7/15/26: Iran Hits US Bases, Robert Pape On Ground Invasion, Trump Praises ICE

23:25Mainstream media is full of crude depictions of the unhoused. Stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the Unhoused is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host. And for years, I've created a space where the Unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed Unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQIA plus community and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the Unhoused existence. We do Unhoused as a two time Webby and Signal Award winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon.

24:08Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wittler, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the Unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to We The Unhoused on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

24:29Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town. It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. New voices, each with the courage to tell their own story. He said, I have been kidnapped. Okay, just trying to act normal.

25:03Emily Jashinsky:He was essentially on the run. Every family has secrets. The rug had been pulled from underneath me. Oh, my God. It was right in front of my face, and I didn't even see it. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

25:28President Trump asked about ground troops in Iran is, well, you go ahead and listen. This is B1. You posted today on True Social comments that you made back in 1988 about Carg Island. And at the time, you said, one bullet shot at one of our men or ships, and I'd do a number on Carg Island, I'd go in and take it. Do you still intend to take Carg Island? I can't say that to you because if I did, it would be foolish, right? But it would be nice to make a little headlines, but it would be foolish. But I'll tell you about Carg Island. So we've already. Are you ruling out a ground campaign in a limited capacity?

26:04I don't want to say that either. But I would say no if I thought it was appropriate. Sometimes you need a ground campaign. But we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us. But we already hit Cargill, as you know, twice, even three times. I said hit everything but the oil. Just leave that little area from 25 yards out. Leave that little area. Don't touch the oil. Because I don't want that in terms of the world economy. You know, it's a chunk of the world economy. So we haven't hit that. At some point, we could. But I think it's unlikely, as far as taking it is concerned, if we degrade them far enough and deep enough back.

26:42All right. So we had hoped that we had somehow escaped the escalation trap into the warm embrace of the memorandum of understanding reached between the United States and Iran. Unfortunately, it seems like that trap is cinched just as tightly around our ankles. We can put up B2 here. Professor Robert Pape's piece yesterday over at his substack, The Escalation Trap. The Escalation Trap has entered a new phase. Joining us to discuss kind of what that new phase is, is University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape. Professor, thanks for being here. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, you got it.

27:25So, hoping that we had moved on. Not quite. What was it in your assessment that kind of pulled us back in? Yes, well, thank you for talking about this. This is really quite a tragic moment. We're entering some of the most dangerous weeks of this war, quite likely. And people are thinking, well, this is just a return to, say, March or early April. It could be much worse than that. I know we haven't gotten there yet, but where we are at is very predictable. So as you'll recall, there have been three core stages of the escalation trap. Stage one is where you have regime change bombing that kills leaders but leaves America weaker because you get a stage two, which is although we kill the leaders and hit targets, Iran lashes back in a horizontal escalation campaign and takes Hormuz and now controls 20 % of the world's energy.

28:27And we will take every effort. We tried punishment campaign for six weeks, air power. That failed. We tried two-month blockade. That failed. And we are still where we are with stage three, which is the ground power dilemma. So if you go to February 25th on the escalation trap three days before the bombing, you'll see all these stages laid out before the war, and we would get to the ground power dilemma, and that's where we are today. Now what is that dilemma? Either we physically take Hormuz back, and you're seeing President Trump repositioning forces to do that, and we can talk about the details, including the ground operations, or we don't, and you get what I call stage four, which is Iran becomes the fourth center of world power over the next year or so.

29:18It continues to control Hormuz and reap all the economic benefits from that. It spreads its sphere of influence here to basically go from Lebanon to the Red Sea to the Gulf. And you see they're basically beginning to do that. And then in about 18 months, they develop nuclear weapons. So this is the actual trajectory of what it means to simply not take or moves back to walk away. And people keep thinking there's some third option. There's not a third option. And we've tried every possible third option. Now, there's something very specific, I think, just to drill into what happened in the last few weeks that I think can help make some sense here for your listeners, because I understand the whipsaw here, because I face it every day with my sub stack, you know, it's now almost 70 ,000.

30:08We got a lot of people emailing me and telling me all kinds of things. So I definitely feel this. But what I just want to sort of explain here is, well, what happened with the MOU? And you know, you've had me on. I'm not surprised this thing fell apart. But what exactly happened here with President Trump? Why didn't he just keep going forward? Well, there's really two reasons here that's very important to understand. Reason number one is that the reason Trump said he wanted to do the MOU was to avoid the oil inventories running down. You recall he said, we're going to run out of oil in four weeks, which means he would become Herbert Hoover.

30:51And then everybody said, well, okay, so that means he can't avoid that. Well, know. The problem is, if you look at the oil inventory curves, which I'm sure President Trump is getting, we're still running down. We're basically still on the Titanic, heading to the iceberg. We haven't diverted from the iceberg. We're going to hit that iceberg somewhere around the middle of August. We don't know the exact days here. That's what all these oil experts are are debating is it August 7th, August 15th, September 1. But this is not a problem. It's we're going to hit this iceberg. And so President Trump, the MOU failed from his perspective.

31:33J.D. Vance said, the reason Trump told us to do this was to fill the oil coffers. This did not work. He's still at risk of becoming Herbert Hoover. So this is issue number one. He's desperate. He's not using these options because they're going to win in a certainty. He's desperate because he sees certain becoming Herbert Hoover, and he's being very desperate, trying anything to avoid it. There's a second reason, which is the MAGA opinion polls. The MAGA opinion polls are very strongly in favor of regime change in Iran, and President Trump needs MAGA to turn out. He doesn't need Democrats to turn out.

32:13They're not going to vote for him. He doesn't need even the independents. What he needs is MAGA in these midterms to turn out. That's what midterms are always about. It's the base. Well, he's also feeding a big part of his base. There's only a small part of his base. It's a Tucker Carlson part of his base. So people, I think, have just been misreading the midterm incentives here for Trump. And what you see is he is the ship on the captain of the Titanic. He's heading us here. And it's because he's desperate to find a way to avoid hitting the iceberg, even if that means this super highly risky set of options.

32:55Which, by the way, I am not in favor of. I want to be very, very clear. I am not supporting this idea. I believe all the bad things that everybody is saying. My job is to put my policy, my preference hat aside and say, setting that aside, where are we actually heading? That's why the escalation trap has been on the money month after month after month after month after month. We're in five months now of this being on the money, and your listeners will know. You guys push back at me all time, right? And I don't want this to be the case. I'm just following 20 years of modeling where this heads and understanding the real dilemmas that are at work, even as we're heading to a really potentially costly future here.

33:53I'm Munga Shatikula, and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain as opposed to his brain. Here's some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble.

34:38I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

34:54Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused. Stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the Unhoused is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host. And for years, I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed Unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQIA plus community and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the Unhoused existence. We Do Unhoused is a two time Webby and Signal Award winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon.

35:36Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wittler, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the Unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to We The Unhoused on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

35:58Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town. It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. New voices, each with the courage to tell their own story. He said, I have been kidnapped. Okay, just try and act normal.

36:31Emily Jashinsky:He was essentially on the run. Every family has secrets. The rug had been pulled from underneath me. Oh, my God. It was right in front of my face, and I didn't even see it. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

36:57The part I'm trying to figure out is why Trump forgot about the physical limitations that he was so clear about at the beginning of the MOU. When he was explaining to people publicly why he agreed to the terms of the truce, as you said, he said multiple times, if I didn't, it was going to be bedlam, I think was the word he used. And multiple times in this long interview that he not long press conference he held, he talked about Herbert Hoover. You know, he has he has basically two South stars, I guess you could call them. And that's Jimmy Carter and that's Herbert Hoover. And those and to him, Carter involves Iran, too, that, you know, he believes that the Iranian hostage rescue attempt that went south is, you know, what really cratered his that combined, interestingly, with the oil embargo that led to gas lines and high gas prices.

37:48that that cratered his presidency. And then Herbert Hoover, of course, nobody needs to be reminded what happened to Herbert Hoover. So that's his big concern. And he was saying that because inventories are low, the strategic petroleum reserve is low, like he needed to get, he needed to reach a deal or else he was going to become Herbert Hoover. But nothing has changed. Like, oh, we've added it. That's the problem here. Nothing has changed. The oil inventories with the MOU are still going down, which means the MOU is Trump's roadmap to becoming Herbert Hoover. That's what he sees. Now, you can disagree with him, but see, this is what the media is not quite getting.

38:29Your question is a very understandable one, and I understand why you're asking, but it's hard to listen to what I'm saying because we don't want this to happen. But here's the problem. The problem, from Trump's perspective is the MOU was supposed to be his off-ramp to avoid becoming Herbert Hoover. But the MOU has turned out to still run the oil inventories to ground. If you look at the ships passing the Strait of Hormuz, they're still virtually, you know, they're almost zero. They're not quite zero. We got a little bit of oil out. But it's because Iran is shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. It's not just Trump shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.

39:12Iran decided to be very aggressive in enforcing the MOU and shut down the Strait of Hormuz. It was Iran who initiated the shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz, not President Trump. And so why is that? It's because Iran wants revenge. Iran has moved from survival to ambition to revenge. And that's what you see with those tens of millions pouring out. And these are all connected. These are not separate issues. Iran is shutting down the Strait of Hormuz here because Trump won't honor the MOU. And Trump can't honor the MOU without the big loss on his record. So the bottom line is that what's happening is the MOU has become simply a roadmap to Trump hitting the iceberg anyway.

40:08And what he's trying to do now is use military force to see if he can minimize how long the oil, the damage is to the world's economy. I don't think he's going to succeed. I think it's the risks are too great. But this is why he's doing this. And I think if we don't take this seriously, we can't really try to convince him to do something else. So if we really just keep dismissing why he's doing it, even though he's telling us so directly, then you're never going to persuade the decision makers. And I know because I've advised every West Wing, including the first Trump White House from 2001 to 24, chiefs of staff of the Air Force, you're not going to convince them by telling them they're stupid, their ideas are bad.

41:00You've got to understand where they're coming from. And if you don't, then the only thing you can do is wait to vote them out of office in 2028. But by 2028, look at all the damage that's going to happen. So this is really the problem that we face. We're having a hard time seeing it from Trump's perspective because the oil inventories, if you just show the chart, they're still going down. That's what he said the problem was, and the MOU didn't fix the problem. Well, so I'll put the pushback I would give on that would be and we can put this chart up and up in post. The MOU is signed June 17th. And I think that the Titanic and the iceberg analogy is actually useful.

41:46If Trump thought that he was driving like an F1 car and that Hormuz traffic was going to do some hairpin turn and go from zero to pre-MOU, then whether or not those people that you're advising want to be called idiots or not, that's an idiotic thing to think. Like it's going to take some time to get it back up. And you do actually see the traffic coming through the Strait of Hormuz, you know, significantly expanding and elevating. You're seeing more and more ships go through. Now, about a week ago, when when the when the shooting really kicked back off, then you see it collapsing again. And so the what so for Trump, it's like, OK, yeah, you didn't immediately refill all your inventories and strategic petroleum reserve stockpile, but the ships were coming through.

42:37So how is stopping it going to helping him? That's right. So there was another choice that Trump could have made. And apparently he signed some of the orders to do this, which is when he signed the MOU, he could have withdrawn all 50 ,000 U.S. troops from the region. He could have withdrawn all 22 carriers and 20 destroyers and cruisers from the region. And Iran would have been probably quite happy with that and not shot at ships. So that was the real choice that he had in front of them. The problem was they tried to go through the Omani side with their transponders. Well, that's what I'm trying to say, sir, is that the real fork in the road happened when he signed the MOU.

43:23When he signed the MOU, he had a choice. Is he going to let Iran become the fourth center of world power, fully control the Strait of Hormuz for real or not? And what it would mean to allow Iran to fully do the MOU, because remember, the MOU is all concessions to Iran. What it would mean is withdraw 50 ,000 combat forces from the region, all our bases in Bahrain, etc. That's what Iran wants. And also all of the 20 ships. And notice that was his real choice. And apparently he even signed an order to start to do some of that. But then he decided he couldn't accept that was too big of a loss because then his MAGA base would not turn out in the midterms.

44:10And that's the problem. There is no third way. There is no compromise where we share the straight-of-form moves. People keep thinking this is a business deal and we're just going to meet in the middle, triangulate in the middle. This is a great power of politics. And President Trump had a choice. You either let Iran get on the trajectory, control or moves 100%, become the fourth center of world power, or you physically take it back. There's no other way around it. And in order to avoid where we are, sir, what you would need to do is physically withdraw all of the forces here. And some people were arguing for that.

44:52Joe Kemp was arguing for that effectively. Ron Paul was arguing for that effectively. So there were voices arguing to if we marched in, we could march out. And President Trump just wouldn't go that far because he'd lose MAGA. And he needs MAGA. So this is the problem. I think the reason people are having a hard time seeing it is most of the media is not really very much into MAGA. They haven't gone to Trump. I've been to Trump rallies because that's part of my book, Our Own Worst Enemies. This is my field research. I've been to Butler's all weekend with these folks. These folks are loyal to Trump only if he is a winner.

45:33This is another way to think about it is they have faith in Trump not because he's a good man. It's because he's a winner. And once he lets Iran become the fourth center of world power and on the road to getting nuclear weapons for real, and where's the actual option anybody's come up with to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons? All of the people on from the JCPO explain Trump's getting nowhere with stopping Iran getting nuclear weapons. So everybody agrees fundamentally that the only way to stop this is to let Iran keep Hormuz and keep its nuclear threshold or if not over the threshold status.

46:16And that's the problem for Trump. He can't own that L and keep MAGA for the midterms. On this trajectory, my sense is that he's going to be Hoover and lose Hormuz. Yep. Do you agree? That's what happens. That's how Lyndon Johnson, so what he's doing is he's trying to avoid becoming Herbert Hoover, and what he'll likely become is Lyndon Johnson, and there's no way for him to become Ronald Reagan. He's looking for a way for him to become Ronald Reagan, pull a rabbit out of the hat. This is going to somehow, you know, like with the air traffic control strike, you know, with Ronald Reagan, suddenly everybody will be, oh, my God, it was the most brilliant thing.

46:58But the reason this happens, and I study preventive wars for a living for 30 years, so I'm not just generally studying international relations. Preventive wars happen because the attackers see certain loss, and then they take highly risky actions to avoid a certain loss. So think of it as they see 100 percent loss and now they take a risk. It's only 80 percent. And that's what we're seeing here in all the commentary. Everybody's saying this is almost surely going to fail. Well, for President Trump, that's right. But to not do it is an even worse outcome for him and his presidency. If the world suffers, that's secondary for Trump.

47:42Yeah, well, we're all screwed. Professor Pape, thanks as always for the brutal effort. I wish I had better news. Maybe next week. I'm Munga Shatikular, and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you, and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths.

48:25I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble.

48:37Emily Jashinsky:I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

48:54Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused. Stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the Unhoused is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host. And for years, I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQIA plus community and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence. We do Unhoused as a two time Webby and Signal Award winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon.

49:36Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wittcheron, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the Unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to We The Unhoused on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

49:57Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town. It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. New voices, each with the courage to tell their own story. He said, I have been kidnapped. Okay, just trying to act normal.

50:31Emily Jashinsky:He was essentially on the run. Every family has secrets. The rug had been pulled from underneath me. Oh my God. It was right in front of my face and I didn't even see it. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

50:56We're learning a bit more about Joanne Sebastian Guerrero, who was the Colombian man killed by ICE in Maine. And one of the witnesses who was there for this execution on the streets of Maine described how Guerrero said before he died that he had tried to stop. I want to play a little bit of his eyewitness testimony before we get to Juan David Rojas to talk a little bit about what more we have learned about this victim, as well as another man who died after an interaction with ICE down in Florida, followed by President Trump, who is now saying that he wants to reverse the ICE decision to stop traffic stops and get back to doing it.

51:43But let's roll a C2 here. I didn't witness the shooting. I witnessed the aftermath and the car coming down and then being hit again by the ICE SUV and the victim being moved out, taken out of the vehicle. And I heard him say I tried to stop. Ice agent got out, tried to open the door, had a difficult time, but eventually opened it and pulled the guy out. His face was bloody, his head was bloody. I know that he was still cognizant because they told him to calm down. I feel somebody needs to know what a bystander saw, not what ice tells you. Because too often ice says things that just are not true.

52:38and at least from this is what I saw. Now, whether their version is different, that's up to them. Yohan Sebastian was killed in front of his daughter, and we're trying to learn as much as we can about him. We understand that, according to the administration, he came to the United States in 2023. It's unclear yet if he was pursuing an asylum claim. The reports are that he had a work permit as well as a Social Security card. That doesn't tell you a whole lot about his immigration status. Juan David Rojas is joining us now to talk a little bit more about this. Juan David, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me on, Ryan.

53:22So let's put up C1 again. This was one of his social media posts where he says,

53:32So this gives us a little bit of an indication of where he fits kind of in the Colombian political spectrum. Walk us through what we can glean from that. Yeah, it's especially tragic. I mean, I don't want to, you know, it's ironic, but, you know, I don't really want to make too much light about this. This guy, yeah, he was apparently executed in front of his three-year-old daughter. His wife is still grieving, and it's one of the most horrific shootings. Thank God there's really not a whole lot of video about it, because otherwise I think there would be a lot more outrage. But this guy apparently was a supporter of Colombia's current president-elect, Abel Ardo de la Sprella, who's like a far-right, literal Miami neocon, is a dual citizen of the U.S.

54:25and lived for 10 years here in Miami before becoming president. So, and yeah, Columbia's current president-elect, he says he's a registered, he said during the campaign, he just got elected, that he's a registered Republican, that he voted for President Trump, and that he wants to let Trump bomb Columbia. So that's to give people an idea. So, and here's an interesting set, actually. 80 % of Colombians in the U.S. that voted in the past election voted for De Las Priegas. So a lot of Colombia's immigrant population here in the U.S. is just very right wing. So it's especially tragic. A friend of mine pointed out, it's like, hey, this guy very conceivably could have ended up supporting Trump.

55:14Right, right. Meanwhile, down in Miami, I want to put up C3 here, there was an interaction at a gas station between ICE and what appeared to be some Mexican migrant laborers. A man ran from there and was immediately then hit by a truck in St. Augustine and died on the scene. This is obviously a different scenario than being shot, as we saw in Houston and then in Maine. But in reaction to the two and then three deaths, ICE-related deaths within a week, ICE, interestingly, said that they were going to stop the practice of these traffic stops. ICE, you know, most police forces in general are trained not to put themselves in front of moving vehicles.

56:08And that was something that all police understood kind of before Minnesota. But that's something also the public overall understood after Minnesota because it's just common sense. In fact, the law, as it's written, is that if you put yourself in front of the car recklessly, that does not then produce the justification to shoot the person. Like, if you're the one that creates the danger for yourself, you can't then resolve the danger that you created by killing somebody. Like, that is how police are trained, and that is the law, and it's also just plain common sense. And so ICE said they're going to pause these traffic stops.

56:56I want to put up C6, which is Trump's response to this, and get your reaction to it. Trump says, the men and women of ICE are doing a great job, one that has to be done. Crime is way down in America, in many cases with numbers that haven't been seen in decades. The open border policy of sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25 million people to pour into our country unchecked and unvetted. Many were criminals, and we have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we cannot give up one of ICE's most important and effective crime-fighting tools, the traffic stop. Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal's hands.

57:33The radical left Democrats would like to see this done, but it won't happen on my watch. ICE, be judicious, fair, and smart, and go back and do your very important job. Keep those crime stat records coming. Remember, you are loved and respected in America. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. So, WandaVie, that feels like it was, that came after a Stephen Miller phone call, the reference to the stats, I feel like, is the giveaway there. Miller has a quota that he is kind of insisting that the federal government hit, and in order to hit that, you hit courthouses, you hit immigration facilities where people are going to get fingerprinted and otherwise following the law, or you just start pulling everybody over who looks like they might be an immigrant and check their papers.

58:22What was your reaction to ICE announcing that they were going to pause it and now Trump telling them, no, get back on it? Yeah, like you said, there's clearly some inter-administration wrangling over this stuff, most likely due to Stephen Miller. I mean, look, I'm going to be completely honest. I have a very similar perspective to Sagar about this stuff. I think that the previous administration had way too lax of a policy of basically just letting anyone come here and stay here for years on end while their asylum claim was adjudicated. Most of these asylum claims, frankly, I think were fraudulent.

59:00At the same time, that doesn't mean you should just go around killing people who came here irregularly, whether they have an asylum claim, they're here illegally, or illegally, they're human beings. Jesus. And all this does is just discredit your own cause of mass deportations. I mean, you know, we can debate about exactly what level of deportations would be just. But I mean, yeah, it's just all these kinds of hardline tactics. You know, there's been 50 people killed in ICE detention. There's been four people shot, I think, at these traffic stops since the start of the year. Obviously, Renee Goodes was the most famous case.

59:42So, I mean, yeah, there's really nothing good that I can say. There's so many better ways that this could be done. I mean, starting by the fact that really there's just been no interest at all in punishing employers of illegal labor. And if you look at corporate prosecutions of employers of illegal immigrants, They're at all-time lows, and they have been for multiple administrations now. All of the enforcement is on the workers, the people who are here irregularly. And that obviously has costs. Not to mention the fact that case in Florida, my hometown of Coral Springs, Florida and Broward County, ICE agents surrounded the home of this Peruvian man who was here illegally or had an asylum claim.

1:00:31they surrounded his entire home with like rifles and it's like guys not only is this not necessary it's disruptive to american citizens so obviously yeah like we saw in minnesota this has costs for citizens as well and aoc was asked about this at the capitol um before trump announced that he was going to push them to uh rescind their rescinding of the policy let's listen to c5 she's bragging about the fact that they had additional body cameras in the Homeland Security funding and they had more safeguards than the inspector generals. Do you think that that was, I mean, was that sufficient? No, she, Senator Collins wrote the blank check to allow these officers to conduct themselves in the way that they have in Maine in the first place.

1:01:17And she's the one who's poured resources into it. And just because now that there's live footage of the atrocities that she has enabled doesn't make it better than preventing them from happening in the first place. All right, so that's AOC going after Susan Collins for expressing concern about the killing after having given all the weapons for it to happen. And then here's C4 with her talking about Trump's policy. What do you think of DHS suspending vehicular stops in the aftermath of Houston and Maine? I mean, I think they shouldn't be, a lot of the stuff that they're doing shouldn't even be allowed in the first place.

1:01:57And I think they're trying to get ahead of the fact that people should realize that what they're doing shouldn't be allowed. And so I think that, you know, they should be facing consequences for killing innocent people in the street. And they're just trying to escape from those consequences. While I'm glad that they are temporarily, I assume. Yeah, and so Juan David, to your point, I know that you and Sagar kind of line up on a lot of elements of this immigration policy. But as I've been arguing, if they can't do it in a way that is civil, without killing people, they're going to lose the kind of public support for the thing that you and Sagar want done.

1:02:45if you were advising them on how to pursue the policy, what would you tell them? Yeah, it's like I said before. I mean, there's just no enforcement at all on the employer's side. And if you had like a national regime of E-Verify, a lot of this problem would solve itself. And look, personally, I would be for some kind of amnesty. For me, it would be something like for people who have been here like at least 10 years or more. And then, you know, other people would say, oh, no, it should be less or whatever. But, yeah, if you like spent a lifetime here and have abided by the law, for me personally, and a lot of Republicans will disagree with this.

1:03:27Yeah, I think, you know, this would go a long way towards solving the problem if a lot of people were given a path to citizenship. And there's also debates about like, you know, like when we talk about amnesty, people think that's like immediate citizenship for X amount of people. Not necessarily. It tends to be like a gradual process that people have to pay back taxes, taxes that they would theoretically owe. And then they would get like a work permit and then eventually residency and citizenship, something like that. I could go along with that if it's paired with an aggressive national regime of E-Verify.

1:04:03because if you implement those two things in tandem, then, yeah, you wouldn't need to have this kind of draconian enforcement all the time. But to your point, what they're doing right now, it's just discrediting their own cause, and it's enabling radical opponents on the other side. And this is what I'll say to Democrats. I mean, please, for the love of God, we cannot go back to the previous policy. I don't mean, I don't say that because, you know, I love Republicans or hate immigrants or anything like that. On the contrary, if we go back to what we had before, we're just going to get another nativist administration in the future.

1:04:38So a lot of this discourse around abolishing ICE, voters, in my opinion, see that kind of stuff. I say this myself included, interpret that as we're going to abolish ICE and then there's just going to be no more immigration enforcement. If you really want to do that, you need to make clear that, look, look, we'll get rid of ICE, but there will still be enforcement. And I agree. Criminals should be prioritized. But enforcement shouldn't just be against criminals. I mean, like I said, the truth is most of these asylum claims are fraudulent. And if you come here, defraud the asylum system intending just to work, eventually you should be removed.

1:05:18I'll cite, this is the last thing I'll say, yeah, I'll cite former congressman Barbara Jordan. She said for the system to be credible, people have to be deported at the end of the process. This is just common sense. Yeah, I do think that Democrats, a large swath of them, have abandoned or moved away from defending the Biden administration's border policy and have kind of given up and said, you know what? OK, we can't defend not having a border. Fine. We're fine. We'll do a border. But we need to abolish ICE, which is this rogue agency that's doing, you know, you know, mass scale internal removals at Home Depot's and 7-Eleven's and traffic stops that lead to them, you know, shooting and killing people in the streets, including Johan Sebastian, who was not a target at all.

1:06:07Like this was this appears to be just a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, I mean, not necessarily. It was the ice. Ice, I'd say, was the wrong place at the wrong time. But in any event, he's the one that didn't survive the encounter. But I take your point that the that the public might be might be conflating some of that. So we'll see how they kind of navigate that as they're kind of shaping what their immigration policy is. That doesn't produce another nativist backlash in the future. But Juan Naveen, thanks as always for being here. Where can people find your stuff? Follow me on X and I have a sub stack.

1:06:49It's called Social Democracy with Populous Characteristics. Also a columnist at Unheard. So check me out at Unheard. Excellent. Well, thanks for being here.

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