1108: ICE's Reign of Terror

26:41You do them all. You have to get them all done by the time the government funding runs out, which is usually at the end of September. The next option is what happens more often these days is they just pass an omnibus bill, which is just they take the entire federal budget, they put it in a one gigantic bill and pass it. The problem with that is no one ever reads it. We always find out afterwards there's all this shit in there that no one knew about. It's a bad way of doing business, But there's at least a bipartisan negotiation between the House and the Senate leadership. We get some things, they get some other things, et cetera.

27:13The other way, which is one they're doing here, is something called they pass minibuses, which are bills that contain a handful of the appropriations bills. And so they have passed a couple minibuses now. So more than half the government, in terms of agencies, not in terms of funding, are funded for next year. They passed. The president's either signed them or he's going to sign them. The problem is around DHS. And in these things, they're really doing the thing where the House, the Democrats get together, the appropriators are sitting there, they're figuring out, like, we're going to give you guys a little more funding.

27:46Here, you give us this much here. We have a bipartisan agreement. We get it out the door. Trump signs it. DHS is the problem. All the rest of them will pass fine. And so you could, what I don't want Democrats to do, I do not think Democrats should do, is be so committed to this bipartisan process that they vote for a year-long DHS appropriations bill that contains no reforms, no efforts to curtail ICE. It increases funding for ICE. I do not think they can do that. I think that is morally important. I think it's politically bad because you can't rightfully scream, as we were asking people to do, to talk like that guy at the beginning of the podcast about what ICE is doing and then pass their bill.

28:22You cannot do that. What you can do is - I should say that from all the reporting, it does not seem like there's many Democrats on board for that option. In the House, it seems like Hakeem Jeffries and others are not for that. In the Senate, they're being much more coy, although Patty Murray, since that Joe Pritikon piece has come out and suggested that she would not be for that. But we cannot be for that. I don't think that's going to be an issue. You could theoretically just keep DHS funded at its current levels. I think the important point - A CR, basically. Yeah, just a CR for DHS and for the year.

29:00And so they get nothing new. Now, a lot of their funding and the funding for ICE comes from the one big, beautiful bill. That's the real problem. Yeah, it's mandatory funding, so you can't really, you're not affecting that. I think the important point here that everyone should be aware of is shutting down DHS would do nothing, would do absolutely nothing to stop ICE from doing what it's doing right now. Yes, and that is the very hard truth. Yeah. I wish it weren't so, but like, look, we have been through this. We've been through this shutdown stuff before. and um it's i want i always want democrats to fight when democrats have the power to fight when they have the power to fight with results and they do not use that power fuck them and we should all scream when they do not have the power to fight or their fight is not going to produce the results that we want i don't know it's like i don't you know like sure they can shut it down and it's not even like i'm worried about the politics of shutting down dhs i'm really not i'm more worried about like well it's a pyrrhic victory if suddenly we're shutting down a department but the one the one thing in the department ice that we we actually want to shut down that's still going while everything else gets it's not even a pyrrhic victory it's just not a victory at all right well it's when you'd be like what they fought you know it's like what did they fight what did they get so that's unsatisfying here's something else it'll be unsatisfying the other question democrats are so excited for this i know the other question democrats are once again grappling with here in 2026 uh is whether it's wise to call for abolishing ice which is something that democrats wouldn't be able to do until 2029 at the earliest if there's a democratic president uh the searchlight institute which is a startup democratic group is circulating a memo about why this would be a mistake uh on the other hand you have a lot of people feeling like what's happening is so clear-cut that we have to rid ourselves of ice entirely and that group naturally includes fellow ideological travelers aoc and bill crystal

31:06i saw bill's tweet abolish ice i was like whoa um uh all right what do you think what do you what's your what are your thoughts on all this you alerted me to this debate uh i was blissfully unaware of it until we had a meeting yesterday um and now i'm nothing gets by this yeah i know Now I am deep, deep in it. I can't play these eyes. Yeah. I feel sorry for you and your cortex. I can't figure out if this is debate around a real problem or not. Like, are there a bunch of Democrats who want to actually run on abolishing ICE? Like, I'm pretty skeptical that that is the case. But even still, I think it's worth having the debate because I think it does get at something bigger.

31:50And so I would stipulate at the beginning of this that Democrats should have no fear of aggressively criticizing ICE, Trump's immigration policies, Trump's deportation policies, the policies themselves, the enforcement of them. Trump is not – Trump right now, his immigration approval is very far underwater. He is – ICE has become the face of Trump's immigration policy. As our friend Peter Hamby pointed out in Puck, ICE's approval rating is down 30 points since last year. It's now 14 points underwater. That is a phenomenal slide. So we should have no fear about being critical of ICE. There is polling – what sort of sparked this conversation is that in the YouGov poll, it shows a slight plurality, essentially a dead heat for abolish ICE, which is a relatively dramatic shift since the last time they asked this question in 2019.

32:43I've seen other internal polling that shows that while it is more popular once in 2019, it's still underwater and more so with swing voters. Same. And I've seen some public polling that bears that out as well. Yeah. But I think the question I would have about abolish ISIS, like let's play it out logically, like not the slogan, not the idea, not like as a thing you're going to say on a debate stage in a 2028 debate to applause or post on. How does it work? So you are the newly elected Democratic president. We are fortunate enough that we have a trifecta, right? One of our first things we're going to do is we're going to get Congress to pass a bill to abolish ICE, to end that department, make it go away.

33:30That is something that I believe would require 60 votes. So therefore, unless we have the election to end all elections in 2020, way, that is not going to happen. And so are you taking on what, are you running on something that you cannot do that is not available to you? Why is it not a better idea to run on aggressive, transformative reform of ICE that includes accountability for the people in charge and the agents who have done the things we have seen, get them out of there, hold them accountable for it, deep investigation of everything that went wrong to fundamentally change how it operates in this Blue Rose Research poll that's been making the rounds.

34:15They test a bunch of ideas proposed by Chris Murphy, including requiring warrants, masks, sending Border Patrol back to the border, which is a crazy idea, getting them out of cities. Those all poll quite well. Like, why not do those things? Is it not a better idea substantively, if not even politically, to run on making ICE work, making it like fundamental reform so that it is unrecognized, that the ICE serving under the next Democratic president is unrecognizable compared to the ICE serving under Trump. Which I think it will be no matter what. I mean, here's my, here's the exercise I went through.

34:52I was like, put the polling and the politics aside for a second. It's like, what do I want to hear from 2028 presidential candidates, one of whom will hopefully be in a position to decide what happens to ICE. And I will say to the first point that you made, I think that the next president, hopefully the next Democratic president, is going to have very wide latitude to do whatever they would like with ICE, both because the president always has pretty broad latitude in terms of immigration with what to do at an agency and after the Trump presidency and what the Supreme Court has decided is legal under the Trump presidency, it turns out you can do quite a bit with departments and agencies in terms of cutting their funding, firing people, getting rid of them, all that kind of stuff.

35:40But I would want the next Democratic president to say like day one, they will end ISIS reign of terror. A lot of the stuff you just said, like no more militarized occupations, no more invasions, no more mass raids, no more arrests without a warrant, no more denial of due process. I would fire every agent hired by Trump, fired all of them. And I would fire every agent that violated either the law or DHS's own use of force policy or other policies. And then, like you said, hold them accountable to whatever extent possible within the law. Use part of ICE's budget. Now we're moving money around in the federal government.

36:20That's what Trump's doing. move part of ICE's budget to go fund people's health care, and then leave behind a small deportation force whose job is basically limited to detaining non-citizens who have a criminal record or pose a genuine threat to their communities. Because I do think you need, like, again, I noticed some of the people who are for abolish ICE were like, well, it's not fair to say that if you want to abolish ICE, you're not for immigration enforcement. it's like okay that's that's fine but if like if the slogan is abolish immigration and customs enforcement i i don't think it necessarily helps to have a slogan that is going to raise more questions with people that you then have to explain because i think the the benefit of a slogan when it's a good slogan is that it's obvious what it is and you don't have to answer a lot of questions about it yeah and i do think you you do need immigration enforcement in this country like Like I just, it's.

37:20Of course you do. You absolutely do. Right? And like now in an ideal world, now we could talk about like immigration reform writ large because I think the other challenge here is whatever you do with ICE, like that's just one. That's the issue we're dealing with right now. There's so many other problems in immigration that you have to solve and some of them really do are going to require legislation. But in an ideal world, you would have most of the federal agents, whether Customs and Border Patrol or ICE, near the border. and you would try to stop people from crossing illegally before they get here, right?

37:52That is not the world we live in. We live in a world now where there are millions of people who are here who are undocumented. They are in the interior of the country. And if there is someone with a criminal record, if there's someone who poses a threat to the community, if there's someone who's dangerous, then you can't just have border patrol. You actually need, and you can have law enforcement, but you also need like federal law enforcement to deal with this in some way. Whether you call it ICE, whether you call it whatever the fuck you want to call it. You just need that. and um so figuring out what that deportation force looks like and completely reforming ICE or or you can name it whatever the fuck you want I don't care I'm fine apparently we just changed the name of that legislation anyway so like I'm open to whatever right I do think that like having a debate in 2026 about what the DHS org chart will look like in 2029 it makes less sense to do now when, to me, the most important thing is to figure out how to stop ICE from terrorizing our cities right now.

38:49And I think the most important thing for 2028 and the race we're going to have in 2028 is to lay out a vision of humane immigration enforcement and what that would look like. The thing I would add to this is I believe to my core that after all of this, the next Democratic president is going to have the best shot we've had in a very long time to pass comprehensive immigration reform. I know. I was thinking about this the other day, because I think you could do it by, if you have the Senate, you could get rid of the filibuster and do it. Yes, you do. And I think that you may even be able to find some Republicans for it.

39:24Yep, maybe. Just we are living in a world of absolute chaos. And I mean, this is the brutal irony of what Trump and Stephen Miller have done is that by winning on an anti-immigrant platform. By governing in an anti-immigrant way, they have made Americans overwhelmingly more pro-immigration. The number of Americans who say immigration is a good thing for our country is at a 25-year high in the Gallup polling, a dramatic shift since 2024. 2024 is this horrendous singular blip where opinions on immigration, or basically during the Biden administration, went the exact opposite way that they had been for a very long time.

40:02And now back there, where American people understand, and the polling shows, that immigration is good for our country. Polling also shows that they believe that the people who have been here for a long time, who have been working and paying taxes in their community, should be given a path to citizenship. And that was true 15 years ago, and it's true again. And so I say that only to say, Like that, if we want to stop all of this, if we want to really on the change, prevent the next Trump from doing something like this down the line, the way you do it is you pass comprehensive immigration reform.

40:41And so you have to work backwards from what's the best way to do that and how would an abolish ICE or whatever your ICE reform plans fit in that. And that is not to say that you have to be pro-ICE to try to get like some sort of path to citizenship border security deal. just like where are you that's not what i'm saying at all i'm not making that case i think like ice needs to be better smaller renamed all the above reformed but just the way to think about is let's start with how do we fix the overall problem and then go backwards for that yeah it's and look there's a lot of big questions you have to answer that i don't think are easy like i don't want to make it sound like it's going to be very easy even if democrats have power to do it but You got to decide, like, what's the border going to look like?

41:26How are you going to handle deportations? How are you going to handle a path to citizenship? How are you going to decide who's a recent arrival and who's not? In some ways, because we have punted the problem so far down the road for so long, it was easier. It would have been easier to do it. I mean, it would have been easier to do it when George W. Bush thought about doing it. And then when we thought about doing it. And it's getting harder and harder because back then it was mostly immigrants from Mexico who were here undocumented. and we're going to get a path to citizenship. And, you know, in the Biden administration, there was an influx of immigrants and asylum seekers from Central America, South America, and all over the world.

42:04And so you do have a lot more recent arrivals who came in the Biden years, and you're going to have to figure out, like, who gets to stay and who doesn't and make sure that you, like, account for all of those people and then also figure out what our asylum laws are going forward. I mean, there's like a, you know, I'm not a complete immigration policy expert here, but, like, there's a lot of thorny questions here. But I do think that the goal should be a humane immigration system where we're welcoming to immigrants, but we also make sure that people follow the law, they'll follow our laws, and that we have like an orderly immigration system that finally works.

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45:39All right. So now we got the Justice Department, which when they're not busy investigating the widow of a woman the government shot in the head, they're also hard at work investigating the Fed chair, Democratic members of Congress, and now raiding the homes of journalists. On Wednesday, the FBI showed up at Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's house and seized her work computer, her personal computer, her phone, and her smartwatch. The warrant they obtained was issued as part of an investigation into a government contractor who may have leaked sensitive or classified information about Venezuela.

46:10Even though Natansin isn't the target of the investigation, the raid and the seizures are really shocking because, one, it's not a crime to publish classified information, and two, usually DOJ will try to get the information it wants through subpoenas, or at least they will try to do that first. Trump's DOJ is also now investigating the Democratic members of Congress who filmed a video where they merely told Americans serving in the military that they don't have to follow illegal orders. They have all been contacted by ace D.C. prosecutor Janine Pirro or her prosecutors, who's also investigating Fed Chair Jerome Powell, at least until outraged fellow Republicans talk her out of it.

46:49On one hand, this is just, you know, one terrifying abuse of power after another. On the other, it does seem like the Trump administration's very sloppy attempts to threaten and intimidate the president's perceived enemies keep backfiring. Like, I don't know that they have gained much from the attempt of the Comey prosecution, Tish James. Like, politically, they're not necessarily helping them. They really haven't borne fruit in court. And so I'm sure it satisfies Donald Trump and makes him happy. But I don't know. What do you think about this? Back in Trump 1.0, I used to describe the Trump presidency as the plot of House of Cards with a cast of Veep.

47:30And that is exactly what's going on here. We are blessed by the idiocy of our enemies and people like Gene and Piero doing this because they're just so bad at it. And it's funny that they're so bad at it and we're fortunate they're so bad at it. But then there's the alternative reality that we haven't even hit the one-year mark of this presidency. And at some point, they might get better people doing these jobs. And Janine Pirro makes her triumphant return to the five. And so they put someone else who's better at that job in there. And then that's where this gets worrisome. Yeah, it does. She tags out for Greg Gutfeld.

48:05I guess the question is who replaces her? No, and look, going after the senators and the members of Congress for that video is just fucking nuts to me. The Kelly thing was not just the Mark Kelly thing, what Hegseth tried to do the jerome pavel thing is clearly backfiring i mean like the fact that even piero is already trying to walk it back by being like actually we just called him for questions about the renovation and then he didn't get back to us and so what we had to like threaten an investigation and subpoenas like come on but you can tell that none of them think that this the fed chair especially was a good idea the post reporter thing is terrifying and like we have to see how this plays out in court and they have to like unseal the warrant to see like how they got the warrant everything but like raiding under reporters house is fucking nuts yeah let's talk about the latest in trump's efforts to acquire greenland through bribery or force uh after meeting with jd vance and marco rubio on wednesday the foreign ministers of denmark and greenland told reporters that a quote fundamental disagreement remains between the parties but said they agreed to form a quote high level working group to review the problem the problem being that the leader of the world's most powerful nation, is off his fucking rocker, and is willing to blow up our most important alliance because he thinks the map would look cooler if he owned Greenland.

49:25That's where we are. Because of that, France, Germany, the UK, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands have now sent troops to Greenland to conduct military exercises and show support for the Danes. In... This is, like... Reading this is so fucking nuts. It is It's hard not to laugh, but it's also horrifying at the same time, which I guess is like most of the Trump administration. But it is. Trump remains undeterred and said that if Russia or China occupied Greenland, there's, quote, not a thing that Denmark could do about it. But that, quote, there's everything we can do. You found that out last week with Venezuela.

50:06They're going to fucking send Delta Force into what to capture the Danish prime minister. What are they doing? i mean it's so stupid because if china or russia invaded greenland as members of nato we would fight back yeah it would trigger an article 5 response that's the whole point of i just think it's so funny that they were gonna have to have like a there's like probably a working group trying to figure out how article 5 applies if a nato member invades a nato member there's also the opportunity cost of everyone having to like spend their time and energy on this fucking senile old man's deranged plans for the world when like another deranged old man is at war with Ukraine and like threatening Eastern Europe.

50:55And now all the NATO countries are like spending time in meetings and sending troops to fucking Greenland because Trump thinks it looks cool on the Mercator projection. Of all the things we've dealt with over the many years that we've been forced to talk about and think about Trump. I've struggled to find something that was this dumb and this consequential as the federal government plan to invade or buy Greenland. Like, did you see the estimate that this working group put out that it would cost$800 billion to buy Greenland? Which is like, also, what are we going to, we're just going to pay, we're going to pay$800 billion?

51:34That's what the United States is going to do? Are we just going to give it to Denmark? Are we going to give it to the people of Greenland. I mean, it's just... And then, let's just play this out. The federal government is unwilling to pay a third of that to stop people's health insurance premiums from rising for 20 million Americans. Or to start... Or a fraction of that to feed children in Africa or prevent babies from getting HIV or give people clean drinking water, any of those things. But we have the money... But we're going to buy Greenland because it looks cool on a map. A place that we...

52:08already have a base and could have as many bases as we wanted, but we must own it for reasons that truly make zero sense. It is so fucking stupid. And, like, I don't know, I don't have a lot of faith in the high-level working group. Oh, you. Such a cynic. Finding a way forward here? Like, what way forward is there? It's not for sale. They've said that a million times. And so we're going to invade? I think they're just trying, I think the high level working group is trying to run out the clock on Trump's short attention span. Yeah. That's the other thing. It's like, and Gallego said this too, it's like, when a Democrat becomes president, we're just going to give it back.

52:54You know? That's going to be the first thing. What a group of litmus tests we're going to have. Destroy the ballroom, change the Department of War back to the Department of Defense, get all that weird stenciling off the White House. Yeah, the fucking, Now we've got a Rose Garden sign up. It looks like you're at a fucking Chili's. It's for him to know where he is at all times. He's an old doddering man who gets confused. So they're like labeling his clothes. Like, these are your socks. These are your underwear. This is the Rose Garden. In other hemispheric conquest news, Trump met with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Machado on Thursday at the White House, where she presented him with her Nobel Peace Prize.

53:37Did he accept it? I could not get to that. I could not find that in the reporting before this. No one seems to know yet. I see everyone with this question. Do you think he's the kind of person that's like, no, no, no, you keep it. You keep it. Yeah, I would assume. I was just looking for confirmation before I asserted it. But it's just so pitiful. It's so embarrassing that she is like, here, take this trinket so you can feel better about yourself. And that may improve our chances for a good policy outcome. Because now that you have deposed the authoritarian leader of my country, I would like to return and become that leader because I won the Peace Prize and the election.

54:17But instead, you have the authoritarian leaders number two in command there and don't seem eager to get rid of her at all because you have called her a terrific person. Because I guess she's giving you all the oil that you need. I think in hindsight. Now, I don't believe that Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. But to hindsight, it was probably a mistake not to give it to him. I mean, think of what's happened since they did not give it to him. You think Greenland wouldn't be happening if he had the peace press? We have bombed. We've invaded Venezuela. We've bombed Nigeria. We've invaded Minneapolis.

54:51Like, he's really, we are threatening Cuba. We're threatening Colombia. We are looking at bombing Iran. By the time you listen to this podcast, Iran could be bombed. We don't know. Good news on the oil, though. So Semaphore broke the news that the U.S. has brokered its first sale of Venezuelan oil, apparently worth around$500 million, which is being held in bank accounts controlled by the U.S. government with the main one located in Qatar. Why? Why are we stashing oil revenues in Qatari banks? We have a bank account in Qatar? Now we do. Do we think it's the U.S. governments? Really? It's very, very.

55:30But don't worry. We're going to get more oil because all those oil companies that are a little worried about going back into Venezuela because, you know, it's still basically a dictatorship and quite politically unstable. And Trump, you know, wants to keep his prime. He doesn't want to send. He wants to have boots on the ground in the form of American military. So now we're going to pay private military contractors to go to Venezuela and guard the oil. And one of them could be Eric Prince. I mean, one of them is almost certainly Eric Prince. Yes, and they're all, the White House put out an RFP, and they're all going to start bidding because, boy, is there going to be some money to be made from the U.S.

56:13government. So our tax dollars are going to go to pay military contractors to guard oil interests for the oil companies, to lure the oil companies into Venezuela so Donald Trump can sell the oil and put it in his Qatari bank account. What the fuck is going on? I mean, Donald Trump seems to be is going to get rich on this. The oil companies are going to get rich on this. The military contractors, the military contractors. Yeah, I guess it is a win. Big win for the win for the hemisphere. And and just in case our other neighbors in the Western Hemisphere haven't gotten the message yet. The New York Times reported on Thursday that the Trump administration is, quote, intensifying pressure.

56:49We know what that means on the Mexican government to let either U.S. special forces or CIA officers conduct joint operations on fentanyl labs in the country. So Mexico's next. That's cool. Over in the Middle East, which is not yet part of the Don Roe doctrine, Trump seems to have decided for now to hold off on taking military action against Iran in response to the regime's brutal crackdown on protests. Trump claimed on Wednesday that he'd heard from, quote, very important sources that, quote, the killing in Iran is stopping. It's stopped. It's stopping. And there's no plan for executions or an execution or execution.

57:26So I've been told that on good authority. Well said, sir. Well said. This is all because he gave an insane answer, an even more insane answer in the totally ridiculous and totally embarrassing interview with Tony DeCopal on CBS, where he learned in real time about that, about the hanging of protesters and then declared that that was his new red line. And that would be a very, I can't remember his words, but they were very strange and ominous. and he's like it's like how many i'm not arguing for trump to do anything here it's not really not uh hoping for a bunch of bombing or anything but it's like how many red lines is he going to draw and uh step right over and do nothing with and you can't tell you know it's like he they say he hasn't taken military options off the table one of our aircraft carriers is headed toward the region but it's like you know he does have a pattern of right when he says oh maybe i'm not Yeah, this is the thing.

58:20After all, then he sneaks in and bombs. You know, he kind of likes to do that. That's a play. This is the important part of my notes where I said, insert caveat, which is it feels like there's a very real chance that between now and when we record this podcast on Thursday afternoon and you're listening to it on Friday, that something may have happened because that's basically what happened with the Iran bombings. He said he's not going to do it. He set a timeline and then boom, they did it. So it could happen at any moment here. Yeah. I'm sure whatever the action is, it's going to be focused on saving the lives of the protesters.

58:46That is what he cares. As we can see all across this country, he is a man who deeply respects civil disobedience and protecting protesters. Human rights and democracy. Top of the list. Right after the oil. All right. One last thing before we get to my interview with Ruben Gallego, a podcaster, just wildly successful podcaster, Katie Miller, rocketing to the top of the charts. She had as her guest this week none other than Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who spilled some secrets about how his boss keeps functioning at such a high level. Let's listen. Who has the most unhinged eating habits?

59:25The president. He eats really bad food, which is McDonald's and then, you know, candy and Diet Coke. But he drinks Diet Coke all times. He has a constitution of a deity. I don't know how he's alive. If you travel with him, you get this idea that he's just pumping himself full of poison all day long. And you don't know how he's walking around, much less being the most energetic person any of us have ever met. Dr. Haas looked at his medical records and said he's got the highest testosterone level that he's ever seen for an individual over 70 years old. I don't even know where to begin with that I do think I do think it might be the best news I heard all week That the health and human services secretary Can't believe that the president's still alive And that he is Bumping him, believes he is bumping himself Full of poison all the time Yeah, I guess if we're looking For silver linings in this dark cloud I guess that's one of them Let's see, let's see Is it something about, does he have the body of a deity?

1:00:38Is that the constitution of a deity? Is that what he said? Could it be that? Or could he just be lying to everyone about how healthy he actually is? What is the truth there? I can't tell. Do you think he really has the highest level of testosterone of any man over 70 that Dr. Oz has ever seen? Yeah, yeah. Oh, and also he has an eight-inch dick. That's what he said right in the medical records. At least we got a pod title. That's good. It's just so funny to volunteer. They're like, oh, but what is this diet like? Also, really, really high testosterone. What a weird fucking thing. These people are so fucking weird.

1:01:14I know most people are listening to this and not watching it, but I do recommend the video because in it, there are all these very strange cutaways to Katie Miller silently laughing. Yeah, I know. Just like losing her shit. And then like he does call it when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls Trump the most energetic person he's ever seen. He has an arched eyebrow as if like, what are you talking about? this is a man who fell asleep in a oval office meeting 24 hours ago tip top shape tip top shape anyway you know what keep it in that candy keep it in that mcdonald's we're behind you 100 percent you're back on the hamburger from heaven uh move i just i think that's i might be responsible for his high tea it's all it's all one of those low t betas like us you know of us libs yeah All right.

1:02:02When we get back from the break, you'll hear my conversation with Ruben Gallego about Greenland voting for DHS funding and so much more. But two reminders before we get to that. Crooked Media's newest book, Hated by All the Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind, is releasing on January 27th. It's by one of our favorite political journalists, New York Times Magazine writer, Jason Zengerle. And it is a fascinating, really entertaining look at Tucker's political evolution and how his rise traces the rise of the MAGA movement. Tommy's going to interview Jason on Tuesday's Pod Save America, so make sure to check that out.

1:02:35And as I said, Hated by All the Right People comes out January 27th, but you can get a discount right now when you preorder a copy of Hated by All the Right People. Head to crooked.com slash books to get that discount and check out Jason's book, Signing Tour Dates. Also, there are still tickets available for our shows in New Zealand and Australia. The Hopefully Just Visiting Tour takes us to Auckland on February 11th and then three cities in Australia, Melbourne on the 13th, Brisbane on the 14th and Sydney on the 16th. For more details and to grab tickets, head to crooked.com slash events. When we come back, Ruben Gallego.

1:03:19This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The new year doesn't require a new you, maybe just a less burdened you. Therapy can help more easily identify what weighs you down by offering an unbiased perspective to better understand your relationships, motivations, and emotions. Therapy's great. A lot going on in the world right now. I'm sure there's a lot going on in your lives. You might not think you need therapy, but talking to someone always helps. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals.

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1:04:28Senator Gallego, welcome back to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me. Politically, the new year has been off to an absurd and infuriating start. What's pissing you off most right now? The fact that it's that. It's such a start. I mean, as any normal human, nobody wants chaos. And this president is all about chaos. He creates the chaos, whether it's, you know, starting a war in Venezuela, these massive suppression of our cities by those ICE agents or, you know, the buildup or some type of pressure campaign that we have going on for Greenland. You know, none of this makes sense. It all actually hurts Americans in the end.

1:05:10And, you know, of course, that pisses me off that, you know, we should be trying to help people right now because Americans are really hurting right now. Trump's once again threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, this time in Minnesota. DHS has already deployed a small army to Minneapolis. They're continuing to terrorize the people who live there, citizens and not citizens alike. Like, J.D. Vance tweeted the new line from the administration, which is that in cities that aren't sanctuary cities, the deportation process is orderly and normal. But in Minneapolis and a few other sanctuary cities, local jurisdictions and a few left wing agitators have decided to wage war on all immigration officers.

1:05:47What do you think of that? That's total bullshit. What's happening right now is that they're using overt force, you know, these men with masks to go and they're violating people's rights. They're racially profiling. They're going up to gas stations. And if you're not white, they're coming and asking you if you're if you're a citizen, having to prove that you're a citizen. Even some people that do have proper identification, not accepting them. They're using, you know, these tactics that, you know, we didn't even use in Iraq in urban areas to basically suppress and make the people feel like they're under attack or they're they're they're taken over.

1:06:20That's why you see videos of people reacting very harshly against these guys when they go into restaurants, when they go into stores, when they're all masked up, gunned up, and acting like they're stormtroopers because the American public does not like that. They don't like having this feeling like someone's coming after them or the government's here with their boot on the back of your neck. They don't do that in red states because they want to avoid the politics, but they do this type of overt suppression in blue states so they could get the political feels they get from them. They want to be able to say they stuck it to the libs.

1:06:56And they also want to create the environment for them to actually invoke the Insurrection Act. And let's be clear, the shit they're doing, right? And I was in cities of 50 ,000 to 100 ,000 cities of Iraqis in Iraq surrounded by insurgents. And we, Marines, well-trained Marines, did not act the way that they're doing, the way they're treating other fellow Americans right now. It's disgusting. Government funding's going to run out at the end of the month. There's been rumbling about Democrats withholding support for DHS, at least until there's changes to ICE. Do you think there's any chance that any of your Republican colleagues would support any kind of ICE reforms?

1:07:34No, absolutely not. This is the one thing that, from what I see, they understand that this is the red line you can't cross Trump on. You could maybe go a little against them on this issue, that issue. This is the world where, if you do this, Stephen Miller and his online bullies will come after you. So they're not willing to do it. Now, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't use whatever levers that we can to stop them. And I'm trying to figure out what that is. what is the best way to rein in this craziness? Is it just denying them the funding? If that's the best way to do it, I'm going to do that.

1:08:09If it's giving them some funding but putting tons of constraints on them, then I'll do that. But we need to figure out how to rein these monsters in because it is bad, bad. If there's a shutdown or a partial shutdown just because DHS isn't funding, I mean, does that impact what ICE is doing right now? Does that really deny them the ability to continue what they're doing right now in Minneapolis? So that's what we're trying to find out. And I think a lot of us that are sick of what we've seen so far and need to understand that this is not normal. We need to use every level of power to rein them in.

1:08:45That's what we want to explore. If we can rein them in through appropriations, then we'll do that. If not, I don't see why we would continue to be funding this craziness. And look, they're going to be able to get the money anyway because they passed that big ugly bill a couple years ago. But it doesn't necessarily mean that I have to make this easier for them. And so whatever is the best way for us to stop these guys from acting the way that they are, abusing U.S. citizens, racially profiling in our communities, physically harming Americans, we're going to try to find a way. Do you get a sense from your Democratic colleagues then that this is still a very live issue on whether or not you'll all join hands to fund the government?

1:09:26Talking to my Democratic colleagues, it sounds like a lot of them are aligned with me and a couple other people that we need to use this opportunity to rein them in, to constrain them, to do anything. Because right now they're just – it's lawless what they're doing. They're not acting like a police force. They're acting like a goon squad for this president. And they're not even effectively doing their jobs. I have friends of mine that I've known forever that are lifelong ICE agents and HSI agents. You know, they're getting pulled off. They're very important cases going after drug, you know, drug smugglers to going after money laundering, going after child exploitation cases because now they're forced to go look for people that, you know, maybe they're in the country illegally but have no other criminal record.

1:10:10And we're using a lot of time, money, manpower to go after them for a political effect, not an actual for actual real security effect for for everyday Americans. This has resurfaced an old debate among Democrats over whether to call for abolishing ICE. I'm just going to ask, if you were in charge of DHS, what would immigration enforcement look like? Well, if I was in charge of DHS, it would look like a very professional operation. Number one, you wouldn't be able to deport anybody without a warrant. And what we've seen right now is that without that safeguard, these guys feel they could go and grab anyone anywhere.

1:10:48And they're making mistakes, too. The reason the warrants are important is because a lot of times it creates the right conduct of how they go and grab and export some of these people. We would right-size the amount of people. There are way too many ICE agents. If you have so many ICE agents, that means they're just going to go after innocent people and or even feel the necessity to go after Americans. Americans, I would get rid of the quotas that they have to be filling because that encourages them, again, to just keep going out there and finding anybody. I would work with the president and the Senate to pass comprehensive immigration reform so we could focus on the real criminals and not the people that are just working here that we could legalize and have them have a job and stay with their families.

1:11:35And I would take off the masks. You have to be accountable. You have to be accountable to U.S. citizens. Police officers in almost every city, every day, interact with the public, and they do it in a professional manner, and this is why they don't wear masks. ICE agents, they feel that they could get away with where they want because they're covered. They're covering their faces. And this president has basically guaranteed them that he's going to give them all a pardon no matter what they do. That's not what should fly that way in the future. The argument you hear from some folks who want to abolish ICE is, you know, ICE is relatively a new agency anyway.

1:12:12It's only been around for a couple decades. And can't we go back to, you know, pre-ICE when there was still immigration enforcement but you didn't have ICE? What do you think about that? Well, I mean at that point it's still ICE, which is by a different name. The problem we have to avoid – and I actually don't necessarily disagree with that viewpoint either. I think the problem we have to avoid is like the everyday person is not as well read in when it comes to immigration policies, right? So if you say abolish ICE to somebody, they're going to be like, I don't know what that means. Everyone knows and understands we're always going to have to have a deportation force.

1:12:44Do we have to have one that is how ICE is currently acting right now? Lawless, without warrants, without justification. No, we don't have to have it that way. We can have something that we saw akin even before 9-11 that is a professionalized force that goes after criminals, it goes after people that shouldn't be in the country, that doesn't – in a manner that isn't abrasive to everyday civil liberties and Americans in general. But the confusion is around the language. And I think the general rule, especially as someone who has had to engage, by the way, in immigration and border policies for the last 16 years in Arizona, is if you're explaining, you're losing, right?

1:13:23And so let's be clear what we know Americans want. Americans want a secure border. Americans want criminals in this country to be deported. They don't want the mom, the dad with U.S. citizen kids, the people that have been here, that have community roots, that haven't had any major crimes. They don't want them deported. And let's create a force that reflects that instead of what it is right now, because what it is right now is not at all about immigration enforcement. It is about suppressing and trying to intimidate Americans in blue cities. You met with the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland on Wednesday, same day they met with J.D.

1:14:01Vance and Marco Rubio. Were they just like, what the fuck is wrong with your president? Like, were they freaked out? What was the mood there? Honestly, they were more politically stable than I would have been. It is clear from the conversation that I was having with them that Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance are trying to create an actual reason why we need to take Greenland, because the actual reason we want to take Greenland is a stupid, idiotic idea of the president, because he just wants to have that big island on the map being part of the United States. So talking to the foreign minister, they have been very clear, like if you want to build more bases, US bases in Greenland, you are welcome to build more bases in Greenland.

1:14:47You want to stage more men in Greenland, you're welcome to do that. We will cut off all commercial trade with China. We cut commercial trade with Russia, which they already have. Tell us what you want. We will do it. There's no need for any of this. And the ostensible reason why J.D. Vance Reba Cameron's like, well, that may be the case right now. But 10 years from now, you could be in a totally different situation. So there is no logical reason for them to be engaging this. It's actually harmful, right? Right now, you have people trying to figure out how to balance against us versus us being able to work with them to balance power against China, against Russia.

1:15:21We need the buying power of NATO as well as of the European Union to be able to really overcome the buying power of China. And we're going to make ourselves weaker in the long run if we go into a stupid war over Greenland, which in the end would not be successful. What happens when the next president comes? I guarantee you it's a Democrat. We're going to give it right back. And even if you try to, you know, I don't know, bring it in, you have to have a treaty process to that. And again, you'd have a lot of people against that. And this is monumentally unpopular right now. You know, people don't want any wars, let alone a war of Denmark or NATO, especially right now when there's so many other problems happening in this country.

1:15:59You introduced a bill this morning saying that any action in Greenland would require congressional authorization. Your Republican colleagues in the Senate folded to Trump's pressure on the Venezuela war powers resolution. Do you have any more hope when it comes to the Greenland resolution? I do, and for a couple reasons. Number one, this is a violation of a treaty that NATO came into as a treaty in the late 40s, early 50s. voted by the Senate. There's also generations of relationships across the pond with, you know, NATO leaders that a lot of these senators would lose respect, not among necessarily their citizens or Arizonans or, sorry, Americans, but across, you know, these people that they consider friends, you know, parliamentarians in other states, you know, generals from other countries.

1:16:50And I think they also understand the existential situation that would come if we end up getting into a stupid war for Greenland. It would be the dumbest, dumbest move, strategic move, that this country has done probably since its birth. It would end up destroying an alliance that has stabilized at least the Western Hemisphere. It would end up causing economic problems, slowing down our economy, and potentially making China the rising and permanent economic power. And these senators would all have to pay for it because guess what? Donald Trump is gone in three years. These senators have to run again and they will end up feeling and having to deal with the fallout of a very stupid war over Greenland.

1:17:39You also released a big housing affordability plan this week centered around making it easier to build more homes, making homeowners more affordable. Yeah. Very abundance coded, which reminded me this week also your Senate colleague Elizabeth Warren. She gave a big speech where she said, abundance has become a rallying cry for wealthy donors and other corporate Dems who are putting big time muscle behind making Democrats more favorable to big business. She made the argument that economic populism is much more popular with voters than an abundance message. I know that you've previously said there is no need to choose between populism and abundance, but what did you make of her comments?

1:18:17I mean, I get it. I think there is no need to choose. You can do both. And not care the color of the cat when it catches the mouse. Like, you know, you have to have the opportunity to build fast and you have to make some of the incentive for them to build fast. But you also do have to make sure that the big conglomerates that are controlling maybe timber, the mortgage industry or something like that, aren't becoming so powerful that it becomes uncompetitive, non-competitive for smaller businesses or even for the consumer. I think you got to do both. So like, you know, I'm agnostic when it comes to this stuff.

1:18:51Like, I don't take sides. This is like a gang fight, and I'm an innocent civilian. All I care about is results. And let me tell you, Americans, when you talk to them, aren't going to tell me, like, Ruben, I really hate the fact that you built that house, but you didn't do it in a populist way. Or the opposite, Ruben, I'm very disappointed that you used your abundance agenda to bring down my mortgage costs. That's ridiculous. That's not how normal people are. No one thinks that way except for a couple people and a couple zip codes around the whole country. Let's focus on results. And if you have to break up the banks to do it, then do it.

1:19:24If you have to make sure that we're introducing or cutting it on regulations to do it, then we do that. But this whole argument is a bunch of elites talking to a bunch of elites, and it's not going to make a bit of a difference. Yeah, I'm an elite, and it breaks my brain. Senator Gallego, thank you, as always, for joining Pod Save America. I know you've got a meeting to rush to, but thanks for coming on. Thanks, man.

1:19:53That's our show for today. Thanks to Ruben Gallego for coming on. Alex will be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with Strict Scrutiny's Leah Littman about legal avenues for pushing back on ice. Check it out. Bye, everyone.

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1:20:50team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellaviv, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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