Is Minneapolis a turning point in Trump's presidency?

0:00And did you guys happen to hear we have a new song from Bruce Springsteen? Through the winter's ice and cold. It's very much in line with who Bruce Springsteen is as an artist. I thought what was interesting is how pointed the song was. He is directly writing about Trump. King Trump's private army from the DHS. He refers to him as King Trump in the lyrics. And it does pick up on a tradition that was bigger in the 60s and the 70s than it has been recently, where artists used to write more specifically about individual events that happened in the news. That's not something you see a lot now. And so the fact that Springsteen did that is, I think, a bit of a marker.

0:55From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Report's weekly politics roundtable. I'm Colby Echowitz. It's Friday, January 30th. Today, we're discussing the latest fallout from Minnesota and how President Trump is responding. And we'll hear how Democrats in Congress are fighting back. With me at the table again is Dan Merica, co-anchor of our politics newsletter, The Early Brief, and thrilled to have senior national politics reporter Naftali van David. Guys, thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Senior national. Wow. Congratulations on that. Not just senior, also national.

1:28Oh, yeah, you got both. I want to start with the political fallout from the killing of Alex Preddy in Minneapolis over the weekend by federal law enforcement agents. So in the immediate aftermath of his death, there were Trump officials that came out disparaging him, calling him a domestic terrorist, saying he was brandishing a gun. But as we all know, we've seen videos of the incident from several different angles. The Washington Post has reported that that narrative is inaccurate. it. And that has really caused Democrats and Republicans to criticize the Trump administration. And Naftali, I want to start with you because you reported this week on the response here in Washington.

2:06And you wrote that the Trump administration's handling of it, and I quote, reflects a potentially significant shift in the dynamics of the Trump presidency. What did you mean by that? Well, I think one of the notable dynamics in the whole Trump presidency has been the way that Republicans tend to march in lockstep with whatever the administration says and whatever the administration does. So the fact that after the pretty killing, there were a number of Republicans who criticized the way the agents behaved, who asked for investigations, who said that they were planning hearings. It was really something different than we've seen in the past, particularly when it comes to domestic policy.

2:42And let's not forget that immigration is sort of President Trump's signature issue. And so to have a number of Republicans really challenge and push back the way the administration conducted itself, I really think was notable and potentially an inflection point. It highlights the tightrope that Trump is walking here. He ran, as Naftali points out, he ran on immigration. It was the bulk of the speech he gave when he came down the escalator in 2015 and announced his presidential aspirations. But if you look at the 2024 campaign, many polls afterwards showed that the main reason people voted for him was not immigration.

3:16It was the economy. People thought they were paying too much for goods and their dollar wasn't going as far. And so you have this huge block of voters who backed President Trump because of the economy. And they are seeing these videos. This is breaking through in a way that other news events haven't. And they see the president who's not necessarily focused on what they wanted him to be focused on when they elected him. And that's why he's in this tough moment because his base that has been with him for a decade, very much motivated by this immigration issue. But the swing voters, independents, people who may not have voted for Trump in the past, way more motivated by the economy.

3:52And that's where that tension is. And I think that tension is being felt in the way that Republicans in the Trump administration are responding to this. And we should also note that as we're talking here, there's been another video of Preddy that has resurfaced. It's from about 11 days before he was shot and killed. He's running after an agent's car. He seems to spit on the car, kick out a taillight. Some people on the right are showing this video to suggest that he was he was an agitator. I don't think for a lot of people who see that video They think that that means that he should have been killed But I just wanted to put out there that that video exists And so to your point dan people are angry and scared and confused.

4:35I think I think the way that it's broken through is kind of The story and the response, you know, I full disclosure I'm a huge soccer fan and i'm very excited for the world cup I listen to a lot of soccer podcasts multiple soccer podcasts that have nothing to do with american politics this week mentioned what was happening in Minnesota because it's on everyone's mind. I mean, that is a reoccurring theme throughout kind of popular culture right now, where forums that were not necessarily known to be political have been more political and have focused on what's happening in Minnesota right now. And what's so striking about that is that President Trump was extremely good at using non-political forums when he ran.

5:13It really worked to his benefit and he was able to motivate people who were not used to voting. Now that very thing is working against him. And I think that's a dynamic he hasn't seen before. The other broader problem for the administration is, I think, in a way, the democratic message is this country is out of control. So in a way, this goes beyond immigration and even beyond ICE. The democratic argument is prices are out of control. Our foreign policy is out of control. The president is chaotic. And now the clashes in the cities play into that message. So I think the reach of this goes beyond just the immigration and even just the issue of ICE itself.

5:48So I want to get to the White House and Trump's actual response, because immediately afterwards, it did, you know, we had some stories that Trump was softening. You know, we saw Trump pull Greg Bovino, who was kind of running Border Patrol in Minneapolis, out and send in Tom Holman, who is his kind of immigration border czar. And so people thought that that signaled that maybe Trump was going to change his tune on immigration. He had this conversation with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. He talked to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry, who said that Trump had told him that they were going to pull some people out.

6:25But now it seems like Trump is saying that's not really true and they're not going to do that and that, you know, status quo. So I'm a little confused about where the White House is on this. Well, that does really highlight the conundrum that they're in, because they still need to keep their base motivated. And their base just wants to double down and even go further than they've gone so far. But a lot of centrist voters don't want that. And so Trump is trying, I think, to walk that line. It was very interesting that Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, was dispatched to Minneapolis and Greg Bovino, who's more of a combative pugnacious type figure, was removed.

7:00And, you know, Homan's talking about a drawdown and they're definitely sending conciliatory messages. But Trump has always survived by doubling down on his base. But that has relied on two things that I don't think are happening right now. One is the Democrats being unmotivated. Nobody can say that's the case right now. And the other is that independent voters are willing to give him a shot. I don't think that's the case right now either. So the question is whether this longtime strategy of just delivering a message to the base can work, particularly in the midterms. And the interesting thing here is that Trump's base has somewhat come up in his image.

7:34You know, they have Donald Trump is someone who is defined not only in his political life, but in his business life as a counterpuncher. He does not admit, you know, that there was an issue or he doesn't really admit mistakes really ever. Yeah. And his strategy is, as Naftali says, is to punch back. And the Republican base, which I don't think 10 years ago was defined by that, has been far more defined by that in this last 10 years because of the Trump effect, because of what he has meant to that base. And so they are looking for that as well. He has sort of brought them up in his own image. And so if he doesn't continue that image, that is equally as damaging as it could have been if it's more like a more traditional president.

8:13I mean, that's a great point. And another, I think, fascinating issue is the gun issue. Yes. Thank you. I wanted to bring that up. Yeah. I mean, because that is affecting some people who are in his base. I think that the administration arguably made a misstep or at least weakened their position with some of his supporters by focusing so much on the fact that Alex Preddy had a gun. And there was a lot of messages from the administration officials suggesting that maybe this was all justified or he brought it on himself or at a minimum he made things a lot worse and could be blamed for exacerbating the situation because he had a gun.

8:46But he didn't brandish the gun. He didn't withdraw it. He was disarmed before he was shot. That's what the videos show. And so plenty of gun rights supporters were very upset at the messaging from the administration that, well, the guy brought a gun. What can he expect? Yeah. I mean, right to carry is a huge central tenet, right? of a gun rights backer's position, which is that you should be allowed to carry guns wherever you want to carry guns. And so for Trump and others in the administration to say, well, he kind of had it coming because he brought a gun to a protest, really flies in the face of what Second Amendment supporters have been fighting for.

9:23And you saw these groups push back against the president in a way that they haven't in the past. I mean, the president, he was asked by reporters outside of the White House about some of the conversation around Freddie being armed. You know, he can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns. You just can't. These gun rights groups criticized him very pointedly for saying that. It was a remarkable moment because I don't think many groups like that, more conservative groups, have criticized the president on not only just the gun issue, but just issues in general. And it highlights how out of step that conversation and that talking point was with kind of Republican orthodoxy on concealed carry weapons.

10:03There's also this fascinating counterpoint with something that people may remember from a few years ago when a guy named Kyle Rittenhouse, he brought a gun to a racial justice protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and he ended up killing a couple people, actually, a couple of the protesters. He was acquitted, we should say, of murder. But he became a hero to conservatives and to gun rights advocates. And so to sort of, let's say, deify this guy who brought a gun to one protest, but then say that a guy who brought a gun to another protest kind of deserved what he got when he was killed, that's creating some real kind of cognitive dissonance, I think, on the right.

10:38Notably, Rittenhouse this week responded on Twitter by saying people should be allowed to conceal carry. So even he kind of took issue with the way that the administration was talking about the gun issue. I mean, I was going to say that the hypocrisy is great here, right? I mean, we also saw January 6th protesters with guns at the Capitol. And so, you know, And that was all forgiven. A lot of those people were given pardons by the president. So I do think, I wonder if gun rights advocates will think like, well, maybe he's not on our side as much as he says he was when it's not convenient for him to be on our side.

11:15I mean, the way the politics usually work is when there's an enemy that you can vilify, that brings people back to your side. And so my guess is when Republicans are running against Democrats and Democrats may have stronger gun control positions, these gun rights advocates are certainly not going to flock to Democrats and probably won't abandon Trump. But it's been really notable, this breach right now. And I think it's not a small thing. You talked about hypocrisy, but I mean, let's say for the gun rights people, they're not being hypocritical. I mean, they're saying it wasn't right, you know, to make this argument when Democrats made it.

11:46And it's not right when Donald Trump is making it. This also gets to the point that you and I have talked about this before is that Trump is incredibly mercurial. You know, he is surrounded by many people. Many of them have different perspectives. and oftentimes the president responds or talks like the last person who was in his ear. This is something that was well documented in his first term and as well in his second term. So all that we're talking about right now is he's kind of changed his mind. Maybe he softened. Does that change how he goes about immigration enforcement in the future? That could change in mere days.

12:19There's numerous things that could happen over the next few months that would shift his thinking on immigration, including just talking to somebody who thinks he's making a mistake. And does that mean that he ramps up the immigration enforcement? We just don't know with the president because he really does respond to the last person who speaks with him. The White House has definitely, though, made Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem kind of the fall woman for what happened. In Minneapolis, obviously, we also have Stephen Miller, who's kind of the architect of all of this ramp up of immigration enforcement.

12:51Will there be any consequences for Noem? I know people are calling for her to be fired. I've seen some Democrats say, you know, I won't support anything until Miller is gone. What do you think Trump's going to do about the people in his orbit? I mean, I do think that Kristi Noem is facing pressure unlike what a Trump cabinet secretary has faced in the past. Obviously, people like RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth have faced pressure. But that was mostly from political adversaries and critics of the president. In this case, there are some Republicans calling for her ouster and even some Republicans who aren't explicitly doing that are refusing to say when asked by reporters that they support her.

13:29So I think this is a new level of pressure. Yeah. I mean, and one example of that is Tom Tillis. We saw that from the senator from North Carolina who he was being interviewed by a CNN reporter this week. And he was talking about his frustration with Noam and also with Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller. They're discrediting even these officers. They're going to make their job more difficult and more dangerous with this incompetence that I'm seeing out of Nolman, out of Stephen Miller. The president called you a loser, I believe. I am thrilled about that. That makes me qualified to be Homeland Security Secretary and senior advisor to the president.

13:59Trump, however, does have a history of standing by people who, you know, stand by him and who go out and fight for him. So I wouldn't necessarily count on anything happening to her. But I do think she's in hot water in a way that she and really any other Trump official has not been in the past. The other thing to mention is that if Democrats do retake the House in November, which I think is not unlikely, plenty of them want to impeach her. Now, it's unlikely she'd ultimately be removed by the Senate. But just as Republicans pushed to impeach President Biden's Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

14:32Over immigration. Over immigration. I mean, you could see sort of a mirror image of that taking place should the Democrats retake the House in the fall. Trump is at a remarkably stable second term when it comes to his cabinet. Yeah. There haven't been the kind of comings and goings in the cabinet, in his West Wing, that were really the hallmark of his first couple of years in the White House in his first term. Part of that is many people think he doesn't want to admit that he makes mistakes. And by firing Noam, he would be admitting that he may have made a mistake by nominating her. He likes to stick with people who stick by him.

15:07That has a limit, of course. Loyalty is largely a one-way street with the president. that he demands loyalty, but oftentimes he's also willing to throw someone who has been loyal to him under the bus if it serves his political interests. I really think predicting what the president is going to do and whether he's going to fire someone is like predicting whether my three-year-old is going to enjoy the meal that I made him or demand a new one. It's a fool's errand. And that's why I think for Trump, it's very much a day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour question. This reminds me a little bit of the moment in the first Trump administration when there was a huge blow up over the separation of children from parents.

15:48And you had images of kids being ripped away from their parents' arms. And there was a huge backlash. And I think what this kind of shows is that both sides tend to overread their mandates when it comes to immigration, which is a hugely emotional, hugely volatile issue. So Trump won the first time talking about immigration, had a very harsh immigration policy. Voters rebelled. Then President Biden won, promising a kinder, gentler, more humane policy. That was followed by images of chaos at the border. Voters rebelled against that. Then President Trump ran again on immigration, and now here he is.

16:20So I think this is one of those issues in American politics that people feel all kinds of different things about. It's chaotic. It's emotional. Neither party has really been able to address it to the satisfaction of the public. It's so interesting to tell you because I actually spent a day this week at the U.S. Conference of Mayors where I was talking to mayors from all over the country, big cities, small cities, Republican, Democrat, you know, and they, like, to the person, take a really nuanced perspective on immigration, which is, you know, we need to secure our borders, but we need a pathway for citizenship for people that are here illegally and have lived here a long time.

16:58And I believe that that's probably where the mass, where the majority of Americans are on immigration, right? Something in the middle. And yet we're always pushed to the extremes on immigration, right? You can either be for a secure border or you can be for a pathway to citizenship and allowing people to stay here in this country. And that is quite the throwback to, I believe it was around 2013, where there was a gang of eight senators, including now Trump Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then the senator of Florida, who they struck a bipartisan deal on immigration. It passed the Senate. And then House Speaker John Boehner declined to take it forward.

17:35And so it just died in the House. There have been attempts before to get a bipartisan immigration deal done. Marco Rubio faced criticism from Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary over his role in the gang of eight and bipartisan immigration agreement. And it really highlights how much the immigration argument has changed or conversation has changed since that moment. Yeah, I mean, immigration used to be something that Republicans had a much softer take on. I mean, President George W. Bush was a huge advocate of finding reforms to our immigration system that would help people find a pathway to citizenship.

18:11But that seems to not exist anymore in the Republican Party. I also think it's really, really to Congress's discredit that they haven't been able to solve this major social problem facing the country. I mean, presumably that's their job. And any number of times in the past, not just five years, but like 20, they've come close. And there's been, you know, bipartisan senators that were trying to do something. Going back to John McCain and Lindsey Graham. I mean, they've tried any number of times. This last time, I think it's fair to say, President Trump sort of openly torpedoed it because he wanted the issue.

18:40He said that explicitly. But even without that, they've just been unable to come together because every time that they are close, people who are a little more to the political fringes make a huge issue out of it and it blows up. But arguably, we're in this situation because Congress has been unable to do what people elect Congress to do, which is come up with comprehensive bills to solve large social problems. Yeah. Yeah. So one more thing I wanted to note before we before we take a break is Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who's up for reelection this fall. She's in a tough race. She's considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans.

19:15Announced on Thursday morning that the administration is going to pull back agents in its, you know, ramp up of immigration enforcement activities in that state. She said that she had spoken to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and that Noem told her that they were going to end those advanced tactics. And I think that's so interesting because obviously, again, Collins is one of a handful of senators that will decide who controls the Senate in the fall. And I just found that really fascinating because something similar also happened in North Carolina where they ramped up and then quickly pulled back.

19:52And it seems to me that they're looking at states like Maine and North Carolina where they have really where the Senate can hinge on those races. And the Republicans in those states are saying, wait a minute, like you don't want images from these states like you're seeing in Minnesota if you want to keep the Senate. Is that how you understand it? I mean, Susan Collins' entire political argument this cycle is, I am one of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate. You should reelect me to represent the state of Maine because I can deliver for this state as I've been delivering for decades. And this plays right into that.

20:24You know, she is running as competence. She's running as someone who can deal with these issues. And by bragging and by boasting that this dwindling of enforcement in the Lewiston and Portland areas of Maine, that really fits into her argument. And there were thoughts that any kind of scenes like we saw in Minnesota in Maine would directly impact her, would fire up a progressive base. Maine is a blue state. She has been kind of the oddity in that state and having the ability to win statewide. I spoke to a lot of Democrats this week, including one, Seth Moulton, of Massachusetts congressman, who traveled to Minnesota to speak with protesters.

21:03He met with the ACLU. He went to vigil sites. And he told me that he wanted to be there to show support. But he also wanted to be there because he thinks Massachusetts could be next, that you could have enforcement activity in a city like Boston. And he wanted to be prepared to know what worked, to know what didn't work. It was a sign that Democrats are not going to drop this. They want to be prepared if this comes to their state. And they know, frankly, that this is a political loser for many Republicans, even if it is traumatizing for local communities that this happens in. I do think it shows, too, that the White House is worried about losing the Senate.

21:36I mean, I think it's fought by strategists on both sides. The Democrats will almost certainly retake the House and the Senate is sort of more of a long shot. But I think the way that they've acted in Maine in particular does show that they are worried. Beyond that, President Trump has, I think, needlessly antagonized a few senators, Tom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, others that were relatively loyal to him. And then he kind of turned on them for some small dissent. And I think he's made his own political landscape in the Senate more difficult than it had to be. But, yeah, I think that they're I think they're pretty worried about the Senate.

22:07All right, guys, let's take a brief pause. After the break, we're going to talk a little more about the Democrats' response to what happened in Minnesota and the impact it could have on the midterms. We'll be right back.

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