152. Minnesota Shooting: Is Trump Going To Back Down?

15:49Anthony Scaramucci:Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, was right. Americans don't like what they're seeing right now. Anton, you said all along during the election campaign, Americans won't tolerate them doing mass deportations. And actually, they've tolerated a lot of mass deportations of people who were not criminals. We know that. A lot of the people who've been deported, more than half are not criminals. not violent criminals. I mean, criminal, if you say that they're in the country or whatever, that five-year-old boy who was arrested.

16:20Katty Kay:They've deported some US citizens too, Caddy. I mean, they're out of their minds. They're out of control. It's like the monkeys got a hold of the zoo and they're now going to do whatever they want. And the Democrats, unfortunately, and we will talk about in the second half, they don't get it. And that's where we are. But I want to just go to Trump because I'm going to make some predictions here. He's going to double down on law and order and immigration enforcement. He's going to definitely do that because that's his red meat. That's his base. He's going to support the federal agents. And if you're not supporting the cops, you're supporting the criminals.

16:51Katty Kay:He's going to say that. Okay. He's then going to continue to blame the Democrats and local officials. He's going to say that they're inciting an insurrection and that they're all in cahoots with each other. See, that's what the Kristi Noem stuff was if you listen to her interviews carefully. protesters are in cahoots with the hard left and we're going to expose all that we're going to weed it all out okay but he's also shifting here where he's got to find somebody to blame so she's in the crosshairs so christy in my opinion secretary noem okay she's now at the head of the departure sweepstakes she's ahead of exeth and others because he can put he can put holman in

17:30Anthony Scaramucci:that position no problem okay yeah she was in a pretty vulnerable position before this wasn't she?

17:36Katty Kay:She was. She was. And now the real question is, who's going to push Trump? Is there anybody in Washington that's going to hold Trump and these people accountable? Okay. And I've predicted they won't do that. Some reason we've lost our ability to check and balance the government, which is why you have this jackass, Stephen Miller, who couldn't get confirmed dog catcher in the United States running things. And that's where we're going with this. And it sucks because they're hurting people.

18:10Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. If this carries on, this is going to get way worse.

18:14Katty Kay:Now, I'm going to tell you other cities, right? If they try that bullshit in New York, there are actually libertarian New Yorkers, okay, that will side with the left and will say, get your jack boot, nasty mask face out of my face, and we're going to have a huge commotion caddy. So they're doing it in Minnesota, a little different culture up in the Midwest. If they try that in some of the more aggressive blue state cities, some of the quote unquote liberal cities, okay, you're going to have a complete and total unwinding nightmare on your hands.

18:53Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. If they carry on doing this, I think Portland, Maine could be one of those. Maine is a very interesting state. Everyone thinks Maine is very democratic, but it's got a strong libertarian purple culture to it. It's got a lot of rural areas that are pretty MAGA. It's a very strong gun carrying state. And I thought one of the more interesting reactions has been from the gun advocacy community. There was a kind of great thing on X from a guy called Clint Russell, who's a MAGA podcaster who's got, I mean, not massive, quarter of a million followers, but even And so he's very hard MAGA and opposed to illegal immigration.

19:29Anthony Scaramucci:But they've pushed back on this. He's quoting Kash Patel saying Kash Patel, who at the weekend said, you can't bring a firearm loaded to any sort of protest. And Clint Russell is saying, yes, the fuck you can and saying that's as if that's a quote from every founding father. So you've got a lot of pushback and you'd get a lot more pushback from a state like Maine as well. I think where they're now, you know, their next target is. But let me pick up on what you said about Stephen Miller, because I think that's interesting. And remember, everybody, if you haven't heard it, we did a great little mini series on Stephen Miller, who he is, what his background is and the influence he has in the White House.

20:02Anthony Scaramucci:It is for founding members. You can sign up or you know where to find us and become a founding member. But so what does this do to Stephen Miller's influence in the White House? Because when you and I recorded that mini series back in November, December, he was riding high. He's known as deputy chief of staff, but actually, of course, he's much more powerful than that. He really has won the trust of Donald Trump. Does this incident in Minneapolis and Stephen Miller calling Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who works with veterans in the Veterans Administration, calling him an assassin with no facts coming before?

20:42Anthony Scaramucci:Before there's been an investigation with none of the facts coming in, people paying huge amount of tribute to this guy. Does this diminish Stephen Miller's influence in the White House? And perhaps more importantly, does this incident cause Donald Trump to rethink these ICE activities across the country? Does he now decide, actually, we're going to pull back from what ICE is doing, terrorizing people around the country?

21:10Katty Kay:So I think the first answer is no, Stephen Miller's influence not diminished at all. If anything, it's getting stronger as Trump continues to get more demented. And then secondarily, they will pull back a little because they know how embarrassing this is now. And they'll adjust some of their procedures. But they're coming hard for these people. And they're going to continue to come hard for these people until there's a check on their power. So that's either there's an electoral defeat, there is some type of organized response that's successful in the court of public opinion, but they'll keep coming, Katty, because this is what they do.

21:51Katty Kay:But I want to just say something about Stephen Miller for a second, okay? If you're not well-liked in high school and you are a miserable, miserable human being that actually hates people, okay, you can take a butane lighter to the US Constitution and burn it up. And what's interesting about Stephen Miller is Stephen Miller played the long game. He bought call options on January 6th, 2021, when Kevin McCarthy said, nah, we don't need to impeach Trump and throw him out of office because he's completely politically irrelevant now. Look at the havoc he wreaked. And Mitch McConnell said the same thing.

22:36Katty Kay:Trump is finished. Stephen Miller bought call options on the 2024 electoral win of Donald Trump. Why did he do that? because he sees Trump as an empty vessel and he sees Trump as a way for him to get into the government and to do his nefarious pain infliction on other people under the guise of we're right and you're wrong. Okay. So instead of living in a society that I would like to live in, which is you've got your life, I've got my life. If your sexual orientation is different than mine, God bless you. Let's all live here in the United States and live free. We have an asshole like Stephen Miller that wants to be punitive to people that don't live or think like him.

23:26Katty Kay:Okay. So Donald Trump is an absolute disgrace. There's no question about that, that he's allowing that to happen. But Stephen Miller, okay, is going to bring down Donald Trump, caddy. Okay, you watch over the next two years, how bad this gets.

23:41Anthony Scaramucci:This is Stephen Miller's administration at the moment, not Donald Trump's administration when it comes to this issue in particular. And Stephen Miller will be the thing that causes Republican members of Congress in vulnerable districts, or in districts with large Hispanic populations, to make Republicans lose the midterm elections in the House. And that will be why, because this issue is turning. They think Stephen Miller still thinks this is a way to own the libs, but he's not reading America right now. The Wall Street Journal is saying you've got normies in America turning against this. They don't like what they're seeing.

24:22Anthony Scaramucci:They don't like American citizens being shot and everybody has the video. This will be on Stephen Miller. It'll be on Stephen Miller if there are more lives that are lost, and it'll be on Stephen Miller in part if the Republicans lose the midterm elections.

24:37Katty Kay:The whole purpose of that Second Amendment, Cady. Yeah. The whole purpose of that Second Amendment is when your government turns on you, you are armed to take on your government. How about the irony of that?

24:49Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. And as you heard the chief of police of Minneapolis say over the weekend, Alex Preti was not doing anything illegal. He did not deserve a death sentence for being there filming these protests. Okay. We're going to take a break. I think it's worth talking a little bit more about the midterms when we come back and about how the Democrats are responding. Super depressing moment, I have to say. Watching this a week, we've had Greenland for a week and now we have this. I tell you, America is not looking very solid from this side of the Atlantic right now.

25:20Katty Kay:Some things are just better in person. High fives, hugging your dog and shopping for Crocs. If you've never been to a Crocs store, you're missing out. Sure, you can find us online, But when you step inside our shop, you'll get it. And your feet will feel fantastic with a fresh pair of classic cloths or cozy slippers or beach ready sandals or even sneakers. Everything's ridiculously comfy and you can even pick out gibbets charms to personalize your new pair. Go check out your nearest croc store. You deserve that in-person moment.

25:55Katty Kay:Welcome back to the rest of Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci. Me, Katty K. So, Katty, let's talk about the Democrats for a second because we have to understand what they would do. You know, to me, I'm looking at this saying, okay, I finally got the Republicans. They've completely overstepped. They're now killing American citizens. Do the Democrats ever have a meeting together? Do they ever get together and say, hey, fellows, we got to beat these guys because they're destroying the fabric of American society. So rather than shitting on each other, why don't we get together and have a coordinated response?

26:30Katty Kay:Do they ever do that, Katty?

26:31Anthony Scaramucci:Well, I guess, you know, I mean, their initial coordinated response is to say we can't fund anything more for homeland security, which is going to shut down the government. And you even have the Democrats who voted last time around the government, who perhaps are seen as the more centrist Democrats in the Senate, coming out and saying, OK, no, this is enough. We can't, you know, we just cannot give the Homeland Security Department another penny. But the trouble is they quickly get into a debate among themselves about whether Abolish ICE is the next defund the police and how do they handle this and how do they phrase it and how tough should they be.

27:11Anthony Scaramucci:And in a way, shutting down the government and not giving any more money to DHS is a little bit performative because DHS got so much money anyway in the big, beautiful bill that DHS is pretty well funded. What are you thinking of in particular about how you think Democrats should be handling this?

27:30Katty Kay:Okay. So to me, I thought the best response so far, and it sort of looked somewhat coordinated, if you looked at the two letters, were the two former presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, basically condemned the shooting, said it was a wake-up call, said that there needs to be lawful accountability. The fact that the ICE agents have not been named, that happens in repressive regimes. It doesn't happen in non-repressive regimes. Even when the George Floyd killing took place, the police officers were named. That's about accountability and civil libertarianism. But in this case, under the junta of Stephen Miller, they're not naming the people.

28:12Katty Kay:And so you've got a defuncted procedures. But to me, I think what the two presidents said is something that has to happen, okay? You have to condemn the deadly use of force. You have to restate the principles of what's going on. You need lawful enforcement and protection of the civil liberties of these people.

28:32Anthony Scaramucci:I thought Bill Clinton saying, we have to show that the nation still belongs to we, the people. Yeah, exactly.

28:37Katty Kay:Well, if you read the bottom part of his letter was about process. You need due process, right? In order to be free, Katty, from a criminal procedure or civil procedure perspective, You have to have process. You can have somebody who's in the militia, a soldier, come up to you, decide you got a gun on you, bam, bam, put 10 shots into you. There has to be a process.

29:02Anthony Scaramucci:And you have, by the way, police officers across the country saying exactly what you've just said, that this guy should not be dead. I mean, he didn't do anything that was about to hurt these police. Their lives were not in danger. He was down on the floor. If anything, he should have been arrested. My question on those letters, where was George W. Bush?

29:21Katty Kay:So I don't know where George W. Bush is. I think George W. Bush has decided that he's out. He's a private citizen.

29:29Anthony Scaramucci:Wouldn't that have been more powerful if he'd been part of that group?

29:32Katty Kay:I think it would have been. I think there's a lot of critics that are calling for George W. Bush and other Republican retired leaders to come and speak out against this. I think that they've decided that they're not going to do that. They don't want to face the wrath of Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been successful at either intimidating them into silence.

29:50Anthony Scaramucci:I don't think George W. Bush cares about intimidation from Donald Trump. I don't think he's sitting there in Texas worried about the wrath of Donald Trump. Maybe not.

29:59Katty Kay:Maybe it's not intimidation. Maybe it's a, he's made a decision like some of these generals.

30:04Anthony Scaramucci:I think he has this idea that he's protecting the system. I mean, he's doing something which feels old school, which is showing deference and respect to a system which right now appears to be teetering on the brink.

30:17Katty Kay:Right. Well, it's not a system anymore. This is a Stephen Miller junta that has taken over the American government. So, it's not really a system anymore. And so, if you don't speak out against that and try to correct it, I think there's going to be a big problem. But I want to address this with you and ask you a question because while this is going on, okay, because I obviously have a job as a capital allocator, the dollar is melting while this is going on. While this is going on, And capital allocators outside of the United States, particularly in Europe, are selling the dollar, selling US treasuries, selling American companies as a response to Donald Trump's behavior and rhetoric on the world stage.

30:58Anthony Scaramucci:Do you think it's also in response to Minneapolis or not? I was going to ask you that, Anthony. Is it just Greenland? Because I've watched that too. Or do you think this plays into it?

31:06Katty Kay:I think it could be, but it started happening before Minneapolis. If you're in people's faces telling them that Mike makes right, Mike makes right, and I'm going to flex on you and my military can knock you on your ass, people are looking around saying, okay, I've got to form unnatural alliances with others. I've got to be Mark Carney going to China. I've got to figure out my new security system. I've got to prepare for a potential military crossing the Northern border into Canada. I mean, you'd be irresponsible for Carney not to do that. And so I'm sitting here now, what am I going to do in protest?

31:42Katty Kay:I'm going to start selling the dollar, I'm going to start finding ways to barter with other countries away from the United States. So why am I bringing this up? Because the move is a blunt instrument move by the Democrats. We're going to shut down the government and we're going to stop the$75 billion of funding into DHS. But then you're not understanding the holistic thing that's going on for America, the fabric of America, America's role in the world, and how important the US dollar is to the American economy. And so go shut down the government, you're going to disrupt the market and you're going to really hurt the economy is what I'm saying.

32:23Anthony Scaramucci:Okay. So you play democratic strategist. What would you do? If you were running, say the Democratic Party was a cohesive organization, what would you actually have the Democrats do given the position that they're in?

32:37Katty Kay:Unfortunately, what I would like them to do, they will not do. Okay. But what I would like them to do is I'd like them to take Newt Gindrich's playbook from 1994. I'd like them to anoint one person. Okay. I don't know who the person is. Maybe it's Gavin. Maybe it's Hakeem Jeffries. But you got to get one person and you got to put together a program and you got to put together a list of things that everybody's going to abide to. centrist democrats hard left democrats this is the 10 things that we're going to abide to this is a restatement of a contract with america if you remember that from 32 years ago and what what i would do is i would say this is what we're going to do when we get back in power and this is what we need to do to check this president into his lame duck status over the next two years and this is the platform and and what would be in the platform are basic things not hard left woke things okay this would be things i would want to the democrats to appeal to the 40 of the voters that are registered independents and i would tell people let's get ourselves back into power and then we can talk about the policy minutiae but they won't do that caddy because they can't they can't do that.

33:56Katty Kay:They're not capable of it.

33:58Anthony Scaramucci:What would you have them do right now in response to Minneapolis and what's happening right at the moment? What would you have them do that they are not doing or that they could be doing that they're not doing?

34:08Katty Kay:Well, again, I would want a coordinated media strategy. I would want everybody in the room going on the airwaves, going on social media, explaining exactly what's going on, demand investigations, get the DHS inspector general, try to push for some congressional hearings, push for more accountability and guardrails. I would not, and I repeat, I would not delay the funding. I would not defund because it's connected, Caddy. It's connected to the economy and it's connected to what's going on. And you would have to be an imbecile to not look at the economic dashboard of what's going on in the United States.

34:51Katty Kay:If you toss the dollar, okay, you don't have the ability to run a$40 trillion deficit as the United States. Okay. My buddy, Rick Reeder, I've known him for 40 years. He is a 45, 50 % chance prediction markets. He's now going to be the Fed share. He's loved by everybody. He's probably one of the most brilliant fixed income people in the United States. And I have seen his 200-page PowerPoint presentation on how to strengthen the dollar and keep the dollar as the hegemonic currency for the next century. And I'm sure he gave the CliffsNotes version of that to Donald Trump, which is why he's been placed in the poll position, okay?

35:38Katty Kay:But right now, I'm looking at this, I'm saying to myself, I can't have an unwind of the US dollar at this moment. Ray Dalio in Davos with us is talking about a debt super cycle where the United States is borrowing money, Caddy, to pay the interest on the money that they borrowed. Okay. I know we're talking about Minnesota and we're talking about the shootings, but I just need to explain to viewers and listeners how connected everything is. And you can't sit there in isolation and say, well, I'm going to protest this and this is how I'm going to do it because you're going to move things around that you don't want to move.

36:18Anthony Scaramucci:Practically speaking, there was a lot of money already allocated to DHS in the big, beautiful bill, as we said earlier, and they're going to get that money anyway, whatever the Democrats do in terms of shutting down the government. I don't know if the big sell-off of America Inc. was in response just to Greenland and the international erraticism, or if Minneapolis is part of that, but certainly America's appeal for international investors and for anybody who wanted to have alliances with the United States was that there was a rule of law that you didn't go to a protest in a way that was legal and get shot dead.

36:53Anthony Scaramucci:That is part of the contract that the world has with the United States. And I think it's that contract that's being broken, both from an investment point of view and from a reputational point of view.

37:04Katty Kay:We've talked about this before, and I think it's important to continue to bring it up. And Lisa Cook, The irony is the Federal Reserve governor who I met with back in October has written about this. When you have repressive regimes and you are bullying your citizens, you depress economic innovation, you depress entrepreneurship in your country. Yes. And so that is going on at a time where we don't need that to be going on. We have a pivot point in America where we could restate the vision of America and create an American renewal off of productivity, AI, robotics, immunotherapy. We could help our educational systems with the use of AI and improve the educational format, create more aspiration in America.

38:01Katty Kay:But we have a bunch of monkeys running the zoo that want to put a hurt on their fellow citizens. They want to send us into a spiral. So you have two roach and you're at the fork. You can go hard repressive, lose the mantle of leadership of the US dollar, crush your citizens, I guess, to have some enjoyment for somebody who is a sadist like Stephen miller to enjoy the pain of that and to call people who are you know not shooting at anybody assassins i guess we could do that and america can live in that direction steven miller who

38:43Anthony Scaramucci:ditched his middle school friend because he found out he had hispanic roots yeah this sort of stuff

38:48Katty Kay:okay or we can say okay we've got to heal america you know to me i would have this is a platform of Healing America. I'm AOC. I'm Gavin Newsom. We're all signed up for it. And here are the steps we're going to take. We're going to heal America. Yes, we understood. We got the message from the 24 election about the border. We want to have a reasonable, sensible border. We're going to try to seek better innovation in immigration reform. And we're going to try to repair our relationships with our allies so that we can strengthen the US economy and strengthen the US cultural image abroad like we were so successful for doing over the last eight decades.

39:33Katty Kay:Okay. Not transgender in schools or transgender in sports, I mean, or transgender bathrooms. We're not doing that. All we're going to do is restate the vision of America as an inclusive society. Okay. And if they do that, Cady, they'll win the independence. Yeah.

39:53Anthony Scaramucci:Right now, they have a lot that they can run on.

39:56Katty Kay:Please, I'm begging you guys, do not close the government. We're already in enough trouble. Just take a look at where the yen is trading relative to the US dollar. Okay? We're in a lot of trouble, guys. Okay? And the soft power of the United States is eroding due to the idiocy of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. Don't put us over the edge.

40:18Anthony Scaramucci:If you want to understand more about Minnesota and how this all started, particularly with the Somali community there, because that is the reason that Donald Trump says that he has gone into Minneapolis so heavily to target the Somali community. I had a conversation with Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister Salah Ahmed Jama. It's a super insightful conversation. It's a very interesting look at how a small country, which is being hammered by President Trump, his people are being called low IQ people. They're being all slammed as terrorists. if you would like to see how a country like that has to deal with Donald Trump and how they have to respond to Donald Trump you can get that conversation by becoming a founding member sign up at the rest is politics us.com I think it's a timely conversation because it looks at America from the outside and the challenges for a country like Somalia of having to deal with Donald Trump as he says these things about the people of your country that interview will come out on Wednesday for our founding members.

41:24Anthony Scaramucci:Thanks guys for listening. It's, you know, it's pretty grim. It's pretty, it's been a tough couple of weeks, but this one is particularly hard and particularly hard, of course, for the people of Minneapolis. So our thoughts go out to them and let's hope this violence ends soon. We'll see you soon.

41:41Katty Kay:Thanks guys. We'll see you soon.