1600 Mailbag: Carlo Talks ICE, Trump's Health and...Smurfs?

0:00It's mailbag day in America. You've got questions. We've got answers. Let's get into it. Letters. We get letters. Good day, everybody. From the top of the World Trade Center here at Newsweek headquarters in New York City, I'm Carlo Versano. This is The 1600, and we're doing a mailbag today. We got a ton of questions. Hopefully got some answers for you. We got producer Mickey here on the cut with us today. Mick, how you doing? We got questions, but you may not like the answers. Yeah, that's how we're going to do this. Okay, Mickey, it's about two weeks into the new year here. There's been a fair amount of news.

0:32I think it's safe to say both domestically and abroad. But obviously the big story, I think that the story has really had legs in ways that I didn't suspect that it would is the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. We've been writing about it a lot in the newsletter, doing a lot of reporting, a lot of analysis. A lot of people don't particularly think I am right in my opinions about this. But then again, a lot of people do. So I think that just shows you that this is really one of those stories that is broken through in the sort of mainstream and also has really polarized people as basically everything does these days.

1:08But hopefully we can make some sense of where we are. I saw a couple of the questions that came in, but you have been curating my disaster sin box. So I'll let you take it away. Plenty of questions. Lots of ones about ICE. The first one comes from Barbara Nelson. First of all, she wants you to know that she rescinds your offer to become a Republican. Okay. I remember, yeah, okay. I forget what it was about, but she said that I was acting like a Republican, talking like a Republican, and she was happy to welcome me into the tent. I think I've probably burned all those bridges at this point after the last week, but c 'est la vie.

1:45Okay. She asks or says that the ICE officer who shot the woman is bleeding internally in his torso from having been hit by her car. According to the law, if he felt himself in danger of bodily harm or death, the shooting was clean. OK, well, a couple of things. So she's she's referring to a report that was leaked to CBS News on Wednesday that said the anonymous sources that this officer, Jonathan Ross, I believe his name is, was suffering from internal bleeding in the aftermath of the shooting. So that might that could be true. I'm not saying it isn't. It's notable how how that was reported, though.

2:25Right. Anonymous sources, not his medical records. They didn't they didn't show, you know, what this actually actual injury alleged injury is. He could have been injured. I mean, it looks like he got sort of grazed by her car. There's also video of him in the aftermath walking around. Fine. There's photos of him, you know, moving stuff in and out of his house. Seems OK to me. But I think that it kind of misses the point. I mean, I've said even, you know, if this case were to go to court, which it never will, he would get off. I mean, police always get off in almost always in these scenarios. Derek Chauvin, not so much.

3:00But basically, every other police shooting, they have a wide berth. They have a wide latitude of saying, you know, they fired in self-defense. When you look at that video, I mean, he put himself in a position that he put himself in that position. That's what I think. I mean, he was he was standing in front of the car. He was he was fast to the trigger. You know, he shot her once through the front window and then twice through the side window in rapid succession. I don't believe he was in, you know, danger. But also, you know, it comes down to discretion. Right. Right. I mean, you can say that that he has a legal justification for the shooting, perhaps.

3:40But again, ICE is putting themselves in this position. Right. They're surging people into these cities. I understand they're sanctuary cities, but they're places where the population does not want them. This woman was peacefully protesting. Right. You can say she was stalking them. You could say she was obstructing their enforcement. I don't believe that to be true. I wouldn't have put myself in that position as a as a parent. Right. It's just way too hot. Way too many things could go wrong. But, you know, we don't live in a police state. Right. Like you can't just claim self-defense because you were disrespected or because, you know, somebody was blocking your way.

4:20Like, I don't want to I don't want to live in that country. Do you? Does anybody? No. I hope that answers your question, Barbara. I don't know. um dale says the whole ice reign of terror isn't really about deportation a lot of the people they are terrorizing are american citizens there aren't that many actual deportations occurring considering how much the ice budget has increased and the amount of havoc they're causing the obama administration deported more undocumented people for per year than trump has in any year of either term. Oh, from Dale? Dale. Well, it's actually, I'm glad he brought this up because it is, that is a little bit of a disingenuous comparison, Obama and Trump deportation numbers.

5:04First of all, it's very hard to get the actual deportation numbers from DHS under Trump. They changed, they stopped putting those out last January as soon as he was inaugurated. So you're kind of, you know, you're not, we're not working with a total, the level of information that we probably need. That being said, Obama under Obama, DHS can consider what's known as turn turnaways at the border as deportations. Right. So, you know, you come over the border, you claim asylum or try to claim asylum and they just say, no, go back, try it, try it another way that that counted as a deportation. So it's not an apples to apples comparison.

5:39Right. It's obviously much more difficult to do interior enforcement than just turning people away at the border. That being said, Obama did do a bunch of interior enforcement, right? I mean, the left hated him because they called him the deporter in chief, but he was able to do it with an ICE that was trained, that was not masked, that was not kitted up like they're, you know, going into Iraq and, you know, sort of under the table in a way, right? People weren't out in the streets. Now, yes, maybe that's because it was a Democratic president and, you know, he wasn't as hated as, you know, Trump is, but he was pretty hated.

6:16So, yeah, I don't think that's a that's a that's a good comparison. I do agree with Dale, though, that it's not about, you know, I don't think any of this is actually about deportations. Right. I mean, I have this stat here. The administration says, or at least they started the year by saying, you know, we're here to deport the violent criminals. Those are that's the priority. So this is according to ISIS own data that I printed out for October 1st to November 15th. So six weeks in the end of last year, the number of people who are detained by ICE with serious criminal convictions, 5 % have violent criminal records, 5 % of the people they detained.

6:57So it's BS what they're saying, right? Stephen Miller has said, I mean, we should take Stephen Miller, who's actually running this from the White House at his ward. He has said he wants 3000 arrests a day. The only way you're going to get 3000 arrests a day is you're going to have, you know, these masked guys going around door to door, racially profiling people. Those are the conditions that are being seeded here, I think. So, so, yeah, I mean, I guess that's kind of my, my, the point that I wanted to make there. But let me make, let me make one more point, actually. I think that, you know, one of the, one of the things that I've heard from a lot of people who have written in is like, ICE is there to enforce the law, right?

7:36Okay, I guess. But there's discretion in law enforcement, right? I mean, you know, how many times have you driven over the speed limit every day? Every day you get your car, you drive over the speed limit. Are you going to get ticketed? No, you're not because cops aren't trained and they're not. It's not a good use of their time to pull somebody over who's going five over the 25 mile an hour speed limit in New York, even 10 miles an hour over. Right. They have they have discretion in how they enforce the law. So I think that that's kind of a red herring argument that people are making. The last question about ICE is from Jack.

8:11He says, what's the difference between Lieutenant Byrd murdering Ashley Babbitt and Ross shooting good in self-defense? Please spare me your hypocrisy. Who's responsible? How about the sanctuary states refusing to cooperate with ICE? How about mainstream media, Democrats and congressmen urging people to protest and interfere with ICE operations? Who's that? Jack. Jack. Jack, a couple of stuff, a couple of things there. Hang on about the January 6th comparison because I have I have some thoughts there. What was the second part of his question? Who is responsible? How about the sanctuary state? The what about ism?

8:47OK, yeah. Yeah. It's always with these guys. It's always what about this? What about that? Right. I don't. Yeah. I mean, I don't think Tim Walz would be out there telling people to confront ICE agents. I don't think that that's appropriate. I don't think that, you know, the Democrats who run Minneapolis and Minnesota have have covered themselves and glory to hear either. Blaming the mainstream media, I don't know. I mean, as a card-carrying member of the mainstream media, I've been blamed for everything that's gone wrong in this country for the last 20 years. I don't buy any of that shit anymore.

9:16His point about like, why is, isn't it hypocritical to say, as I have in the newsletter, that Ashley Babbitt's shooting on January 6th at the Capitol was what I called a, you know, one of the most justified police shootings in recent memory. Why is that not the case with Renee Good? Well, I think it's it's, again, not apples to apples at all. Ashley Babbitt was in the process of, I mean, had already broken into the Capitol and was trying to break through a window to presumably attack sitting members of Congress. I don't think that she deserved to die. I mean, I don't think anybody deserves to be murdered by the police.

9:51But she put herself in that scenario. And it's that's a big difference. Having already broken through the Capitol as part of a seditious riot, getting shot by the cops trying to break into the House chamber. I think that that's very different from what happened in Minneapolis, where this woman was, by all accounts, you know, trying to turn away from this cop. I mean, again, she put herself in a position that she probably shouldn't have, just given how, you know, just given how hot, again, the situation is. I, as a parent, would never have put myself in that scenario. But again, it goes back to you don't just because you disrespect a police officer or don't immediately follow their comply with their commands.

10:32I don't think that means that you can get you should be able to just get shot in the face. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy there, but that doesn't strike me as a is a is an appropriate response. And I think that a lot of these guys, you know, they're so blinded by, you know, they're they're what they want. Defending President Trump, defending this administration, defending ICE, you know, blaming the media or whatever. They're missing the bigger picture. We don't nobody here. Nobody wants a police state. Right. It was Republicans. I mean, you're young. You don't remember this. But, you know, back in the 90s, during the days of Waco and Ruby Ridge, the whole point, the whole thing you heard from Republicans is this is what we don't want.

11:10We do not want federal militarized police roaming our streets, you know, causing problems, right? Whether it's the ATF or the FBI or the Bureau of Land Management, that was the Republican point back then, right? Even relatively recently, not even – you don't even have to go back to the 90s. And now it's like, oh, well, they're there to enforce the federal law, so they should have basically, you know, complete jurisdiction and also no accountability. Nobody ever confronts this question of like, why are these guys allowed to wear masks and be completely unidentified and, you know, tacked up and juiced up and jacked up?

11:47Cops don't act like that. I wrote that in the newsletter today. Right. Police, even in 2020, when everybody was losing their minds on the street, streets of New York and other cities during the BLM protests, which turned into riots, cops weren't masked up. They weren't, you know, they weren't hiding their badges. I saw cops getting spit at on the street. How do they respond to that? They, you know, in most scenarios, they let it slide because they are trained to deescalate, not to inflame those situations. These guys are the opposite. They're going out there amped up out of their minds, looking to crack heads and they're, you know, they're getting what they want.

12:21I'm just saying this is like this is going to spiral. And I made the other point that, you know, right now it's it's it's ice going door to door asking, you know, is your neighbor a brown person or they hear illegally? OK, you may like that if you're against illegal immigration or immigration at large. You're not going to like it when it's President Ocasio-Cortez and she has her own goon squad that's going out there to make sure that you're using the right pronouns. That sounds ridiculous, but crazier things have happened in this country lately. Yeah. Yeah. OK, moving on. Carol asks, how can we as a country preserve, protect and strengthen our democracy?

13:00What role might education play? There are obvious things such as lessons in civics and the Constitution. But would you agree that critical thinking and human rights and empathy could be very effective? Well, yeah, I would agree, Carol. You should mandate an ethics class. Well, I mean, her point is a good one in that I've always said that, you know, I did my graduate thesis years ago on, you know, an idea for like a national media literacy program, which I still think is something that we desperately need. I feel like media literacy is, you know, one thing that would, if we actually had it, if we had like a real media literacy, you know, curriculum in schools, it would solve a lot of problems on its own, right?

13:43We need AI literacy. Well, that's part of it too. It's part of the same thing. It's part of understanding the information environment as it exists today versus how it used to exist and how you can't really trust your eyes anymore, can't necessarily trust the media, obviously cannot trust the administration. no matter who's in charge. So, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, a nationalized curriculum, I don't know how you would specifically do it, right? It would be very difficult. It would be very hard to do it in a way that came across as nonpartisan. But I do think it's possible just, you know, trying to teach kids as as a young age as possible that, you know, there there's a lot of there's a lot of crap out there that's not true.

14:21There's a lot of people out there that are, you know, pretend to be, you know, straight journalists or straight reporters who actually have an agenda, how to spot that. There's also, yeah, just like how to sort of like get through this new digital panopticon that we're under. And also understanding that these tech companies do not have your interests in heart, right? Like they are, the stuff that you see on your Facebook feed or on TikTok or whatever, it's there for a reason, right? That reason is because it wants you to engage with it. The way you engage with it is you create stuff that is divisive, inflammatory, polarizing.

14:57That's the stuff that gets views, clicks, likes, and whatnot. So that's going to feed you more of that. I don't know if young children in America really understand that. So long answer to a fairly straightforward question, which is I would really promote a national media literacy program. All right, we're going to move on to some Trump bashing questions. Okay. Bill says, I'm an American, both Democrat and Republican. with the building of the big, beautiful ballroom. Do you think we could name it the Jeffrey Epstein and Donald J. Trump Ballroom for the Performing Arts? OK, is that a question, Bill?

15:34Yeah, no, I mean, it's a good question, I guess. Look, I think, you know, the ballroom, I still can I still think the ballroom is an underappreciated part of sort of like Trump's polling swoon. You know, I don't personally think it's really that big of a deal. you know they're using private money but the way he went about it is just like it just shows I think it really cut through to a lot of people because it just shows the way he sort of goes about his job which is like I'm gonna do whatever I want and you guys can you know can fight it all you want but I get my way and I think when it comes to something that's like as tangible as like the destruction of an entire wing of the White House without any sort of like you know debate over it or, you know, going through the proper channels.

16:18I think that that really showed people, you know, who he was if they didn't already know. As for naming it, the Jeffrey Epstein ballroom. OK, we'll see if that will. We'll see. I'll put that to the president. OK, Nancy has three questions. The first one is, I read rumors that Donald Trump's health is failing. His sycophants work hard to present him as vital and powerful, but are crack showing. He disappears for days at a time and reappears with fresh IV concealing makeup on his hand, swollen ankles, and a lipping staggered gait. He drew blood from a literal high five with his AG. He trips over his feet and his rants, to finish you all together, are incoherent and cringeworthy.

16:59What is the status of his health? Okay. This is a HIPAA violation. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the status of his health. He doesn't really tell us. I know that he takes a ton of aspirin every day. That was reported in The Wall Street Journal recently, which I think explains his how he's so easily bruised and cut. I don't know what the deal is with the makeup on the hand. Is that an IV thing? He said the White House says it's, you know, it has to do with how many hands he shakes, which I guess is certainly plausible. The thing with Trump is like it's hard to, you know, whereas somebody like Joe Biden, you could like look at videos and watch his decline in real time.

17:35Right. The guy used to be, you know, when he was a senator, even when he was vice president for Obama, like. He was a completely different person than than he was in the latter half of his term. Right. It was easy. Trump is like he's he's his own thing. Like it doesn't it's hard to track his, you know, his health from his his public appearances because, you know, he's always been unhealthy. Right. We know that he eats McDonald's every day, drinks Coke, eats steak and ice cream. And also, like, he's always talked the way he talks. So I think it's hard to it's hard to tell. That being said, he is the oldest guy to be president.

18:11Right. I think he's going to be 80 this year. So, I mean, yeah, no matter who the next president is, if they could just please be under the age of 70, that would be something that I think everybody in this country would support. Sure, sure. All right. Her second question is, I read reports every day about Donald Trump's illegal and or unconstitutional actions, corruption and growing dementia. His penchant for revenge, his rants and rambling speeches, his hatred of Democrats and indifference to the Constitution leave most Republicans taking the fifth or defending him because they fear his bullying retribution.

18:47There are glimmers of change, but why aren't Democrats broadcasting his corruption and unfitness for office and promoting a better alternative? Tell us how you really feel, Nancy. Well, I mean, the question, I guess the question is, why are Democrats, why do they suck the way that they do? I wish I knew the answer to that. The problem the Democrats have is they don't have a leader at the moment. Right. So, I mean, Newsom, Gavin Newsom in California is the closest thing that I think we have to sort of like a, you know, a figurehead at the top of the Democratic Party. sure as hell isn't Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer.

19:23And he is, you know, I think the reason why Newsom is in sort of like pole position for 2028, even though it's obviously way too early, is because he has been doing exactly what she said, which is pointing out the various ways in which this administration is corrupt and doing it in a way that kind of mirrors Trump's own, you know, sort of like style, right? By like, you know, these insults and, you know, his all caps tweets and everything. I think it's clever how Newsom is, you know, conducting himself that way. I don't think he could be a very good nominee, not that anybody asked. But yeah, I mean, look, the Democrats still have a leadership problem.

20:00I think one of the, you know, one of the most interesting thing happening in American politics right now is, you know, you're seeing that Trump is very unpopular, right? He's particularly unpopular on the ICE and the immigration stuff. But the Democrats are not, you know, the people who are who are leaving Trump and MAGA and, you know, the the independents who, you know, may have may have swung for him in 2024. It's not like they're going to the Democrats. Right. They're just saying, like, I'm fed up with everybody. You got both of these parties are complete disasters, which, again, raises the point of if there was ever a time for a real third party in this country, it would be right now.

20:40But, you know, the system is built so that that can't really happen. So we're stuck with what we got. OK. Cheryl asks, who was the 40 billion that reportedly reportedly went to Venezuela paid to exactly? Is it possible that Maduro was paid to leave the country? And if so, what was the agreement with him? Cheryl, okay, I think she might be getting something mistaken. I think the$40 billion she's referring to is the money that we lent to Argentina. I don't know about any$40 billion that we paid the Venezuelans. I mean, we just sold a bunch of their oil now that we have it. So I think she's mistaken there.

21:19The question about Maduro, did he have a deal to leave? I mean, I thought that was my first, when that went down, that was my first thought. I was like, oh, They, you know, he made a deal to go into exile, you know, bring as much loot on his plane as possible and fly off to Turkey or whatever. Obviously, I don't you know, they didn't make a deal because he's sitting down the, you know, across the river right now in like the worst prison in America or at least one of the, you know, one of the worst federal prisons in America in Brooklyn awaiting trial. So any deal, any deal that that that he made obviously wasn't very good one.

21:51And I do certainly think that there were people, including the current interim president of Venezuela, who were in on that. I think that she absolutely flipped on him and just the way that that went down and how quickly she was sort of installed as the interim president. And as quickly as the White House came out and through their support behind her, suggests that she was part of a contingent of Maduro's people that that turned on him. I don't have information to suggest that. I don't have reporting to suggest that other than just like what I see with my own eyes. And we know that the CIA had infiltrated Maduro pretty closely.

22:25So there were absolutely, you know, backroom deals being made in getting him out of here. I don't think he was the beneficiary of them. He probably wishes he was, though. Right. I'd way rather be hanging out in, you know, Turkey or Moscow with all my money right now than sitting in the MDC in Sunset Park with my wife and Luigi Mangione. So would Eric Adams. Yeah, exactly. Okay, we're going to do some fun questions to round us off. Okay, good. These have been tough. We're going to do a rapid fire round. Okay. From Bill. He wants to know all about you. Okay. Ready? Hit me, Bill. Okay. I'm pretty sure each of your readers, like me, wonder that we are one of many how many followers?

23:12Like how many people read the newsletter? 120 ,000 is the readership. I mean, I don't know how many people, how many of those read it every single day, but that's how many people actively subscribe. Bill does. Bill does, for sure. Thank you, Bill. Describe a typical day from morning to bedtime. Oh, God. Who wants to hear this? My days are insane. I wake up at six. If my daughter allows me to wake up at six, usually it's more like four or five because she doesn't like to sleep and never has. I, you know, I take a shower. I write the newsletter. She wakes up. She starts demanding that I feed her.

23:50So I make her breakfast while my wife's getting ready. She's got her own crazy news job. So she's doing calls. The mornings are insane, as anybody with young kids knows. And then in the evenings, it's a little bit more relaxed, right? We all try and have dinner together. We don't do any screens with her, which is like, I'm not saying that to like, say like, oh, if you let your kid watch TV, you're a bad parent. Of course not. I don't judge. But so but we made an effort to never to just not not a lot of screen period with her. So we do a lot of, you know, drawing. We listen to stories, listen to podcasts together.

24:27She really ended doing dance parties right now. So we do a lot of that. And yeah, I put her to bed every night or every most nights, at least readers some books. That's my life. It's not that it's not that exciting by any means, but it's great. Yeah, that's nice. um okay what's your favorite book my favorite book um you know what book i really loved uh i don't read that much fiction these days i really like the goldfinch by um donna tart you read that no they made a bad movie it's excellent excellent novel highly recommend okay um favorite movie you're gonna make fun of me i don't even want to say it say it titanic oh real i think so i know I didn't know about your Kate Winslet fascination.