Minneapolis ICE shooting, Tim Walz and 'America First' after Venezuela

0:00I would move to Greenland. I think it's cold. It is. It's very icy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because you know what I learned in The Mighty Ducks? Greenland is covered in ice. Ice in the sky. And Iceland is very nice. Did you know that from The Mighty Ducks? No? Okay, just me? No, I also know. You did not? That's why I signaled at you. Yes.

0:22From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Report's weekly politics roundtable. I'm Kolbe Ekowicz. It's Friday, January 9th. We'll begin today discussing the political fallout from the shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent. And then we'll stay in Minnesota to talk about Governor Tim Walz, the former vice presidential candidate who has decided not to run for re-election this week amid a major scandal in his state. We'll also discuss the latest on President Trump's ambitions in Venezuela and what it means for his ambitions around the world in places like Greenland. And we'll talk about why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is targeting Democrat Mark Kelly.

1:01Back with me at the table is Dan Merica, co-anchor of our politics newsletter, The Early Brief. And thrilled to have with us at the table, Michael Birnbaum. He is a White House reporter for The Post. Guys, thanks for being here. It's great to be here. Thanks for having us. Guys, I want to start with the tragic news out of Minneapolis. We saw on Wednesday a woman, a 37-year-old named Renee Nicole Good. She's a mother. She was killed by an ICE agent in her car. I wanna note, we're taping this on Thursday morning. So this is a story that is continuing to unfold. We're continuing to cover. We don't know how it's gonna play out.

1:39But we've already seen, you know, we've seen protests, and we've seen reactions from both political parties. And I wanna talk a little bit about that specifically. How this has already been divided along partisan lines. Dan, what have we seen so far? Pretty quickly after this happened, there was video on social media of it. It wasn't full video, there were different angles. But you saw people kind of rush to the video and in many ways see where their political ideology lined up. Obviously, the ICE actions in the United States are supported by Trump's base, by the Republican Party generally. And so you saw President Trump quickly take to true social, saying that he saw the video and castigating the woman who was killed in the car and defending the ICE agent.

2:26And the exact opposite happened from Democrats, nationally and also in Minnesota, where the mayor of Minneapolis came out very forcefully and blamed the ICE operation in the state for what happened, said that the administration was trying to spin what happened, and then used some pretty colorful language to tell ICE to leave the city that he leads. To ICE, get the f*** out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety and you are doing exactly the opposite. It really has become a bit of a political Rorschach test in some ways where, and we've seen this happen with other instances of tragedies like this that happen where how someone or how a politician or a political party sees a video largely falls or tries to, you know, comports with how they view what is happening in that region.

3:22And that is certainly what has happened here. The New York Times had an interview with President Trump on Wednesday when the shooting happened. and they pushed him on, you know, what his response was. And it was interesting that he, when he was showed the video and was told that there didn't seem to be an instance where the ICE agent was run over by the car, he didn't really have an explanation for it and just said it was a terrible scene and he didn't want to have that happen. There's this dynamic where he's being forced to kind of reckon with the video as it is. Right. And we should note, for those who maybe haven't seen the video, It's a woman sitting in, I think it's a Honda Pilot.

4:01She's kind of blocking a street where there are some ICE agents. And it seems like they approach the car. She starts to drive away. An ICE agent shoots directly into the car. We have reported, based on the video, that the car was very clearly, the wheels were turned away from the agent when the agent fired the shots. I mean, Michael, obviously, Obviously, Trump's immigration raids in cities all over the country have been quite controversial in his first year in office. ICE has increased its presence in Minneapolis. What does it say about this moment? Like, is this moment a tipping point for that larger conversation around immigration and deportations?

4:44Well, it certainly does feel like this is a big moment and something that's going to catalyze a lot of protest, a lot of discussion, perhaps even more polarization and an extremely polarized time. ICE has been conducting these raids around the country, but especially in Democratic cities over the course of the last year. And that's been paired with the military deployments in the streets of U.S. cities, National Guard and other troops being deployed, sometimes for immigration enforcement, sometimes just for law enforcement. What Democrats have said this whole time is that this kind of tremendous display of federal force in, again, largely Democratic cities is both inappropriate, not a good use of federal power in the case of military, largely unprecedented.

5:47and ultimately that it's going to lead, when you put a bunch of heavily armed agents, federal agents, into the streets of cities, sometimes those arms are going to go off and hit people. And so, you know, particularly this is Minneapolis, you know, this is where George Floyd was killed in President Trump's first term. Yeah. There are a lot of tensions here. And, you know, as Dan was saying, this does feel like a moment where, depending on which side of the political spectrum you fall on, you see something very different. It is worth noting that President Trump's ICE actions, while promised throughout his 2024 campaign, are largely unpopular with many voters, based on polling in 2025, last year.

6:36I mean, there was a Gallup poll that only 35 % of Americans approved of how Trump was handling immigration. And obviously, the way he's handling immigration is largely defined by these ICE raids. It's certainly the most public way that he's handling immigration. And you have to wonder that, you know, a lot of people don't sit on the news, they're not on Twitter at all days, they're not, like, engaging with content as much as probably reporters do. Yeah. But this breaks through. Sure. And this is all over the place. And the video is out there. You do have to kind of wonder that a moment like this, could it make what was already a relatively unpopular program being pushed by the Trump administration, could it make it more unpopular, even if it does break down along partisan lines?

7:15And does it benefit him, I've been wondering politically, that he is, at this point, really doubling down on it being the woman's fault, that she's kind of the bad actor in this storyline, and that the agent was defending himself, defending his life. There'll be an investigation. We will learn more about this in the coming days and weeks. But the fact that he was so quick to blame the woman who is now dead, a mother of three, is that going to backfire at all? I mean, it's a little hard to say. I think it's clear his reflexive defense of this ICE agent, his blaming of the woman. If you look at the video, our colleagues, our Washington Post colleagues have found, you know, the agent was not standing in front of the vehicle at the moment that he shot the driver.

8:08there were moments when he was standing in front of the vehicle. If you are predisposed to be sympathetic to these ICE raids, you're probably going to say, well, you know, this is an unfortunate moment, but the driver was at fault. But as Dan says, these are not especially popular among voters. If you're not very excited about them in the first place, but you haven't been paying much attention, this will probably break through. Yeah, well, we'll continue following the story here at the Washington Post, um, and on Post Reports. I wanna shift to another story in Minnesota that is political in nature, and that is Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

8:49Everyone got to know Tim Walz during 2024. He was Kamala Harris's pick to be her vice president. They introduced him to the nation, the world, as this kind of folksy, um, dad that... Former football coach. Yeah, former football coach. He was like an everyman. Um, his star was rising among... in Democratic politics. and now he is not running for re-election. Because there's this major scandal that happened in his state, and Republicans are trying to put the blame on Walls. Dan, explain this scandal to us. So it's a welfare scandal involving the misuse of Medicaid funds, particularly in the way that they have been used for child care and food bank centers.

9:26And Walls and the Democrats have accused the Trump administration of trying to politicize something and, you know, really using kind of racist anti-immigrant overtones because the food banks and the childcare centers are run by Somali immigrants, of which there are many in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. And so, Walls said that he was not going to run for re-election and continue to fight for his constituents in Minnesota, including Somali immigrants, and I think at one point he said that any time he spent focused on a third term, this would be his third term as governor, would be time not spent on defending Somali immigrants and other folks in Minnesota.

10:06For that matter, Walls has said that the buck does stop with him. He has acknowledged numerous times, I think, in December, that fraud did happen. And that it was worth investigating, and that the people of Minnesota deserve to know where their taxpayer dollars are going. But it's worth knowing, this is something that he has said, they are investigating as well, amid all of this focus from the federal government and the Trump administration. It is a remarkable fall for Tim Walls. I mean, there was a point where he was kind of the prototype typical rural House member Democrat, where people would, you know, when they would talk about Democrats struggling to win in rural areas, they would look to him because he represented a swath of southern Minnesota that was largely rural, south of Minneapolis.

10:50And I think that was part of his appeal to the Harris campaign. Absolutely. Then he runs for governor, he wins, he's a governor of a large state. His stock rises in large part because he was somewhat of an attack dog for Democrats around the Trump campaign, and that I think got the attention of Harris as well. And so she selects him over other probably better known Democrats that she could have selected. And then again, he was the attack dog for the Harris campaign as well. He was often the one delivering the most pointed vicious attacks against the president that gave him a lot of credibility on the left and it made him an enemy on the right.

11:28And so when Harris loses and he goes back to being governor of Minnesota, that kind of antipathy on the right followed him back to Minnesota. And I think you saw he was a target of right-wing media, of right-wing actors, of the president himself in numerous occasions. And so the fact that he went from somebody who was lauded as a House member, a rising governor, someone who was even getting 2028 presidential speculation, to not running for a third term, it's a pretty remarkable shift for a once Democrat rising star. I mean, what do you make of the fact that Trump has really focused on this story?

12:02Like he's out there on Truth Social slamming Tim Walz, attacking the Somali-American community in Minneapolis. Well, it fits into a lot of his favorite issues. I mean, one favorite thing is slamming Tim Walls. Another is particularly this focus on Somali immigrants. You know, this is something that dates back to his first term. Uh, he clearly does not like the country. He's talked about Somalia and other countries in, um, quite denigrating, uh, profane language that we can't use on this podcast. And, um, he also really doesn't like Ilhan Omar, who, you know, is a representative from Minnesota and a member of the Somali-American community.

12:55And so this is a moment where he can talk about fraud. He can talk. He can hit Democrats. He can hit Somali immigrants. And it's kind of a perfect storm of a lot of his issues. And, you know, in terms of the fraud, you know, it is a meaningful scandal. And so he's been very happy to jump on it. And so they're blaming Tim Walz because he was the governor at the time this fraud happened. I mean, is there anything to suggest that Tim Walz is implicated in this fraud, that he allowed this to happen? Implicated, no, but that he was the governor, the leader of the state at the time, that there was this fraud happening.

13:37I think is the attack against him that he didn't audit enough, didn't check enough. But it's worth noting that this is something that didn't just crop up under the Trump administration. This is something that happened and was investigated under the Biden administration as well. And that Walls himself was investigating in the state. Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. But it is a potent political issue for all the reasons that were mentioned and the fact that there are a few things that Donald Trump enjoys more than taking down somebody who's been incredibly critical of him. And this is an example of that for sure.

14:10All right, guys. Well, let's pause here. And after the break, we're going to talk about President Trump's moves in Venezuela, what it means for Greenland, and then we'll also talk about Pete Hegseth and his focus on Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. We'll be right back.

15:13So we, earlier in the week, covered extensively the massive news that the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. In fact, Michael, you were our guest on that show with our host, Martine Powers, on Monday. Obviously, this is another story that continues to play out. The fallout from it continues and will continue in the weeks and months and years ahead because the U.S. is continuing aggressive actions related to Venezuela. It didn't just stop with the capture of Maduro. In fact, the U.S. seized two Russian oil tankers. What is that about? How is that related? What do we know about the U.S.'s plans going forward?

15:54Colby, I mean, this is just one expression of raw American power after another. Trump seems to have gotten into a certain kind of groove here. What we saw Wednesday was, in fact, this kind of extraordinary confrontation around a Russian-flagged oil tanker transporting Venezuelan oil. At this point, the tanker had gotten to the North Atlantic, actually not that far from Greenland, another target of Trump's desires at the moment. You know, essentially, Trump deposes Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday in an extraordinary overnight raid and is talking a lot about oil. So they are going to continue to put pressure on Venezuela's oil industry.

16:43They want that oil for the United States. They made it very clear. Trump has said if the new Venezuelan leaders who are more or less like the old ones, except maybe pro-American, don't allow U.S. oil industry access, they're going to reinvade and redepose. And that oil blockade and those seizures of those Russian ships is an element of that. But I'm just I was gonna say, like, Trump separately is trying to make nice with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He's been very accommodating to Putin over the last year. They are engaged in peace talks in Ukraine. This seizure of Russian-flagged ships...

17:20...is an extraordinary confrontation with Moscow. It's not coherent. It's not part of... It does not appear to be a sort of broader part of a strategy about engaging with Russia or dealing with Venezuela. It is something that is going to make people in Moscow sweat. And in fact, it is a major confrontation with another nuclear power, you know, given the extent to which the Kremlin had requested the United States allow these tankers to pass through. It's really a fascinating moment. Yeah. And you mentioned Greenland as part of the rest of his foreign policy. After he deposed Maduro, he started talking again a lot about wanting to take over Greenland.

18:08And I wonder, now that we've seen what he did in Venezuela, does it make it more likely that we could see him try to seize Greenland by force? So Greenland, a Danish territory, it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Denmark is a close U.S. ally, fellow NATO member, suffered disproportionately in Afghanistan, fought along the United States in a NATO action after September 11th, 2001. They are astonished that Trump is talking about taking Greenland, whether by force or coercion of some sort. They say, if you want a bigger military presence there, you can have it. If you want U.S. investments in critical minerals, you can do it.

18:54There's nothing standing in your way. Trump and his allies have said, we just want to have Greenland. And, you know, the things that the Danes are offering are not enough. It's really an extraordinary moment. The Danes are, the technical term is freaking out. And Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has issued multiple statements over the last couple of days saying, you know, this is an issue that would split NATO. It'd be incredibly damaging. And yet, you know, the White House is pushing forward. It seems, you know, they've threatened military force. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress on Monday, you know, this public pressure campaign is really part of a strategy to encourage Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States.

19:50Denmark says it's not for sale, and the Greenlanders would have a say anyway. But it is this extraordinary moment where, you know, Trump really wants this thing, and it has kind of revived a little bit out of nowhere. This was something he talked about very early in his term a year ago. It had quieted down, and it has suddenly come back roaring to the fore. What's interesting about both of these, I mean, this has gotta be the first time that Venezuela and Greenland have been in the same geopolitical conversation, maybe ever. But what's interesting is that a lot of this is an echo of Trump's first term.

20:28In the first term, there were books written afterwards that said that Trump had talked about toppling Maduro and taking over the oil in Venezuela, that he had, I mean, he was very, there was a very, uh, a big scoop in the first term by the Wall Street Journal about him coveting Greenland. When the news broke that he had speculated and had desired, uh, you know, buying Greenland. I think it was cast as, like, the biggest real estate deal he could make. The response from Denmark and from Greenland was basically mockery. I mean, Greenlandic officials called him a circus. You had, I think, even Fredriksson, even the current prime minister of Denmark, mocked the proposal.

21:05A former prime minister said that it was April, must have been April Fool's Day. So you had this kind of mockery of Trump for even suggesting it. You look at how different that is now. I mean, the Maduro action happens, and it kind of shows that there are no longer empty threats from this administration, and they will take audacious action if they want to. Because he feels more emboldened? Because he feels like there's no guardrails? He can do these things now? Well, in the first term, he had a crew of both domestic, but also especially foreign policy advisors who were much more traditional and spent a lot of time holding him back.

21:40Now he has foreign policy advisors who are dedicated to enabling him and facilitating his impulses in all number of ways. And, you know, also he is a second-term president, probably not running for a third term. Probably. And he's in legacy-building mode. What better legacy than to expand the territory of the United States, redraw the maps, redraw world history? That's a good way to assure your immortality and, you know, write yourself into history books. His own doctrine. I mean, I've been thinking about this in a way that, you know, Donald Trump doesn't speak very fondly of his predecessors.

22:22I mean, think about Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, even Republicans. He castigates them roundly. You think about the presidents who he lauds, they're folks from the 1800s who are best known for expanding the size and power of the United States. Obviously, James Monroe with the Monroe Doctrine. he joked this week in calling it his version the Donrow Doctrine. But even, you know, he was the first president to visit Andrew Jackson's home in Tennessee during the first term since Ronald Reagan. Jackson, famous for expansion of the West and the Trail of Tears and a whole host of things, a very controversial president.

22:58But then you think about William McKinley. He renamed Denali, the mountain in Alaska, back to its name of Mount McKinley. He moved a portrait of McKinley in the White House to a more prominent position. McKinley is famous for Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines expanding the size of the United States. So, for a guy who doesn't like his predecessors, the predecessors he does like have the same worldview as him. They just were president, you know, 150, 200 years ago. That worldview being, make America as big as possible. Yeah, I mean, and it's the way that this comports with the idea of making America great again.

23:34And this America first vision. I mean, there's this inherent tension with this slogan, and make America great again. Well, when was America great? Maybe for Donald Trump, America was great in the 1800s, but it was expanding its power and its influence across the Western Hemisphere. Now, I'm not sure that his supporters see it that way. I mean, many of the reasons, many of his voters flocked to him because he was anti-interventionalist, because he spoke out about stuff like the Iraq War, that he criticized kind of the foreign policy views, especially in 2016, of Hillary Clinton, who was far more traditionalist, view of foreign policy, former Secretary of State.

24:10But you have seen his administration rush to cast what happened in Venezuela as America first, because they know that he ran on something different. He ran as an anti-interventionist. He ran as focused on domestic issues. So there's this kind of question hanging out there of how does this fit in the America first document. Well, that's a question I had for you, Dan, because, again, like you've said, the whole MAGA movement is about America first, and his whole campaign was about lowering inflation costs and the economy and making life better for Americans. And yet we've seen him in his first term really focused on things, episodes around the globe.

24:47And I do wonder how Americans will respond to that and how that might even impact the 2026 midterms if Americans are feeling like the president is distracted by things around the world and not making their lives better. I mean, you see in the way that Trump responded that he said that Venezuela, that we're gonna take the oil of these seized tankers and that he was gonna control the money that came from that, and that he was gonna use it for the American people. So that he's taking this foreign policy issue and trying to kind of translate it into real money terms for the United States, because he knows very well that this election in 2026 will be decided not on foreign policy.

25:25Not on what happens in Venezuela. It will be decided on whether the price of eggs is higher, whether people feel like the money that they make goes as far as it had in the past. Well, at the same time, I mean, you see the president and his top advisors, Stephen Miller in particular, his deputy chief of staff, who has been very, very focused on immigration, painting Venezuela as an anti-drug action and as an anti-immigration action. They say that Venezuela has been funneling drugs to the United States, not especially accurately, but that it has also been both a source of migration to the U.S. and also a sort of way country on the way to the United States.

26:11So by imposing a pro-U.S. leader on the country, they say they can reduce the flow of drugs, address those drug issues, and reduce migration, potentially also send a bunch of Venezuelans from the United States back to Venezuela. So they are trying to cast this as, you know, essentially a domestic issue. Yeah. I want to end, guys, on this story that really struck me this week. And it's related somewhat to Venezuela because Senator Mark Kelly, the Democrat from Arizona, along with several other members of Congress who are also retired military, retired intelligence, They put out this video back in November that basically said to service members and people in the intelligence community, you don't have to follow unlawful orders.

27:19and the intelligence community who take risks each day to keep Americans safe. We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military but that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad but from right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.

27:54And in that case, they were referring to the bombing of these boats off of Venezuela, these boats that were allegedly bringing drugs into America and were killing everybody on board last year. So what happened after that is that the Trump administration was furious and called them traitors and treasonous and seditious. And this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took an action against Mark Kelly that was pretty unprecedented. Michael, what happened? Well, as you said, Mark Kelly, a senator from Arizona, has been involved in saying very prominently, you know, he himself is a veteran. He's been saying, you don't have to follow illegal orders.