145. The Minnesota ICE Shooting, Trump’s Greenland Gambit, and Rubio vs Miller

0:05Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US in another crazy busy week in American politics. I'm Katty Kay. And I am Anthony Scaramucci. How are you, Katty? Well, I don't know. We're recording this on Thursday, 8th of January. I don't know about you, Anthony, but I'm kind of exhausted by this year already. It feels like we have had a lifetime of news just in the past week. We've had all of the expansion of America's worldview. Stephen Miller's view of the world clearly put on display against perhaps Marco Rubio's. Is America really going to go for Greenland? We'll get a little bit more into that.

0:44We're going to talk about Venezuela and Greenland and the foreign policy expansion in the second half. But we're actually going to start the program by turning to Minnesota, where there has been this ice shooting in Minneapolis and the kind of outrage and protests that are spreading around the country because of that. This shooting, I think, in Minneapolis is getting so much attention in the United States, understandably. And a quick kind of rundown of what's happened. You've had an ICE agent who has shot and killed a woman called Renee Nicole Good. She's a 37-year-old American citizen, that's key, who had just dropped her six-year-old son off at school.

1:26An eyewitness from the shooting says that she was trying to turn around and an ICE agent was in front of her car. He pulled out a gun and put it right in, reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face. Just to put this in context, federal agents are in Minnesota as part of a kind of law enforcement push by the Trump administration to get people who are in the country illegally, particularly Somali immigrants. There are many of them in Minneapolis out of the country. We've seen these operations happen in Chicago. We've reported on them from here in Washington, D.C. Minneapolis is the latest place in their focus.

2:02But you had thousands of people turn out in Minneapolis last night against this shooting. It's just a mile down the road from where George Floyd triggered all of the Black Lives Matter protests. So this is a city that's feeling very tense today. And I don't know how you see this, Anthony. I spent time this morning before we recorded this watching Fox News and time watching other channels here, kind of more left leaning CNN, MS Now channels this morning. and honestly it's like America is living in two different worlds. People can't even agree on the facts of this case. We've got multiple videos.

2:39People are disputing the facts. People are disputing who's at fault. For me this is so emblematic of a couple of things. One that these ICE officers are radically undertrained for the job that they're doing. They don't know how to carry out law enforcement operations and I guess it was you and I have been saying this for a while well, it was only a matter of time before we had an incident like this. And second is just how divided the country is, and everybody has immediately retreated to their corners, both over the facts and their analysis of what has happened. Having watched this, I know you were texting me last night about this.

3:15What are you making of it this morning? Well, like you, my heart goes out to the family. And we always say that, unfortunately, when there's a murder or a killing in this country. But this woman leaves behind a six-year-old. And so it's an incredible tragedy. I think the thing that I want to say to people is let's take a chill and stop the madness right now. Because the right is saying the car turned into the agent. The agent was shooting the woman in self-defense. She was trying to kill the agent. The left is saying the car, she was obviously nervous. and she was trying to wiggle away from the agent and he wasn't in harm's way and she was murdered in cold blood.

4:00So we can have that debate, Caddy. I'm giving you my editorial opinion of what happened. And the video, and you could go to French websites, which are very objective and just look at the video. The woman was in a panic and she was trying to turn the vehicle away from the police officer. Did it edge to him slightly as she was turning away from him? Yes, it did. Was there any reason to shoot her? He could have stepped back if he was better trained and shot the tire. The woman was not armed. That is a cold-blooded murder. And Christy Noem is going to go straight to hell for lying about it, okay? A smarter person would have said, we're going to have a full investigation into this thing and we're going to get back to you.

4:48But that was a panicked woman trying to get out of the situation and she was murdered in cold blood. That is my opinion. And people can say whatever the hell they want. I mean, that first shot is the one that could be arguably in self-defense. The police officer is trying to stop the car and maybe the police officer got nudged. The president said that he was inhospitalized and luckily looked like he was going to survive. He seems to be fine because he's walking around directly afterwards. words, it's the subsequent shot or shots that have law enforcement officials saying that there is no justification for this and that that woman should not be dead given the circumstances of what happened.

5:28And I am certain that whatever side you are on this debate, I think we're in all general agreement that this is an unspeakable tragedy. So if you want to just step back for a second and talk about presidential leadership and the aura or the stench that somebody is giving from the Oval Office. Let's talk about that and how it relates to this shooting. So in the first eight days, we have taken over Venezuela. We're going to quote unquote run Venezuela. We're threatening one of our NATO allies with military action. I mean, the White House has basically said that. Ms. Leavitt has said that military options are on the table to take Greenland.

6:09That could be a distraction. We'll talk about that in a second. We've threatened Iran. We've threatened Cuba. And we've told our ICE agents to, quote unquote, and this is Donald Trump's own words, not mine, get rough. I want you to get rough with people. And you and I both know that they've flooded the zone with these ICE agents, many of which have not been trained properly. And they're inexperienced in these very volatile situations. Yeah, I mean, really not being trained. They've cut the training from six months to six weeks. Yeah, and so this is an example of everything that's going on right now, Katty.

6:43I'm just gonna say one last thing, get you to respond to it. This sucks from a presidential leadership point of view. This is absolutely reprehensible that you have a leader of supposedly the free world that doesn't understand the mantle of his leadership and is not figuring out a way to dial down the rhetoric. At the same time, all of this is happening. Okay, he wants a$1.5 trillion military buildup, and he wants to build the dream military. So my question back to you, is this fascist behavior? And before you answer the question, Caddy Kay, let's talk about the flooding of the zone of disinformation on January 6th on the website, the military buildup the imperial flex outside of the country and let's talk about the acts of violence by a gestapo-like police agency known as ICE and so pushing it back to my favorite Brit in the world is this fascist behavior catty cat what are we so we're Thursday 8th of January we're recording this at 9 21 a.m and we're already bringing up the f-word which is not the same f-word by the way that the mayor of minneapolis has used this morning not my favorite f-word by the way but it's one it's it's in my top five look it's interesting that you drew that common thread because that's where i went this morning too when i was thinking about how to frame this because i do agree with you that there is a a kind of common thread that the use of force is justified when it's used by us that being the white house in order to further our agenda Whether it is Venezuela, these ICE agents furthering the agenda of deporting millions of people who are in the country illegally, whether it is the threat against Greenland.

8:40And I agree with you, actually. I think it's so interesting that you bring up the, and I'd encourage everyone to go to the White House's new web page describing the events of January the 6th, which completely retell history and blame this entire action of January the 6th actually on the kind of federal agents who were there saying that they kind of started all of this. It's a stunning rewriting of the events that we all watched on our, you know, don't believe your lying eyes, but I was there watching it, you were there watching it, and this is a rewrite of it. And there is this common theme that if we use force, it is always justified.

9:20I mean, you had Stephen Miller go out. We spoke about this earlier this week. You had Stephen Miller go out on CNN and effectively say that. So I think you're right that there's a common theme. We can have a debate another time about the use of the word fascist and whether it describes a specific ideology. But there is a real flex going on. And you're seeing it in the response to this shooting in Minneapolis with Kristi Noem, the Secretary for Homeland Security, going on television within seconds before she had any of the facts around this case, before an investigation is conducted, and saying that this woman is a domestic terrorist and that this was an act of domestic terrorism.

10:03She was kind of contradicting one of her own Tom Herman, who's the border security czar, who was saying, I haven't seen the video yet. There needs to be investigation, although even he has rode back. And they're basically blaming this from the White House on saying, listen, if you resist in any form, even if it's a constitutional form of protest, our law enforcement officers, then you are to blame for what is happening. And that's the line that you're hearing on Fox News this morning, that you are to blame because you are resisting law enforcement now. You've got a congressman from Texas, Wesley Hunt, coming out saying the deal in this country is if you obey an officer, you get to keep your life.

10:46That's not my reading of the history of the American Constitution or of law enforcement in this country. I mean, I think it's very hard to make the case that this woman should have been killed for this. And then that the ICE officers prevented a self-identified physician, a doctor, from going to her car, which had crashed into another car, and checking on her. And we don't know what position she was in. And maybe she was dead already. But a doctor went up to that ICE officer and said, can I go and check on this woman? And he said no. And I think you've said this before, Anthony. Is the cruelty the aim here?

11:29Is that what it is? No, the cruelty is the aim. These are repressed, angry individuals that run the White House. And whatever is bothering them, they want to inflict this pain on the rest of the world. And some of these new ICE recruits are being sent into the field before their security background is cleared. We don't know the situation of this guy, but we don't know who these people are hiring or how they're training. They get a lot of satisfaction out of human suffering, Katty. But I want to go back to the fascist term for a second because Simon Cooper, hopefully I'm pronouncing his name right, K-U-P-E-R, F-T, this morning.

12:02I'm just going to hold this picture up for people watching on YouTube. That is a picture of Donald Trump dressed like Don Corleone. He says no, he's not a fascist, but he's running the government like a mafia, Don. And his belief is that the highest human purpose is self-enrichment. And I think it's a very interesting thing. And I want to show you something, Caddy. And again, people listening, this is a picture of me and Donald Trump from the week that I was in the White House. Can you see that, Caddy? That is the New Yorker. And that was going to be the front page of the New Yorker. That's me talking in Trump's ear.

12:38as a consigliere and Trump as a mafia don. The Trump whisperer back in the day. Trump whisperer. Okay, see that? Now, I was fired unceremoniously, thank God for that, and a result of which this New Yorker cover never aired. But the guy that did the rendition of it sent it to me in the mail, which I've kept. Okay, in the beginning, I thought, wow, that's a pretty big slur against the Italians. As I've gotten older and wiser, I think it's the right application of the analogy, I think he's acting like a mafia don. And I think it's very important for people to understand what he is doing and why he's doing it.

13:20He wants$20 billion for his family. He clipped off five in the first year. He's going for another 15. He wants to flex on everybody and intimidate the daylights out of them, whether they're in corporations and businesses, or they're small people in Minnesota or Minneapolis. He wants everybody in fear of him while he goes after all this stuff. Moreover, just let me finish this point. He said to the Congress, his Republican buddies in the Congress, hey, guys, we got to get our stuff together for this midterms because I've got to win these midterms. Otherwise, I'm going to be impeached, Caddy. Yeah, that was stunning, wasn't it?

14:01I'm going to cede for a moment the F word, okay? But there are F-word-like tendencies going on, but it really does feel like a family operation. And it really does feel like a family operation with acolytes that are going to do his bidding while he is in that office. And his job, as far as he can tell, is to take as much as possible from everybody. That would mean their sanity. That would mean their well-being. That would mean their lack of stress. He wants to stress out everybody. And he enjoys it, Caddy. And so lest anybody think that, oh, no, this stuff is accidental, he gets up in the morning and he says to himself, how can I inflict pain?

14:48How can I punish and hurt people? And how can I divert their energies while I'm taking money for myself? And that's exactly what he's doing. And listen, people can say, oh, he's not doing that. No, he is doing that. and you can watch MS Now or Fox News. Objectively, that's what he's doing. Can I ask you something that I, first of all, I thought that the comment he made to the Republican caucus in Congress saying you have to win the midterm so that I'm not impeached, not you have to win the midterm so that we can get prices down for American voters or you have to win the midterm so that we can make America safer for American voters.

15:29It was about you have to win the midterms for me so that I'm not impeached. I thought that was telling. It's so interesting how you frame it and put it in the context of something else that I've been thinking about this morning, which is how there's a trashing of the rules that is sanctioned at the moment. And I think what's interesting about this Minneapolis case, if you dig into the kind of specifics, and everybody can go through the video and draw your own conclusions, but it is DHS policy. And I'm going to read from DHS rule books here. DHS law enforcement officers are prohibited from discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle.

16:11And obviously, the reason is that you don't want to put a kind of thousand ton vehicle without a driver in it because there could be pedestrians in the street. I mean, we're very lucky that there weren't pedestrians in front of this car. The woman was not capable of driving it. The car crashes. We're lucky there weren't other people sitting in the car that she crashed into because they could be dead as well. And that's why there are the guidelines. So you have rules. But for Trump, whether it's on the international stage or whether it's domestically, is there almost a relish in breaking the rules?

16:43It's not just that it's okay to ignore the rules. And obviously, lots of politicians and presidents have ignored the rules. I'm not naive about that. But there's a sort of machismo about breaking the rules that people in Trump's orbit seem to promote almost as a virtue. Well, I not only agree with all that, but remember, the rules are what he makes them to be. Remember, so what are the principles and policies of MAGA, whatever I want them to be? He said that this week, right? He said MAGA is me. Right. Well, that rulebook that you're describing, throw that rulebook out, whatever I say the rules, right?

17:24You know, who said it was a Louis the 14th. I am the state. Okay. I am the rule book. I am the way. And so, and by the way, I'm very good at deflection and diversion. And I'm very, very good at starting a prairie fire that will cause the liberals to go crazy. And then I can talk about them like they're liberal hysterics. Which is what you have Vance tweeting this morning, right? Do you think this officer was wrong in defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over? You've got Jesse Waters on Fox News saying she had pronouns in her bio and leaves behind a lesbian wife and a child from a previous marriage.

18:06I mean, the kind of whipping up of the culture wars wrapped into this case is also pretty stunning. Again, as a human being, Cady, and I say this with great sadness, that we have a death of somebody. We've just had an extinguishment of human life, which to me is prima facie, a tragedy. And we have nobody on those media outlets that are dialing it back. and there's nobody, you know, when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Bobby Kennedy's dad, RFK Sr., got to the microphone. He was running for president and he said, we've got to dial this back. We have to find our commonality. We have to heal ourselves.

18:50We have to take down the violence. We have to find unity and comity. Is anybody doing that, Caddy? No. And Trump doesn't want that. Trump wants us in this fight while he's out for his money grab. And he's doing something very interesting in Greenland that I want to position to you. I know we're going to talk about Greenland and the Great, but it's a diversion. It's another diversion. It's not going to militarily strike Greenland. I maintain that. But he's trying to create a diversion while he's got something else underfoot. Okay. And by the way, Caddy, this was predictable. Okay. We could all look at this alarmed and say, oh wow what a tragedy but if you sat down in a boardroom with me and we workshopped potential scenarios with this level of ice aggression with this level of training of training yeah okay you'd say okay at some point somebody's going to get hurt yeah and and we're going to have a two sides argument uh one it's going to be murder and the other side it's going to be self-defense but why are we who are people are trying to be a great nation?

20:01Why are we in the bog? You see, there's an element of us that is knuckle dragging. I get that. And perhaps that is a primordial sense for all of us. But this was, and I believe continues to be an aspirational country. Okay. This was when I was traveling in Europe with my backpack and I was a student and Europeans were like, yes, I love America. Someday I want to get there and maybe someday I'll make my own American dream there. Okay. Are we, do we want to fully extinguish that for Don, the Don, the Don Donald Trump? Is that what we want to do? And so that's where we are right now. And so Fox doesn't care because they're going to get the people on the right banging the drum while those people are watching like the selling of catheters and walkers and wheelchairs on commercial breaks interrupted by Jesse saying that nonsense.

21:01They'll be like, yeah, that's right. Who cares? That was a lesbian. Let's murder the lesbian. So and she was a lesbian trying to defend criminal Somalis. Can you believe that? Yeah. And then the left will say, these are thuggish murderers. Now, I don't know the man that pulled that trigger, but I guarantee you that man today is horrified. He can pretend otherwise. He can get all that cognitive dissonance going that his life was at stake and try to disclaim it. But in his quiet time, Cady, in his silence, he knows something really bad happened that could have been avoided. I still believe the facts matter because it's the facts that underpin the rule of law.

21:44And at some point, all of these laws and regulations and policies are there for a reason. And if you just say none of that matters, then you can have federal officials and law enforcement officials, you know, acting in whichever way they want with absolutely no accountability. And I think then, you know, you have a real problem. We're going to be watching Minneapolis because there are protests there, of course, today. It looks like some of them are turning a bit violent. You've got law enforcement agents firing pepper balls at protesters as we're recording this. I hope it doesn't blow up around the country because I don't think that helps anybody.

22:21And I do hope that there is a thorough investigation that people can trust. And I think that is key, that the investigation has to be credible into what actually happened up there. OK, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about the other enormous story of the week, Venezuela and Greenland.

22:40Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US. We're going to get into the latest on Greenland and Venezuela. One thing that struck me this morning, Anthony, is that we have heard an awful lot from J.D. Vance this morning on the situation in Minneapolis. Very long tweets that he is putting out. We've heard very little from him on Venezuela. And I think that points to some kind of splits that we're seeing in the administration over the use of force abroad. There's some reporting that actually J.D. Vance is super excited about the mission in Venezuela and thinks it was an incredible military success and is very keen on military intervention in America's backyard.

23:21Stephen Miller is clearly in that camp. But then you have Marco Rubio going down to the hill, trying to explain what the plan is, perhaps giving the most cogent. And even that's got quite a lot of question marks by it. The most cogent three part plan for their plans for Venezuela about stabilization and then have some kind of transition. But there's so much happening around Venezuela at the moment and the updates on that. But one thing that is pretty clear, I think at the end of this week, the president gave a two hour long interview to journalists last night from The New York Times, which is a stunning amount of time in my history of covering the White House.

24:00It's very rare for a president in the middle of a kind of big crisis and stories to give two hours. He gave two hours and spent 75 percent of the time talking about the military operation, the success of the military operation. I think that's why he did the interview. He wanted to tout how successful he had been. He seemed to be kind of jazzed up on that. When White House officials went down to the Hill to speak to congressional leaders, they also apparently those White House officials also spent 75 % of the time talking about the success of the military operation, but very little time on the planning.

24:35And I think we get to the end of this week, almost a week now after the taking of Maduro, with still just not a satisfactory explanation from the administration on what the plans are for Venezuela. And Marco Rubio may try and push them as the kind of guy who has the most experience in that hemisphere, but I still don't hear that they have a real plan for the country going forwards. They're very proud of the military operation, but the day after seems to have escaped them. Again, I'll push back slightly on that because Because as it's been explained to me by people that are in the operations of this, the plan for right now, Delce Rodriguez is going to run the country as effectively an administrator and Donald Trump is going to call the play.

25:23So she's the quarterback. Trump is the head coach, the offensive and defensive coordinator for right now. She is, by the way, a diehard anti-Americanist. Yeah, but, you know, she decided she doesn't want to go to jail like Maduro. And so sometimes when you are at knife point, you become less of a diehard of anything. And it seems like she has been very pliable. And I've spoken to people that have spoken directly to her and she's on board. So much so that you've got 30 to 50 million barrels of oil coming our way. Okay. Which is again, mafia like incentive to keep Trump off of her back in the region.

26:01And so, so again, it's not a perfect plan, but there is a plan. And I'm not saying the plan isn't a disaster, but there is a plan. Rubio and Vance, no mas, okay? They will not be the president of the United States come 2028. Rubio's going to go down on this because he's a flip-flopping weathervane. And he's a direct liar to the Congress. You have interviewed senators who have told you that Rubio directly lied to them. You can even ask Richard Nixon. You don't get away with that. In Richard Nixon's memoirs, he said the known, known liars always get taken out by the system. There is a code of ethics among the pirates that live in the Senate.

26:43If you're coming into the cloakroom and we're talking in confidence, don't lie to us. And Rubio is a known liar. OK, so he is going to go down for this. Even if this operation is successful, the people in that Senate no longer trust them. That's Republicans and Democrats. And he's a very disingenuous guy. And again, hate Donald Trump or like Donald Trump, what you see with Donald Trump and all of his manifestations of mendacity is who he is. Okay. You know, when Hillary Clinton said in Chicago, I'm a Chicago Cubs fan. And then she said in New York, I'm a New York Yankees fan. Imagine that in British football.

27:19People would roll their eyes and say, what are you, crazy? Okay. And so that's Rubio. You can't be a city fan and then be a United fan. That's just like doesn't work. Exactly. Exactly. And the people are shaking their heads right now as they're walking on their hikes listening to this because that's just the way it is. So we know Trump is a known liar. That's his brand. We've accepted it. Rubio has tried to be an honorable person early on his career. And so he's finished. One of the reasons that the senators are particularly disappointed about this is they knew him, of course. He came out of the Senate.

27:51He had pretty good relationships with some of these senators. And you now get them. It's interesting. You get Tom Tillis. You get Kennedy coming out very forcefully against some of the policies. And I think part of that is the anger they feel towards Rubio for lying to them. Rubio's confirmation vote, Caddy, was 99 to 0. 99. So now it's a 99 to 0 vote. And then he goes in there and lies to everybody. I'm telling you they're myth. They don't love it. They don't love it. So let's go to Vance now. So Vance is conspicuously absent. And you know this and I know this. Vance was closer to Rand Paul on military interventionism as recently as three or four years ago.