speaker 4: like the little Guy last week, like it's that's that's
Speaker 4: obviously a problem too, but it's it's effective and when
Speaker 4: you have to prove those claims in the court of law.
Speaker 4: I think these numbers are pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Crystal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I mean it also proves why it's
Speaker 2: been so important the people who are recording in many
Speaker 2: in and around Minneapolis, because without that footage, you know,
Speaker 2: it's just the government's word versus this individual, or you know,
Speaker 2: if in the case of ox Party and Renee Good,
Speaker 2: obviously they can no longer speak for themselves. So that's
Speaker 2: why that mission of just recording everything that's going on
Speaker 2: has ended up being incredibly significant in a number of
Speaker 2: these instances in order to actually establish what truly happened,
Speaker 2: not just the government's spin, because that is exactly what
Speaker 2: they do. And you know, I think this ties in
Speaker 2: with like the Noam versus Stephen Miller, Tom Homan versus
Speaker 2: Greg Babno thing here is Miller according to the Noam camp,
Speaker 2: Miller said, Okay, this is the narrative we're going with.
Speaker 2: He was a domestic terrorist, he was a would be assassin,
Speaker 2: he was planning maximum damage. And the reason they do
Speaker 2: that before you know, anyone can even see the video
Speaker 2: to see what actually happened. Is that that has been
Speaker 2: their pattern and practice in the past, and it has
Speaker 2: worked in a number of instances where they can at
Speaker 2: least get their narrative out. As you said, it muddies
Speaker 2: the water. They're supporters who want to believe them and
Speaker 2: want to back up their side of the story, start
Speaker 2: spinning that out, and then by the time you have
Speaker 2: any sort of contradictory evidence, many people have already moved on. Again.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of the case of Martinez is another great
Speaker 2: example of that, where right when it happened, before we
Speaker 2: had any of the surveillance footage or any of the
Speaker 2: other indications, you know, the right really believed the government
Speaker 2: story that these ICE agents were under attack, they were
Speaker 2: I think there were CBP actually were under attack, that
Speaker 2: they were blocked in, that it was self defense, etc.
Speaker 2: And then by the time it's all resolved, most of
Speaker 2: the country has moved on from the details of that
Speaker 2: and they haven't really thought too much about it. So
Speaker 2: it seems to me that they tried to run that
Speaker 2: exact same playbook here and it was just too undeniable.
Speaker 2: There was too much evidence, There was too much footage,
Speaker 2: and what they claimed was so dissonant from the reality
Speaker 2: of what actually occurred clearly.
Speaker 4: I mean, when you have officers involved in their lives
Speaker 4: are on the line, there's an incentive to spin from
Speaker 4: them as they are going up the change of command
Speaker 4: and saying, yes, this is what happened. And that's why.
Speaker 4: By the way, with all of their new funding, every
Speaker 4: single one of them should have body cameras on. But
Speaker 4: that's not what's happening right now. The numbers are not
Speaker 4: that every single one of them has body cameras on.
Speaker 4: I think it's still minority of them are actually wearing
Speaker 4: body cameras. The numbers are the Washington Posts had some
Speaker 4: numbers on that, but it's definitely not every one of them,
Speaker 4: which is why we don't have body camera video and
Speaker 4: why in fact, in the Renee Good case, you had
Speaker 4: a guy holding his cell phone as he was patrolling
Speaker 4: that particular situation. So all this is to say, you
Speaker 4: have an obvious set of incentives that is not towards
Speaker 4: you know, the truth, although now that everybody is filming
Speaker 4: it does make it harder. I mean, there's just this
Speaker 4: case is one that I think the public's trust was
Speaker 4: kind of shattered because the news and in a non
Speaker 4: partisan way, like I think I just sent this to
Speaker 4: one of our messaging things, but this is from Alex
Speaker 4: Clark at Turning Point USA, who said, I run a
Speaker 4: Facebook group of over twenty thousand conservative women who are
Speaker 4: fans of my show, and the majority think that Alex
Speaker 4: pretty shooting was unjustified. And I know folks are making
Speaker 4: the argument that it's only optics that people are thinking
Speaker 4: the ox Predy cases on, that other people in the
Speaker 4: public are losing faith in the Trump administration on all
Speaker 4: of this, But I also think when you were in
Speaker 4: the government and you come out with such a bold
Speaker 4: position that this guy was trying to do maximum damage there,
Speaker 4: that he was there to massacre law enforcement, and there's
Speaker 4: you know, probably a dozen videos taken from the scene
Speaker 4: where he's clearly just an average person involved in the
Speaker 4: protest or the disruption, however you want to talk about it.
Speaker 4: That is a really dramatic like that that creates that's
Speaker 4: the type of thing that creates a trust gap with
Speaker 4: your own with independence and with people who were like thinking,
Speaker 4: what do I want? What do I make of all
Speaker 4: of this? Like the entire approach. What do I make
Speaker 4: of the administration's entire approach to immigration? And plus you
Speaker 4: layer the Second Amendment stuff on top of that, and yeah,
Speaker 4: it's Trump's political instincts. You can see he's kind of
Speaker 4: being torn. He understands there's a problem, and that speaks
Speaker 4: pretty loudly in and of itself.
Speaker 2: I think, well, over a long enough time horizon, if
Speaker 2: you are a sycophantic Trump supporter, he is going to
Speaker 2: humiliate you. And he did that here because Steven Miller, Christinoum,
Speaker 2: Jade Vance, I'll get out there, over there, Greg Bavino
Speaker 2: over their skis doing the thing they think Trump is
Speaker 2: gonna want, because that's what he's wanted all this way
Speaker 2: of lie, cover up, never back down, never apologize. We're
Speaker 2: the good guys, they're the bad guys. That's how it is,
Speaker 2: you know, the children of the Light versus the children
Speaker 2: of the dark. And then Trump sits back, sees the
Speaker 2: way that this is, this is a disaster for him,
Speaker 2: and he undercuts all of them. So all of and
Speaker 2: not just the administration officials, like all of the you know,
Speaker 2: right wing influencers, the Matt Walsh types who were out
Speaker 2: there going hard in the paint, going to the mat over. Sorry,
Speaker 2: no pun intended, Matt Walsh, but anyway, going to the
Speaker 2: mat over, you know, backing up this completely bogus narrative
Speaker 2: about what happened, and then your guy just comes in
Speaker 2: and casually is like, now, this was a terrible incident
Speaker 2: and we're going to look into it. So you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is what he does now in terms
Speaker 2: of any sort of like actual accountability. Here put d
Speaker 2: d sorry A five up on the screen. No civil
Speaker 2: rights violation investigation is going to happen. DHS is going
Speaker 2: to investigate themselves. They still, of course, are not cooperating
Speaker 2: with the local and state officials. They went to court
Speaker 2: to argue that they're allowed to destroy evidence in this
Speaker 2: and other cases. So that's the reality of what's happening
Speaker 2: behind the scenes. But in this case versus Renee Good,
Speaker 2: they at least felt enough pressure to pretend to do
Speaker 2: some sort of investigation. So I guess we'll count that
Speaker 2: as progress. Let's go and put the next piece up
Speaker 2: on the screen, because we do have some early indications
Speaker 2: from the initial DHS review and even this you know,
Speaker 2: self review that I don't think anyone really trust trust
Speaker 2: to be impartial, even that already contradicts the initial narrative
Speaker 2: that came out to me. There were two important pieces
Speaker 2: of this breakdown. Number One, Preddy did not brandish a gun.
Speaker 2: Of course, we already knew that because we all watched this.
Speaker 2: The only thing brandished was a phone. Emily and you know,
Speaker 2: our friends over at newsbacks did demonstrate how I guess
Speaker 2: you know you can brandish a phone like it's a weapon.
Speaker 2: But in any case, yeah, like the exacts, I.
Speaker 4: Think we have the video, but you can look it
Speaker 4: up Greg Kelly. Greg Kelly like blue steel for the
Speaker 4: camera and was pulling a phone, making it like it
Speaker 4: looks like a gun. Right, He's like, I don't know
Speaker 4: about you, but looks like a gun.
Speaker 2: Ray Kelly is supposed to be trained law enforcement professionals.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure they could probably tell the difference between
Speaker 2: a gun and a phone. And if they can't, then
Speaker 2: that is a whole other issue that we need to
Speaker 2: think about. In any case, the other important detail there,
Speaker 2: which had come out in some of the New York Times,
Speaker 2: I think video analysis there were two separate agents that
Speaker 2: fired shots into Preddy. There were two agents, so I
Speaker 2: think there were ten shots. Eight of them came from
Speaker 2: one guy, two of them came from another guy. So
Speaker 2: you know, we've been thinking in terms largely of one
Speaker 2: individual responsible for this killing, and in fact it was
Speaker 2: it was two, which I think is significant because it
Speaker 2: speaks to you know, this isn't just like a one off,
Speaker 2: this isn't a bad apple. This is two guys. And
Speaker 2: even even if you give him the most charitable reading
Speaker 2: that they thought there was, you know, a gun and
Speaker 2: they were under threat and they got spooked. After Alex
Speaker 2: Pritty is lying motionless on the ground, they continue to
Speaker 2: pump bullets into his body. So those were the two
Speaker 2: I thought significant parts of that investigation, that early evaluation
Speaker 2: from DHS, And if we put a seven up on
Speaker 2: the screen, some new information came out about Prettie himself.
Speaker 2: He had been recording, you know, this is something he
Speaker 2: had been doing. This wasn't his first time and apparently
Speaker 2: previously he had the week before he had had his
Speaker 2: ribs broken by federal agents. So it says federal immigration
Speaker 2: officers have been collecting personal information about protesters and agitators
Speaker 2: in Minneapolis. Orses told CNN, and had documented details about
Speaker 2: Alex Party before he was shot to death on Saturday.
Speaker 2: It is unclear how Party first came to the attention
Speaker 2: of federal authorities, but sources told CNN about a week
Speaker 2: before his death he suffered a broken rib when a
Speaker 2: group of federal officers tackled him while he was protesting
Speaker 2: their attempt to detain other individuals. In a statement, DHS
Speaker 2: said DHS Law Enforcement has no record of this incident.
Speaker 2: A memo sent earlier this month to agents temporarily assigned
Speaker 2: to the city asked them to capture all images, license
Speaker 2: plate identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protesters, etc.
Speaker 2: So we can capture it all in one consolidated form.
Speaker 2: So what CNN is claiming here is not only did
Speaker 2: Alex Party have his rib broken the previous week, which
Speaker 2: again speaks to the insanely consistently insanely aggressive tactics of
Speaker 2: these federal agents, but the other part, emily that needs
Speaker 2: to be at least looked into. Is there claiming that
Speaker 2: he was put into some sort of database of known
Speaker 2: protesters known quote unquote agitators, and that raises the question
Speaker 2: over whether or not he was actively targeted by those
Speaker 2: those agents on the scene who end up taking his.
Speaker 4: Life, and I find the the database possibility, I mean,
Speaker 4: sounds like it's a lot more than a possibility when
Speaker 4: you actually have agents out there, as the viral video
Speaker 4: from Main show saying you're now in our database. I
Speaker 4: find that like highly disturbing.
Speaker 2: What I consider you a domestic terrorist because we put
Speaker 2: you in that database. So yeah, I mean, logic would
Speaker 2: indicate that they viewed Alex Party in that same way.
Speaker 4: What I see in the pretty video and what I
Speaker 4: see in the renanink Good video, and I would what
Speaker 4: I see in so many of these videos is more
Speaker 4: of a keystone cop situation than an operation that is
Speaker 4: like fine tuned to target people like Pratty. Like in
Speaker 4: that video, for example, it seems as though to me
Speaker 4: CBP was trying to deal with the woman and Protty
Speaker 4: stepped in between them and the woman and that's where
Speaker 4: it all went south. And so I'm psycho even with.
Speaker 2: That, Even with that, like why were they assaulting this woman,
Speaker 2: Why do they push her to the ground. To the
Speaker 2: two women that were there, why did they push them
Speaker 2: to the ground, Why did they pepper spray them? Why
Speaker 2: did they pepper spray Alex Pardy, Like none of it
Speaker 2: was necessary at all, which is why I say, I
Speaker 2: think you're right. And this is very typical of this
Speaker 2: administration that there is a keystone cops element to what
Speaker 2: they do. But they're also you know, you had Trump
Speaker 2: himself saying that they're coming to Minneapolis or Minnesota for retribution, right.
Speaker 2: You have the Vice President of the United States saying
Speaker 2: these guys have quote unquote absolute immunity after they killed
Speaker 2: Renee Good. So of course they took that message from
Speaker 2: the top that this is what the President of the
Speaker 2: United States wants me to be doing, wants me to
Speaker 2: be roughing up and assaulting and do and you know,
Speaker 2: just terrorizing these communities, which is why you don't see it.
Speaker 2: You know, in one or two instances where it seems
Speaker 2: to be nearly every interaction is not to de escalate,
Speaker 2: but to ramp things up, but to escalate to the
Speaker 2: next level, but to create these incredibly chaotic, dangerous and
Speaker 2: violent situations.
Speaker 4: The story that seems to be emerging is someone Ice
Speaker 4: was looking for ran into the donut shop. And we're
Speaker 4: still obviously trying to get the pieces of the puzzle
Speaker 4: put together here, but someone ran into the donut shop
Speaker 4: and because the Ice watchers had identified a vehicle, they
Speaker 4: started kind of dispatching themselves over to this block and
Speaker 4: making it difficult for Ice to then apprehend the suspected
Speaker 4: migrant or whomever was in the donut shop or whatever
Speaker 4: part of that operation where they're trying to nab someone.
Speaker 4: I mean, when I look at the pretty broken rib story,
Speaker 4: it does make more sense to me that his parents
Speaker 4: were worried about him. I think people are right to
Speaker 4: be worried about anyone who's going out in this situation.
Speaker 4: I know many of our viewers are probably going out
Speaker 4: and protesting, and I just you know, kilmar Abrego Garcia
Speaker 4: is a good example to me of somebody who the
Speaker 4: administration admitted to what did they say, like an administrative error,
Speaker 4: clerical or something like that when he was originally deported
Speaker 4: and is playing out in court right now. And I
Speaker 4: think that's a much less chaotic and much safer way
Speaker 4: for everybody to fight some of these battles. So it
Speaker 4: doesn't excuse Keystone Coppery at all. And that's definitely what
Speaker 4: we're seeing on the streets of Minneapolis. But that was
Speaker 4: my sort of big picture perspective on all of the chaos.
Speaker 2: Let's take a look at some of this in fighting here.
Speaker 2: So let's put a eight up on the screen immediately after,
Speaker 2: you know, when Trump starts to show that he's unez
Speaker 2: with the lies that were told and labels this quote
Speaker 2: unquote unfortunate incident. Won't call ax pretty an assassin, won't
Speaker 2: say he's a domestic terrorist. It's Christy Noam and Greg
Speaker 2: Bavino that are the initial fall guys. But Vinos pulled
Speaker 2: down in Minneapolis and back to California. Tom Homan brought
Speaker 2: in instead. And here you have from Axios quote Christynam's
Speaker 2: language that Alex Party wanted to massacre federal agents was
Speaker 2: dictated to Noam and her department by the man most
Speaker 2: responsible for the controversial operation, Stephen Miller. And I will
Speaker 2: tell you Emily, like I have zero love for Christy Noam,
Speaker 2: but I actually find this report to be very credible.
Speaker 2: And one of the things Kyle actually pointed out to me,
Speaker 2: which was a good point. Remember back what feels like
Speaker 2: a million years ago when we had the whole Signal
Speaker 2: Gate controversy and we got to see the internal communications
Speaker 2: with a variety of top level aids to include Steven Miller,
Speaker 2: when they decided to go forward with the Yemen bomb.
Speaker 2: It was when he came in over the top and said, hey,
Speaker 2: the big guy says we're going, so we're going, and
Speaker 2: really positioned himself as speaking for the president. The president
Speaker 2: has effectively Trump has effectively put Stephen Miller like, this
Speaker 2: is one of your he has a lot in his portfolio.
Speaker 2: But this whole like immigration, mass deportation, flooding the zone,
Speaker 2: with these federal agents occupying these cities, this is your
Speaker 2: this is your zone. And so what I my guess,
Speaker 2: having zero inside knowledge of what happened here, is that
Speaker 2: you got some information, perhaps even somewhat inaccurate information from
Speaker 2: the agents on the ground that there was a gun,
Speaker 2: because they in real time seemed confused about what happened there.
Speaker 4: When his body is prone on the ground, they're saying,
Speaker 4: some of them are saying, where's the gun? Where's the gun?
Speaker 4: Not even realizing and this The Washington posted an analysis
Speaker 4: from where they watched the video, or they had law
Speaker 4: enforcement experts watch the video. And one of the things
Speaker 4: the experts said, which is obvious to anybody who saw it,
Speaker 4: is if you disarm him, you say he's been disarmed.
Speaker 4: I have the gun. I have the gun and instead
Speaker 4: they seem to have had. Some of them seem to
Speaker 4: have not known that he was disarmed, which will be
Speaker 4: a very big question legally, of course, but obviously some
Speaker 4: of them knew he was disarmed. At least one of
Speaker 4: themknew was disarmed because he disarmed him. But why did
Speaker 4: he not say, we don't see in any of the
Speaker 4: videos he has been disarmed. He has been disarmed. Clearly
Speaker 4: they didn't know.
Speaker 2: So in any case, it's possible that some inaccurate information
Speaker 2: came from the agents on the ground they immediately, without
Speaker 2: missing a beat, spin it into this narrative of his
Speaker 2: would be assassin trying to commit a massacre, mass murderer, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 2: And it would It does not surprise me at all
Speaker 2: that that specific language and the imprimature of this is
Speaker 2: what the big guy wants would come from Stephen Miller.
Speaker 2: I wonder what you make of that, given what you
Speaker 2: know of the the internal dynamics.
Speaker 4: There have been reports that Stephen Miller is really driving
Speaker 4: the reports for a year now that Steven Miller is
Speaker 4: driving DHS, that he's doing briefings with them, and it's
Speaker 4: coming top down from Steven Miller bypassing nom In some cases,
Speaker 4: I wonder if this leak is pretty intentional because Christinoman
Speaker 4: is trying to save her job and is trying to say, hey,
Speaker 4: Steven Miller, this came from Stephen Miller, when yeah, and
Speaker 4: it's it's amazing because I think what likely happened is
Speaker 4: Stephen Miller told her to say that, and she was like,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, she was happy to say what Steven Miller
Speaker 4: told her to say. I mean, it's as though it's
Speaker 4: it's not as though she's, you know, some toddler who
Speaker 4: can't formulate her own thoughts and isn't responsible for telling
Speaker 4: the American public the truth. She went out and spun it.
Speaker 4: She did that interview with Peter Doocy from the building
Speaker 4: where she was like going into detail with these claims
Speaker 4: and standing by them, and a point that you made
Speaker 4: earlier I just wanted to underline, which was they know,
Speaker 4: this is what Trump wants to see in you know,
Speaker 4: eighty percent of cases. And what happened in this case
Speaker 4: is I think those who kept their powder dry genuinely
Speaker 4: did not intend upon there, but those who kept their
Speaker 4: powder dry ended up being closer to Trump because Trump
Speaker 4: realized that the people who were pibles super aggressive in
Speaker 4: the messaging from the beginning made the administration look bad
Speaker 4: because there was so much daylight between what they said
Speaker 4: and what happened. And that's where you had Caroline Levitt,
Speaker 4: someone who largely kept her powder dry, telling reporters at
Speaker 4: the briefing the other day when she was asked if
Speaker 4: Trump has Trump agreed that Pratty was a quote, domestic terrorist,
Speaker 4: she said she has not heard President Trump quote characterize
Speaker 4: mister pretty in that way, which to the point you
Speaker 4: made earlier, Crystal, that if you really really know Trump,
Speaker 4: then you would understand sometimes he's not gonna like like
Speaker 4: sometimes his instincts are different than the Maga instinct because
Speaker 4: he doesn't come from the right like he's a Republican now,
Speaker 4: but he comes from like TV world and has a
Speaker 4: history as a Democrat, like he's from New York. He
Speaker 4: just has a different background, and that that is, I
Speaker 4: mean a serious problem for for Christy Noam, But clearly
Speaker 4: I think trying to telegraph that she wasn't ultimately to blame,
Speaker 4: which you're an adult.
Speaker 2: All of these people are to blame, up to and
Speaker 2: including the President of the United States, who ultimately the
Speaker 2: buck should stop with and.
Speaker 4: People are forgetting he put out let me find He
Speaker 4: put out a post on truth social saying something similar.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna be able to find it because he's
Speaker 4: truth so many times in the last few days. But
Speaker 4: he right away said something similar to but he didn't
Speaker 4: go on camera.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, last piece, let's put this up on
Speaker 2: the screen. Steven Miller trying to sort of like, you know,
Speaker 2: another way of him washing his hands of any sort
Speaker 2: of accountability for you know, I mean, this whole project
Speaker 2: is really his project. This whole like at no nationalist,
Speaker 2: you know, occupying Liberal city is this is all Steven Miller. Truly,
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone really believes Christinolme is like the
Speaker 2: brains behind all of these operations in any case, it says.
Speaker 2: This is from CNN. White House Deputy Chief of Staff
Speaker 2: Steven Miller says officials are evaluating why Customs and Border
Speaker 2: Protection agents in Minneapolis may not have been following proper
Speaker 2: protocol before the fatal shooting of VIA nurse Alex Pretty.
Speaker 2: In a statement to CNN, Miller said the White House
Speaker 2: had quote provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra
Speaker 2: personnel that have been sent to Minnesota for force protection,
Speaker 2: should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a
Speaker 2: physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors. We're
Speaker 2: evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following
Speaker 2: that protocol. And I mean, this is just really rich
Speaker 2: from Steven Miller from this White House, which again said
Speaker 2: that these thugs had quote unquote absolute immunity after they
Speaker 2: had just killed another American citizen, Renee Good. So the
Speaker 2: message went out from the top that we want you
Speaker 2: to be thug, we want you to terrorize, we want
Speaker 2: you to rampage and like strike fear in the hearts
Speaker 2: of these communities, and that's exactly what they got. Now, again,
Speaker 2: I agree with you that they there's a lot of
Speaker 2: buffoonishness and like you know, especially the new ICE recruits.
Speaker 2: But it's worth noting that both the agent that killed
Speaker 2: that killed Alex Party and the one who killed Renee Good,
Speaker 2: these are not new recruits. These were people with many
Speaker 2: years serving in these positions, so presumably training is not
Speaker 2: the issue here. I think what they were getting in
Speaker 2: terms of what they were supposed to do from leadership,
Speaker 2: like this is what leadership was pushing them to do.
Speaker 2: This is what had been condoned. This is effectively, you know,
Speaker 2: up until the point that it became undeniable and there
Speaker 2: started to be a political backlash, they were doing exactly
Speaker 2: what Trump, jd Vance, Stephen Miller, Christinoam, you know, Tom
Speaker 2: Home and Greg Bavino, what all of them wanted them
Speaker 2: to do in these places.
Speaker 4: Well, and here's why I think Christineam's job is in trouble.
Speaker 4: She has been a source of skepticism since the very
Speaker 4: beginning among the furthest right immigration hawks. And I'm saying
Speaker 4: this is somebody who's pretty pro deportations. I don't know
Speaker 4: how anyone defines mass deportations. But the majority of the
Speaker 4: public when Donald Trump took office again he was above
Speaker 4: water on the issue of immigration. Was his polling was
Speaker 4: above a majority of the country who supported his immigration
Speaker 4: agenda and supported mass deportations. And the question of how
Speaker 4: you define that is obviously important, and what methods you
Speaker 4: use is obviously important. But there are a whole lot
Speaker 4: of people on the right who look at Christinome and
Speaker 4: see that she has has led the agency into chaos. Now,
Speaker 4: of course, if they're not in an easy situation, they've
Speaker 4: very organized activist groups that are intentionally making life very
Speaker 4: difficult for them, and the Left is i think correctly
Speaker 4: pointing out they're successfully making life very very difficult for
Speaker 4: them and for the agents, and even experienced agents as
Speaker 4: we just pointed out. So they're not like in an
Speaker 4: easy situation, no question about that. But now christinome that
Speaker 4: comes to a head when people look around and realize
Speaker 4: this entire year long operation looks like a bungled public
Speaker 4: relations campaign rather than something that would have been orderly
Speaker 4: and substantive. Now many people are saying, you're not going
Speaker 4: after employers at all? What about the guys who own
Speaker 4: the meat packing plant? Why aren't they in cuffs? Why
Speaker 4: are you picking random people out of the streets and
Speaker 4: not going after the Americans who have employed them knowingly?
Speaker 4: Are you investigating that at all? Is anybody in trouble
Speaker 4: over that? So? I mean, this is all coming to
Speaker 4: a head for Christine noam, and I think she's very
Speaker 4: very vulnerable. She might just get a Bovino styled emotion
Speaker 4: because Trump doesn't like to concede anything, but I think
Speaker 4: she's she's really on the line right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she could just be sidelined and end up, you know,
Speaker 2: in a sort of like Tulsi Gabbird like state where
Speaker 2: you still have the title, but it doesn't doesn't mean
Speaker 2: a whole heck of a lot. All right, let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and get to this news about ilhan Omar. Wild
Speaker 2: scene in Minneapolis where ilhan Omar was attacked in a
Speaker 2: town hall. So she was there, you know, speaking to
Speaker 2: constituents and at a moment when she was calling for
Speaker 2: I used to be abolished and Chris Christinome to be impeached,
Speaker 2: a man charges at her squirts her with some foul
Speaker 2: smelling liquid. They say it smelled strongly of vinegar, was
Speaker 2: like this disgusting brown color. We still don't know what
Speaker 2: it is. He has now been arrested, but just take
Speaker 2: a look at this whole scene is so crazy.
Speaker 4: Secretary Christinome must resign or face impeachment. I don't know,
Speaker 4: Oh my god, he's we will, we will continue the assholes.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna get We are Minnesota strong, and.
Speaker 2: So there's no yeah, well that's I mean, we'll talk
Speaker 2: about her responses, which is wild. But we do have
Speaker 2: one more angle of this. Let's go ahead and take
Speaker 2: a look at this one as well.
Speaker 6: Impeachment to talk about her response.
Speaker 2: Right because she charges at him. She's like and she
Speaker 2: like raises her arms like she is going to take
Speaker 2: him out. I mean that would listen, that would not
Speaker 2: be my response and more power it might be.
Speaker 4: I think it might be.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess you never know until you're in
Speaker 2: that situation. But the fact that you get sprayed with
Speaker 2: this liquid is so disturbing, and you know that would
Speaker 2: that would really freak me out. By the way this
Speaker 2: guy has been arrested. I can look at what his
Speaker 2: name is people pull to social media. Appears to be
Speaker 2: a Trump supporter, h follows you know, some like well
Speaker 2: known maga influencer type personalities, but obviously very unnervy, unnerving
Speaker 2: and disturbing situation.
Speaker 4: Well it's from a syringe too, so you really, I mean,
Speaker 4: the fact that he sprayed something out of a syringe
Speaker 4: allegedly here is I mean obviously horrifying. If you're on
Speaker 4: the other ende of something getting squirted out of a
Speaker 4: syringe at a town hall event, Now credit where it's
Speaker 4: to do. Politicians are such lame losers, babies like across
Speaker 4: the board, Chrystal, you know this and that second angle.
Speaker 4: What you saw was ilhan Omar basically charged to the guy,
Speaker 4: this big dude, which if you're in the listening audience,
Speaker 4: this guy is a he's probably like six foot two
Speaker 4: twenty or something like that. I'm just guessing. And ilhan Omar,
Speaker 4: who is tiny. As much as I may disagree with
Speaker 4: this woman, credit words deal, that was badass totally.
Speaker 2: His name is Anthony Kashmir Zach fifty five years old.
Speaker 2: And you know, ilhan has long been a lightning rod
Speaker 2: for conservative attacks. Trump has really fixated on her recently.
Speaker 2: In fact, just hours before this attack occurred, he was
Speaker 2: talking about her at his Iowa rally. You know, even
Speaker 2: his we have his response here, put a thirteen up
Speaker 2: on the actually put a twelve first to get a
Speaker 2: sense of the of the type of things that he's
Speaker 2: been saying about her. And this is just like all
Speaker 2: the time he's going after her. He said, there is
Speaker 2: nineteen billion dollars in Minnesota. Somalia fraud, fake woman. Ilhan Omar,
Speaker 2: a constant complainer who hates the USA, knows everything there
Speaker 2: is to know. She should be in jail or even
Speaker 2: a worse punishment sent back to Somalia. Consider one of
Speaker 2: the absolutely worst countries in the world. She could help
Speaker 2: to make Somalia great again. Put the next one up
Speaker 2: on the screen. He was asked for his reaction to
Speaker 2: this attack. And while you had some you know, Republican
Speaker 2: members like Nancy Mace came out with a very gracious statement,
Speaker 2: not so from President Trump. He said, this is from
Speaker 2: a reporter. Just spoke to President Trump. I asked him
Speaker 2: if he'd seen the video of Representative Omar being attacked
Speaker 2: and sprayed by a substance. Quote. No, I don't think
Speaker 2: about her lies because he talks about her all the time,
Speaker 2: had just been talking about her earlier in the day.
Speaker 2: In any case, he goes on, he says, I think
Speaker 2: she's a fraud. I really don't think about that. She
Speaker 2: probably had her self sprayed, knowing her, the President said.
Speaker 2: I asked again if he had seen the video. I
Speaker 2: haven't seen it. No, No, I hope I don't have
Speaker 2: to bother. So there's yours from.
Speaker 4: Trump's just classic Donald Trump. It's like from the Charlie
Speaker 4: Kirk memorial service where he was like, the one thing
Speaker 4: I disagree with Erica on, we don't forgive. Just typical
Speaker 4: callback to that mentality. He demonstrated in the moment. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean I've seen also, I should pull this up.
Speaker 4: There's been criticism of the level of charges that actually
Speaker 4: have been dropped. So Mike Davis from the Article three
Speaker 4: project he posted in response to the fact that the
Speaker 4: guy is only getting I think he's yeh state third
Speaker 4: degree assault charges. He said, attacking a member of Congress
Speaker 4: is a federal crime. The Justice Department must fully investigate
Speaker 4: this attack. The FBI must interview the suspect, along with
Speaker 4: obtaining material statement effact from ilhan Omar, no one is
Speaker 4: above the law because yeah, again he's just being held
Speaker 4: on third degree assault charges. So there's a little duty
Speaker 4: for the federal government.
Speaker 2: From Mike Davis, Yeah, no, that's actually that's a very
Speaker 2: good point. And you know, I listen, credit to Ilan incredible,
Speaker 2: like just in the moment, courage and not just from
Speaker 2: her initial instinct to charge at this guy, but then
Speaker 2: her staff are like, we got to get out of here,
Speaker 2: you got to get checked out, We got to end
Speaker 2: this town hall. And she's like, no, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to let this asshole steal the show. We're going to continue,
Speaker 2: Like just give me a few minutes, let me gather myself,
Speaker 2: and people in the audience were also understandably very unnerved
Speaker 2: and upset because it's the sort of thing where, you know,
Speaker 2: and again we still don't even know what this substance was.
Speaker 2: It's been sent for testing and it looked horrifying. It's
Speaker 2: like this brown liquid and a syringe, like you said,
Speaker 2: but you know, it really shatters your sense of safety,
Speaker 2: right because if he had had a gun, like it's
Speaker 2: all over. You know, we're also we are all as humans,
Speaker 2: incredibly fragile beings, right. It takes us having this shared
Speaker 2: social contract and sense of you know, personal safety and
Speaker 2: trust in one another to be able to just go
Speaker 2: about and live our lives, let alone when you're an
Speaker 2: incredibly i mean just constantly demonized an attacked figure like
Speaker 2: ilhan Omar. For her even to do this town hall
Speaker 2: to begin with was was like a fantastic act of
Speaker 2: courage to be honest, given the level of threat that
Speaker 2: she faces on daily basis.
Speaker 4: I wonder if there were pat downs security to get
Speaker 4: into a town hall, which, by the way, you shouldn't.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a very sad statement on where we are.
Speaker 4: You shouldn't have to do a pat down to get
Speaker 4: into a political town hall. But I wonder if they
Speaker 4: actually were checking for weapons, if there are metal detectors
Speaker 4: or anything like that. Obviously a syringe wouldn't be found.
Speaker 4: But to Crysl's point about a gun, you know, William
Speaker 4: McKinley got shot point blank by someone who had a
Speaker 4: gun like wrapped on the hand, right, and now you
Speaker 4: have a lot more security when people get that close
Speaker 4: to the president, but a member of Congress, they're going
Speaker 4: in and out of those types of town halls, and
Speaker 4: the country is obviously a powder keg. It feels like,
Speaker 4: you know, it feels like things are not getting better,
Speaker 4: but getting worse. I think that's kind of an obvious
Speaker 4: thing to say. Even though the Trump administration is trying
Speaker 4: to calm the situation in Minneapolis now realizing, as ken
Speaker 4: clipp And said, we'll tell us in a bit that
Speaker 4: there's clear chaos even being understood inside as chaos, inside
Speaker 4: these agencies and departments as chaos. So even though they're
Speaker 4: trying to now calm the situation or fix the situation,
Speaker 4: repair their own agencies, just feels like things are only
Speaker 4: getting worse.
Speaker 2: Crystal, Yeah, I think we'll probably see more and more
Speaker 2: congressional security more and more of that screening just to
Speaker 2: get into any sort of interaction with members of Congress.
Speaker 2: And inevitably, when you have that, it means that your
Speaker 2: representative is going to be less accessible. It means that
Speaker 2: you know, you already have had this trend of them
Speaker 2: not doing debates and doing fewer and fewer town halls,
Speaker 2: shutting themselves off in the public. And unfortunately, these sorts
Speaker 2: of attacks and threats are only going to you know,
Speaker 2: make that even more of a reality and give them
Speaker 2: even more of an excuse to close themselves off from
Speaker 2: any sort of public access.
Speaker 4: Set times and when the ecosystem is so fragile, I
Speaker 4: don't know. There's David Betts, who's a civil war historians
Speaker 4: is from the UK. He's been doing some interesting work
Speaker 4: on what it would take to precipitate something that becomes
Speaker 4: a rolling civil conflict in the West, whether it's in
Speaker 4: the UK or the United States, and the conditions feel
Speaker 4: very familiar that he studied in the past feel very
Speaker 4: familiar now. So folks should go check him out if
Speaker 4: they're interested in going deep on where this could, how
Speaker 4: this could escalate and spiral. I mean, obviously the Charlie
Speaker 4: Kirk assassination was in September, and everyone tries to have
Speaker 4: you unity. After that, Dems responded some like high profile
Speaker 4: DEMS responded in a way where they're like, this is
Speaker 4: going too far. We need to de escalate. Crystal, there's
Speaker 4: been no de escalation at all, and here we are
Speaker 4: in January and it seems as though it's only getting
Speaker 4: much worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, indeed, all right, Well, we've got Ken standing by,
Speaker 2: so let's go ahead and get to him on his
Speaker 2: latest reporting inside of DHS.
Speaker 4: We're always happy to be joined by Ken clippin see
Speaker 4: and he joins us now. Make sure to follow Ken
Speaker 4: on his website Kenclipinstein dot com. That's where you can
Speaker 4: follow his substack, follow him on x wherever you get
Speaker 4: your news. Ken is there and he has been reporting
Speaker 4: from inside the vowels of ICE and Customs and Border
Speaker 4: Protection where he's getting leaks, and those leaks paint a
Speaker 4: picture of the internal dynamics at these agencies that have
Speaker 4: been tested enormously over the last several months. Ken is
Speaker 4: out with a new report that was Ken I saw
Speaker 4: yesterday LinkedIn the Drudge Report. By the way, you probably
Speaker 4: already know that, but mega traffic, mega traffic. So everyone
Speaker 4: was posting this and some of the quotes just from
Speaker 4: Ken's sources. Here's one ICE agent tells Ken, I can
Speaker 4: go on and on, but overall it's been a ridiculous experience.
Speaker 4: Another one says, as much as I support this administration,
Speaker 4: there needs to be more common sense in situations like this,
Speaker 4: not a knee jerk damage control narrative that does not
Speaker 4: line up with the evidence on video That was from
Speaker 4: a Border Patrol agent. So, Ken, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4: Please walk us through your reporting here. What are you
Speaker 4: hearing from inside these agencies.
Speaker 7: One of the things that surprised me most was I
Speaker 7: asked each of the people I interviewed, which is eight
Speaker 7: people from both ICE and Border Patrol. One of the
Speaker 7: most surprising things was asking what that's shooting this past week,
Speaker 7: and every single one of them blamed the Border Patrol
Speaker 7: officers involved. And I want to truss that's not coming
Speaker 7: from some liberal, lefty position. I think every person I
Speaker 7: talked to, maybe with the exception of one, were Republicans.
Speaker 7: They just thought it was unprofessional, chaotic, and crazy, and
Speaker 7: when you talk to them, you get the impression of
Speaker 7: an episode of Reno nine to one one more than
Speaker 7: some federal elite law enforcement response, like it's been framed
Speaker 7: by the administration, And they would basically say that themselves
Speaker 7: because they've been inundated and young, inexperienced recruits, who I
Speaker 7: thought when I talked to them they'd be excited about
Speaker 7: this tripling of the ICE law enforcement budget. All of
Speaker 7: them said that these new recruits are useless because they
Speaker 7: haven't been trained, they don't know what the hell's going on.
Speaker 7: They've been dumped into this foreign context is completely different
Speaker 7: from where Border Patrol usually primarily operates, or even what
Speaker 7: ICE typically does, And so it was kind of this
Speaker 7: topsy turvy like opposite in so many ways of what
Speaker 7: I'd expected that I was going to find when I
Speaker 7: talked to them, because they all support immigration enforcement in principle,
Speaker 7: they just don't support what's taking place because it's not
Speaker 7: immigration enforcement. It's become a national security mission, as was
Speaker 7: described to me, a counter insurgency against the protesters on
Speaker 7: the ground, who the federal government.
Speaker 1: Perceives to be terrorists. And they've said that openly.
Speaker 2: How does that square can with the fact that the
Speaker 2: guys we see out there in Minneapolis seem pretty enthusiastic
Speaker 2: about what they're up to. You know, they seem to
Speaker 2: be into the mission of you know, randomly brutalizing people
Speaker 2: that they encounter and pulling random people off the street,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. So how do those two things
Speaker 2: square in your view?
Speaker 7: So that's you're seeing a big selection bias and the
Speaker 7: people that actually get set out there because the more
Speaker 7: experienced people are pulling every lever they can to try
Speaker 7: to avoid these deployments because they don't want to be
Speaker 7: involved in any of this. And so the people that
Speaker 7: you're going to see out there are either going to
Speaker 7: be the young recruits that have just been hired off
Speaker 7: of these like crazy memes and recruitment push that you're
Speaker 7: seeing by ice, and that's going to filter for a
Speaker 7: certain time person. And the second point is that the
Speaker 7: people that are being sent there are doing so on
Speaker 7: a volunteer basis. The government is not handling this like
Speaker 7: they normally would, where they just say, okay, you, you,
Speaker 7: and you you're going to go out there because you
Speaker 7: have the skill set that we want. They and this
Speaker 7: has been described to me by you know, a bunch
Speaker 7: of different agents. I don't know if it's been reported,
Speaker 7: but they're going on and saying, so who wants to go?
Speaker 7: And that's a sign first of all, that they're worried
Speaker 7: that people don't want to go. They don't want to
Speaker 7: send people out there that don't support the mission are
Speaker 7: going to drag their heels and things. And second of all,
Speaker 7: that's going to get the really dung hope people that
Speaker 7: are like yeah. When I talk to people for the story,
Speaker 7: what came up again again was these are the types
Speaker 7: that want to go and get an altercation and really
Speaker 7: buy into this idea of the protesters is some kind
Speaker 7: of radical insurgency that we need to counter. And I
Speaker 7: think that explains a lot of the just crazy levels
Speaker 7: of just you know, macho and like aggressiveness that we're
Speaker 7: seeing posts of the social media all the time. Is
Speaker 7: that this is the most aggressive part of the agent's
Speaker 7: that's going on there.
Speaker 4: Well, it's something interesting. I mean, we can roll be
Speaker 4: to here. This is an officer, federal LA Enforcement officer.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he's a CDPR. I think he's
Speaker 4: ice who appears to be. If people thought he was
Speaker 4: a little drunk, I thought he was woozy. I don't
Speaker 4: know if it was from like some chemical irritant that
Speaker 4: had been sprayed. This is outside the home too, sweets Hilton,
Speaker 4: where people were believed that Ice was staying and we're
Speaker 4: disrupting it all night, trying to make sure that the
Speaker 4: ICE agent's got no sleep and the like. You've probably
Speaker 4: seen people have probably seen a lot of viral videos
Speaker 4: from this particular scene and believe this was Sunday night.
Speaker 4: We can go ahead and roll the clip and then
Speaker 4: we'll get Ken's reaction. Well pressed here, Okay this officer, now,
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, are you okay? I'm fine?
Speaker 5: Where's the local?
Speaker 4: Prev's there? Okay, where's the locals?
Speaker 5: Please give me the roof.
Speaker 4: Here's a Ice guy mooning the protesters from above for
Speaker 4: the listening audience. Yeah, and Ken, I think.
Speaker 2: You've reported the professional behavior here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Ken, I think you report there's been some drinking
Speaker 4: on the job. But one of the things I also
Speaker 4: found interesting from your Ice unlads report that people can
Speaker 4: check out at Kenclippins dot com. Is you mention a
Speaker 4: lot of these guys are not on the left. How
Speaker 4: are they like? What do they want to see done?
Speaker 4: They know they're not in an easy situation, so what
Speaker 4: is there I mean here obviously having the support of
Speaker 4: the local law enforcement has helped them, and that's what
Speaker 4: they want, and you can understand why they would want that,
Speaker 4: But how do they It's not like they're welcoming the
Speaker 4: ante the ICE protesters that they understand that that's created
Speaker 4: a challenging situation. So what more do they want to
Speaker 4: see is a leadership organization? What are they looking for?
Speaker 7: I mean, they're opposed to the entire idea of this
Speaker 7: massive federal deployment that they they don't want to find
Speaker 7: the counter insurgency. They hate this and it's really interesting
Speaker 7: to talk to them because the admin is very triumphalist
Speaker 7: about all this. We're never going to back down, and
Speaker 7: this is so popular virtually all the guys I talk to,
Speaker 7: you think this is a disaster for the agency, that
Speaker 7: long term it's going to just destroy the reputation of it,
Speaker 7: and that they won't be able to do what frankly
Speaker 7: a lot of them you know, believe in, which is
Speaker 7: prioritizing violent felons.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a range of attitudes.
Speaker 7: Some of them want to just you know, deport anyone
Speaker 7: who is here without legal status, but a lot of
Speaker 7: them also, you know, they have this cop mentality of
Speaker 7: like I signed up to fight like cartels, and like
Speaker 7: I hope that I can get sort of these powerful
Speaker 7: people that we want to remove from the country. And
Speaker 7: now it's like I have to go and deal with
Speaker 7: protesters in crowd control, and it's like I would have
Speaker 7: signed up for the National Guard or something like that
Speaker 7: if I want to do that. I don't want to
Speaker 7: do that. It's just so it's like really profoiling, demoralizing.
Speaker 7: And something I struck me was how much they are
Speaker 7: hearing the protesters Like now I'm you know, I don't
Speaker 7: want to give you the impression that they're like going
Speaker 7: to go out there and wave a you know, like
Speaker 7: wave the flag.
Speaker 1: Of like the laugh or something.
Speaker 7: But it's like they they hear that and they find
Speaker 7: it embarrassing and depressing and like it was almost despondent,
Speaker 7: and it was so weird because I just I go
Speaker 7: from that to talk into like some of my lefty
Speaker 7: friends that are like, you know, what difference does any
Speaker 7: of this make.
Speaker 1: We're not reaching anybody.
Speaker 7: It's like they hear and see that stuff and they
Speaker 7: might not perceive it the same way that people on
Speaker 7: the left do, but that factors into their judgment about
Speaker 7: what is going on. And so this whole thing of
Speaker 7: like it being this massive mission. They could just be
Speaker 7: doing enforcement with the coordination of state in OL government.
Speaker 7: It wouldn't be this kind of like spectacle, you know.
Speaker 7: So they're opposed to all of it.
Speaker 2: How n only do the ICE agents view CBP? How
Speaker 2: do CBP view ICE? And I'm thinking about this in
Speaker 2: the context of, you know, we're starting to get the
Speaker 2: demands from some Senate Democrats about the changes that they
Speaker 2: would want to see in order to sign off on
Speaker 2: DHS funding. And one of the things is these CBP
Speaker 2: agents they need to go back to the border. As
Speaker 2: part of the switch out in leadership from Bavino to
Speaker 2: Tom Homan, some CBP agents were apparently pulled as well.
Speaker 2: We have no idea how many. In any case, you'll
Speaker 2: help us understand some of the cultural differences between those
Speaker 2: two agencies.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so when it comes to border patrol, it's really
Speaker 7: alarming some of the resources they're tapping. They've sent bord
Speaker 7: Tac out, which is kind of like their version of
Speaker 7: special Forces. And just so you said, culturally, culturally at
Speaker 7: the border, it's a very different environment than it is
Speaker 7: within the interior. I was talking to one border patrol
Speaker 7: agency said, you know, you just have a lot fewer
Speaker 7: civil liberties at the border, like when you're in an airport,
Speaker 7: for instance, because the laws are just completely different, and
Speaker 7: the idea at least is supposed to be like, okay, well,
Speaker 7: this is like people entering the country, so it's kind
Speaker 7: of like got to be a heightened state of security.
Speaker 1: So that's the mindset they come into this mission with.
Speaker 1: And you can't just.
Speaker 7: Snap your fingers say all right, now you're just in
Speaker 7: an American city and you've got to forget all that.
Speaker 1: They're not going to forget that. Like, they have a
Speaker 1: very different world view.
Speaker 7: They actually will have, you know, dealt with cartels and
Speaker 7: things at some level, human trafficking at the border, and
Speaker 7: so they bring all those assumptions and that lends to
Speaker 7: Minneapolis or you know, whatever city, and that's how they're
Speaker 7: going to see things. So, you know, and this was
Speaker 7: a border patrol age and telling me this, it's like,
Speaker 7: you know, it's a very different world out there in
Speaker 7: the Southwest where you have you know, coyotes and you
Speaker 7: have you have real human trafficking and you know, some
Speaker 7: amount of it, like they didn't sound hysterical. But then
Speaker 7: it's like you come into the city. Not only is
Speaker 7: the population different, the attitudes are different. Like there are
Speaker 7: all these videos of ice officers slipping and falling in
Speaker 7: the ice.
Speaker 1: I asked them about that. They said, well, these.
Speaker 7: Are boys from the Southwest, Like a lot of them
Speaker 7: have literally never been somewhere with they don't how to
Speaker 7: walk on it, so it's like they're in this far
Speaker 7: away alien land that like sounds to me it's like
Speaker 7: they're talking about Vietnam where the locals hate them. No seriously,
Speaker 7: like yeah, they don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: They hate the.
Speaker 7: Officer Corps, they don't trust the leadership, they don't want
Speaker 7: to be here. And I was really surprised because I thought,
Speaker 7: I assume there'd be some level of criticism, but it
Speaker 7: was like far beyond like what you know, and including
Speaker 7: from young recruits. One young recruit told me, he's like, yeah,
Speaker 7: I looked at the other guys that joined along with me,
Speaker 7: and it was like he said, the word he use
Speaker 7: was sketchy. He said, these guys are passing a flask
Speaker 7: around while we're supposed to be at a stakeout following
Speaker 7: by the way, yeah, seriously, that's why I went. As
Speaker 7: soon as I wrote that story, I started getting replies,
Speaker 7: people posting video of ICE officers drinking at these hotels,
Speaker 7: and it was like clear that this is like a
Speaker 7: systemic thing more than just these crazy anecdotes that I got.
Speaker 4: Well, and you're go ahead, Crystal.
Speaker 2: Well, I was just gonna ask, you know, there's an
Speaker 2: attempt from the administration right now to sort of send
Speaker 2: out this. They're trying to do pr right, They're trying
Speaker 2: to say like this was some bad apples. Steven Miller
Speaker 2: even came out and was like, these agents weren't falling protocol,
Speaker 2: they weren't doing what we wanted them to do. There
Speaker 2: was the leadership shift from Okay, we're sending Baveno back
Speaker 2: to California, he's getting demoted. We've got Tom Homan coming in.
Speaker 2: He's the law enforcement professional. It's going to be a
Speaker 2: totally different day and different approach. What have you found
Speaker 2: in terms of what's being communicated internally about whether there
Speaker 2: is a true pivot here, Because while you know, obviously
Speaker 2: and for understandable reasons, the murder of Renee Good and
Speaker 2: of Alex pretty have really captured, you know, the public's
Speaker 2: attention and have created a lot of horror. I talked
Speaker 2: to legal analyst Kyle Chaney yesterday's tracking twenty three hundred
Speaker 2: cases where the administration has just completely flouted judges orders
Speaker 2: and are arresting and deporting people illegally. So there is
Speaker 2: a systematic problem in the approach from top to bottom,
Speaker 2: which is utterly lawless. You is there any indication that
Speaker 2: there's an intent to change that overall approach?
Speaker 4: Well, and let's put be four up on the screen too,
Speaker 4: because Ken, this is you've got a Border Patrol memo
Speaker 4: about the Funk reference. Yeah. So yeah, but we could
Speaker 4: throw a before up on the screen. Ken, this is
Speaker 4: your reporting. You obtained this memo, so tell us what
Speaker 4: this means.
Speaker 7: So, after Bovino was reassigned and everybody sees this and
Speaker 7: it leads to this discourse, a friend of mine in
Speaker 7: CBP says, hey, we just got this, and you know,
Speaker 7: as it shows on the screen there, it says we're
Speaker 7: at a quote steady states kind of military speak for
Speaker 7: like everything's going to stay the same and we're going
Speaker 7: to maintain it and the operations are going to continue
Speaker 7: as planned.
Speaker 1: So I think that there's kind of a tug of
Speaker 1: war going on right now.
Speaker 7: I don't think the right reaction to that is like, oh, nothing,
Speaker 7: you know, none of this made any difference.
Speaker 1: They're under a lot of pressu right now.
Speaker 7: But Trump is being pulled by his base who doesn't
Speaker 7: want him to concede anything. But then on the other side,
Speaker 7: there's Congress has finally gotten off its ass and you know,
Speaker 7: requested hearings and even the Republican leadership and a lot
Speaker 7: of these relevant committees. So he's under a lot of
Speaker 7: pressure right now to try to feel like he can
Speaker 7: give both sides.
Speaker 1: Something.
Speaker 7: But you know, I want to stress, like again, when
Speaker 7: you talk to ICE in Border Patrol, they see this
Speaker 7: as devastating for the agency and as something that's going
Speaker 7: to outlive the Trump administration. But to Crystal's point about
Speaker 7: policies and what they're allowed to do, the admin is
Speaker 7: talking out of both sides of its mouth because internally,
Speaker 7: and I've reported a lot of these slides and briefings,
Speaker 7: they're being told, oh, here's what you can't do. You know,
Speaker 7: people are allowed to film you. They can even curse
Speaker 7: at you and swear and things. So the legal counsel
Speaker 7: within Homeland Security has basically said all the things they're
Speaker 7: supposed to say. But it's kind of like they're fighting
Speaker 7: against the ADMIN, which publicly is calling these guys terrorists.
Speaker 7: And just think about, aside from policy, think about the
Speaker 7: psychological like effect of your boss's boss's boss, the ADMIN
Speaker 7: saying every day that it's some insurgency, it's terrorists, it's
Speaker 7: an assault on liberty, they're going to overthrow the dark,
Speaker 7: all these things, it's like, and then meanwhile, some lawyers, oh,
Speaker 7: by the way, you can't do this, Like it's confusing,
Speaker 7: and if you're a young recruit in particular, there won't
Speaker 7: have been that sort of anybody's built up of like, okay, well,
Speaker 7: whoever's in the White House, this is how we do things.
Speaker 7: Like they're going to listen to this stuff and consume
Speaker 7: it and act on that basis.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of I mean, they killed the aid
Speaker 2: Jonathan Ross, the guy who killed Renee Good. They called
Speaker 2: him a hero. So and jade Van says, they have
Speaker 2: absolute immunity, So what message does that send to people?
Speaker 2: Exactly the way that they want you to behave And look,
Speaker 2: I think that Jonathan Ross murdered renee Good. I think
Speaker 2: Emily disagrees in what the legal definition would be. How
Speaker 2: are you feel about that? Nobody, nobody who has looked
Speaker 2: at this, nobody who has any law enforcement experience, thinks
Speaker 2: that Jonathan Ross behaved in the correct way there. I mean,
Speaker 2: he put himself in danger by going in front of
Speaker 2: the vehicle to begin with. Officer created jeopardy. And that
Speaker 2: guy they called, they said he's a hero. They you know,
Speaker 2: people were raising money for him. So of course that's
Speaker 2: the message that's received, is like the most belligerent, aggressive
Speaker 2: tactics against a group of people who have been labeled
Speaker 2: literal domestic terrorists and are being entered into a database
Speaker 2: and being tracked by our government as domestic terrorists. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what sort of behavior do you think that is going
Speaker 2: to create among not just the new recruits, but all
Speaker 2: these guys. I mean the two killers here, well actually three,
Speaker 2: because we now know there were two agents that fired
Speaker 2: on Alex pretty these were not new recruits. These were
Speaker 2: guys who had years and years of experience, which I
Speaker 2: think is you know, a very important fact here, because
Speaker 2: you can't just sort of shift it off to like, oh,
Speaker 2: we got these new bunch of hooligans in and they
Speaker 2: don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, totally. And again it's an ideological thing. I mean
Speaker 7: there's a range of people and people that talk to me.
Speaker 7: That's not a scientific sample. It wasn't a partisan sample
Speaker 7: like some people are saying like, oh, just democrats, the
Speaker 7: idea of democrats working for ICE.
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of like democratic liberal ICE
Speaker 2: agents guys. Come on, come on, yeah, signing bonus guys,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm sorry, I had to do it.
Speaker 1: What are about for me? Journalism doesn't pay?
Speaker 4: Man need more money for macha.
Speaker 7: So yeah, you talk to these guys and it's like,
Speaker 7: you know, that's the way to advancement, that's the way
Speaker 7: to you know, doing what they had been wants. And
Speaker 7: you talked to about these briefings that they're getting where
Speaker 7: they're like, oh, you can't do this and this. All
Speaker 7: the agents I talked to were like, yeah, that's just
Speaker 7: legal checking a box so that then the adamin can
Speaker 7: say later if there's some kind of like investigation, like
Speaker 7: what do you want? We had our legal compliance tell
Speaker 7: them what they what they can do and what they
Speaker 7: can't do. But what that's missing is like what you
Speaker 7: just said fristal, which is that all the leaders are saying.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know, uh, full immunity.
Speaker 7: And when I ask the agents how that's received, they say, well,
Speaker 7: that's everyone knows. That means we're going to have your
Speaker 7: back if you if you get in trouble, and that's
Speaker 7: how it's perceived. And that's I mean, that has to
Speaker 7: be what it is intended to be too.
Speaker 4: So it doesn't help you from state immunity. I mean,
Speaker 4: they can say federal immunity as much as they want,
Speaker 4: and you can the state of Minnesota can still go
Speaker 4: after your Jaidevance doesn't have control over.
Speaker 7: Them, right, And that's why all this is so important
Speaker 7: because to the extent that Trump is even moderated, I
Speaker 7: mean obviously there's you know, fair to criticize the cynicism there,
Speaker 7: but the law enforcement will hear that and say, oh,
Speaker 7: look they're getting a little wobbly. Maybe they maybe they
Speaker 7: won't have my back as much as I thought. So
Speaker 7: so you know, I have a comment.
Speaker 2: And they won't if the going gets tough, they won't.
Speaker 2: Like you should understand that Donald Trump is not going
Speaker 2: to like save your ass if it is even slightly inconvenient.
Speaker 1: For him totally, totally well.
Speaker 2: Ken as always, thank you so much for your reporting
Speaker 2: and for joining us to break it down. I think
Speaker 2: it's these were incredibly valuable insights.
Speaker 1: Thank you and thanks thanks for having me again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our pleasure anytime.
Speaker 4: President Trump went to Iowa yesterday as part of what
Speaker 4: appears to be the CZ Wilds orchestrated economic messaging speaking tour.
Speaker 4: It was supposed to be squarely focused. The event was
Speaker 4: supposed to be squarely focused on drawing attention to what
Speaker 4: Donald Trump believes is an economy and recovery after the
Speaker 4: Biden administration. Instead, of course, it was overshadowed by the
Speaker 4: situation in Minneapolis, just basically from start to finish, and Chris,
Speaker 4: I watched the speech before we started this morning. It
Speaker 4: was remarkable how often Trump was pivoting back to Joe Biden,
Speaker 4: and not just on the economy in general, of making
Speaker 4: funeral right for being sleepy and crooked, but constantly reminded
Speaker 4: me of like somebody who had a great high school
Speaker 4: football career and now they're thirty and can't stop talking
Speaker 4: about it. You say, he's constantly going back to high school.
Speaker 4: But let's take a listen to what Trump said as
Speaker 4: he talked with reporters on the ground in Iowa. Oh cool,
Speaker 4: mister President. With the current value of the dollar, do
Speaker 4: you think it's declined too much?
Speaker 5: No, I think it's great. I mean the value of
Speaker 5: the dollar. Look at the business would no dollars doing great?
Speaker 5: If a Democrat got half a point down? This is
Speaker 5: like hundreds of Depending the way you want to calculate it,
Speaker 5: you could say it's an eighty percent reduction, or you
Speaker 5: could say it's one thousand percent reduction. You could say
Speaker 5: whatever you want. But it's the biggest reduction in history
Speaker 5: by many, many times. I think they're the best Paul numbers,
Speaker 5: the real Paul numbers. I think we have the best
Speaker 5: Paul numbers we've ever had. Think of it, if I
Speaker 5: were to run again, if I ran again, would you
Speaker 5: would anybody? So we have some of the best call
Speaker 5: numbers we've ever had.
Speaker 4: Thank you all very much. Okay. So, then Trump stopped
Speaker 4: by Fox News for an interview on the Will Kine
Speaker 4: Show and was asked about farmers.
Speaker 5: Here's what he said, And by the way, I just
Speaker 5: gave the farmers twelve billion dollars because they were treated unfairly.
Speaker 5: We take it we'll take it in a fortune with tariffs.
Speaker 5: And I wrote him a little check about two weeks
Speaker 5: ago for twelve billion. Anybody in this room.
Speaker 1: Get any of it yet?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and a lot of people.
Speaker 4: Well, meanwhile, MS now did a man on the street
Speaker 4: in what appears to be a Target parking lot in Iowa.
Speaker 4: Here's what one woman told them. He needs to get
Speaker 4: his act together, and our representatives here in Iowa need
Speaker 4: to stop following his lead.
Speaker 6: I'm not voting from public again.
Speaker 4: Did you ever vote for him first time around? And
Speaker 4: he did a good job, but then he got stupid.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 6: Means that he just changed and it's all about him.
Speaker 4: He thinks he's God.
Speaker 2: So we can go ahead, and I love everything matter.
Speaker 4: Just making me realize I want to go to target,
Speaker 4: or need to go to target. Now, let's go ahead
Speaker 4: and put the Trump approval rating by state up on
Speaker 4: the screen. We're going to skip ahead one element here
Speaker 4: because Trump's approval rating in Iowa's hovering in the low forties.
Speaker 4: So this is from USA today, but kind of across
Speaker 4: the board. The couple of places I looked where they
Speaker 4: have approval ratings on a state by state basis, had
Speaker 4: him I think between forty around like forty four or
Speaker 4: forty three percent approval in Iowa. So Trump talked about
Speaker 4: Crystal was he was talking about how he brought John
Speaker 4: Deere excavator manufacturing to North Carolina, got you know, some
Speaker 4: plause for that. He's talking about how now you don't
Speaker 4: have to be a PhD to repair your tractor anymore,
Speaker 4: and some lines that are economic populism, and you can
Speaker 4: see why. At one point he asked the audience who
Speaker 4: had a four o one guy? Because he was trying
Speaker 4: to convince it. He was trying to convince everyone that
Speaker 4: he's been he's been a huge economic boost to the
Speaker 4: country because the stock market is going up. Uh, and
Speaker 4: you talk about how he made a lot of people
Speaker 4: rich who hate him and all of that, but also
Speaker 4: that normal people, you know, yesked He literally at that
Speaker 4: point was like, who was a four oh one k?
Speaker 4: But he constantly was saying, this is the Biden administration.
Speaker 4: We're crawling out of the hole, and we're doing such
Speaker 4: a great job. Then he's also constantly getting diverted into
Speaker 4: these tangents. The whole thing. I mean, I'm looking at
Speaker 4: all the headlines this morning. It was really really overshadowed. Yeah,
Speaker 4: even if you even if you agree with his economic messaging,
Speaker 4: really overshadowed by Minneapolis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, in Iowa has been sort of uniquely hurt
Speaker 2: by the you know, the Trump tariff schemes. The soybean
Speaker 2: issue there looms very large, and you know, the farmers
Speaker 2: that I've heard interviewed are like, yeah, we don't really
Speaker 2: want a bailout from the government. We want to be
Speaker 2: able to sell our crops like into a market. That's
Speaker 2: what we would like. And you have a put the
Speaker 2: last element that we have here actually up on the
Speaker 2: screen because this indicates, you know, is indicative of where
Speaker 2: the public opinion is and how Republicans are faring in
Speaker 2: the state. Iowa obviously a very rural state, and you
Speaker 2: have a Democratic candidate for governor because their governor's race
Speaker 2: is coming up this year, who was in was actually
Speaker 2: leading the Republican Now, this was I think a Democratic poll,
Speaker 2: so factor that in, but say they're like roughly tied,
Speaker 2: and I know, you know, the people that I've spoken
Speaker 2: with in the state actually feel like Democrats have a
Speaker 2: shot there and maybe even an outside shot at an
Speaker 2: open Senate seat. That is that is you know up
Speaker 2: this time around, now, I'm not going to like put
Speaker 2: my eggs in that basket. I think it's still unlikely.
Speaker 2: But you know, this is a state that Trump won handily, infamously,
Speaker 2: and Seltzer thought it was going the other way. And
Speaker 2: many people are saying, Emily, maybe she wasn't wrong. Just early.
Speaker 4: You still got thousands of people to his rally yesterday,
Speaker 4: and you know, it's it's it's Iowa. It's a friendly
Speaker 4: place for him overall. But if your approval rating is
Speaker 4: down in the forties in a place that you've seen,
Speaker 4: I mean, he talks about how much he loves Iowa.
Speaker 4: It's a place where he's seen a lot of success
Speaker 4: with economic populism. Those some of those candidates in Iowa
Speaker 4: are talking a lot about anti trust and you started
Speaker 4: to see a little bit of that from Brooke Rollins
Speaker 4: and Gail Slater in the AG space. So but it
Speaker 4: seems like they're out on an island like nobody is.
Speaker 4: Because all of the corporate lobbyists who are hounding MAGA
Speaker 4: in Washington, DC are picking up fancy new clients who
Speaker 4: want them to prevent that from happening. And so there's
Speaker 4: a long way to go if they want to have
Speaker 4: an economic populism that farmers are ultimately really happy with,
Speaker 4: apart from being sort of sated with bailouts like in
Speaker 4: Trump one, they've been giving him a lot of grace
Speaker 4: and patience because they know that they have that They've
Speaker 4: been trying to get people's attention for years to what's
Speaker 4: happened with China and trade deficits and the like. So
Speaker 4: they it's not as though they're, you know, they wanted
Speaker 4: things to continue as usual. They had reasons for putting
Speaker 4: their hope and their eggs in the Trump basket, and
Speaker 4: they've been very patient with him. But if things keep
Speaker 4: looking the way that they're looking, that's going to be
Speaker 4: a much much harder case for him to make.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Iowa is an interesting test case as well,
Speaker 2: because it really does get to the question of material politics.
Speaker 2: When I say Iowa, it really is one of the
Speaker 2: states that has suffered the most under Trump's economic policies.
Speaker 2: I was just looking it up. They're ranked forty ninth
Speaker 2: to fiftieth in terms of economic growth. They're ranked forty
Speaker 2: eighth in terms of personal income growth, so you know,
Speaker 2: things are not going well there. But because it is
Speaker 2: a rural, culturally conservative state, you know, obviously Republicans for
Speaker 2: you know, since the Obama era, he was the last
Speaker 2: one Democrat to win Iowa, Republicans have cleaned up there
Speaker 2: quite easily. So, you know, like I said, it will
Speaker 2: be an interesting test case of the importance of material politics.
Speaker 2: Although the other thing is Democrats obviously have to offer
Speaker 2: something on that front that also looks measurably superior to
Speaker 2: what they have got and enough for them to sort
Speaker 2: of look away from the you know, the cultural issues
Speaker 2: where they may disagree.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a great point. Well, if there's
Speaker 4: widespread dissatisfaction with and even just a lack of motivation
Speaker 4: among Trump voters on the immigration issue come November because
Speaker 4: they're demoralized that Christy Noan hasn't done a good job,
Speaker 4: you know, even from the perspective of immigration hawks, that
Speaker 4: can be a problem. Trump was repeatedly trying to all right,
Speaker 4: he said, the reason he's like, I love Iowa, but
Speaker 4: the reason that I'm here is to start spreading this
Speaker 4: economic message for the midterms. You know, he said, they're
Speaker 4: not here, You're not hearing much about affordability a new
Speaker 4: word anymore. But everyone's saying, this is an affordability midterm cycle.
Speaker 4: And then he's laying the groundwork for Republican loss in
Speaker 4: the midterms. He said, did you know. He spent a
Speaker 4: lot of time saying, did you know, everybody whose party
Speaker 4: is in power and the presidency ends up losing those
Speaker 4: first midterms and so lowering expectations a little bit. But
Speaker 4: he was literally imploring, imploring the audience to remember like
Speaker 4: the John Deere deal come midterm season, to remember their
Speaker 4: four oh one ks come midterm season. So that's that's
Speaker 4: where they're going with this. Meanwhile, let's put up this
Speaker 4: post from Trump on True Social I'm hearing that the
Speaker 4: great country of Iraq might make a very bad choice
Speaker 4: by reinstalling Nori Almaliki as prime minister. And he goes
Speaker 4: on to say, make a rock great again. This was
Speaker 4: posted literally on his way to i Iowa to make
Speaker 4: a pitch for his economic agenda. He's posting, make a
Speaker 4: rock great again. Well, he is on the plane, yes,
Speaker 4: sensibly from the timeline, he's saying make a rock great again.
Speaker 2: And then on the way back or once he got back,
Speaker 2: he's threatening Iran again and threatening war with Iran again.
Speaker 2: So good hard to get the economic message to really
Speaker 2: break through when number one, people feel like the economy sucks,
Speaker 2: and number two, you're constantly, you know, doing these like
Speaker 2: foreign adventures in a variety of new countries. Seems like
Speaker 2: a new one pops up every day.
Speaker 4: When we can put this Washington Post element up on
Speaker 4: the screen. This was from yesterday as well. Facing US turmoil,
Speaker 4: Europe in India announced blockbuster trade deals. So a major
Speaker 4: free trade negotiation between Europe and India announced yesterday. Yesterday, Crystal.
Speaker 4: So that question of you know, Mark Carney's speech in
Speaker 4: Davos last week about the fiction, the polite fiction of
Speaker 4: the international rules based order crumbling, where he's trying to
Speaker 4: make overtures to China. We'll see how that pans out,
Speaker 4: but where he's trying at least to move Canada closer
Speaker 4: to China amidst all of the threats from the United States,
Speaker 4: which we were promised by Gavin Newsom was just a temporary,
Speaker 4: a temporary disruption. We'll see how temporary it is. But
Speaker 4: it's dormant, right is I think the word that he used,
Speaker 4: the relationship is dormant. Some of these relationships are dormant.
Speaker 4: Then you have Europe and India trying to move closer together,
Speaker 4: and the realignment is happening in the background here. I
Speaker 4: think it's unclear what happens at the end of the day.
Speaker 4: If when Trump leaves office, maybe a Democratic president comes in.
Speaker 4: It's Possiblely Gavin Newsom is right, and these relationships were dormant,
Speaker 4: and there's an effort to kind of rebuild, but meaningful
Speaker 4: that these relationships are now sprouting up or closening opening
Speaker 4: during the second Trump administration, m