Minneapolis backlash reaches the White House

0:00Katie Simpson:Jacqueline Furlan-Smith, a 40-year-old former Canadian military trainer, moves to Costa Rica to follow her dreams, but in the summer of 2021, vanishes without a trace. How can a woman just go missing and us put out all that effort to find her and she's still missing? I'm David Ridgen and this is Someone Knows Something Season 10, The Jacqueline Furlan-Smith Case. Available now on CBC Listen and wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Well, this week in Washington, all eyes are many, many blocks from the White House, all eyes on Minnesota, after 37-year-old Alex Preddy was killed by ICE agents on Saturday morning, his death adding to the growing protests in that state.

0:49What's unfolding there could have major implications for Donald Trump and for America. I'm on the ground in Minneapolis right now, and it's really hard to put into words the level of anger I'm seeing from people here. You know, when this deployment is done and I come back to Washington and I close my eyes and think about what is going to resonate with me, it's the images of people on their knees on the freezing cold ground in the ice, openly weeping, kneeling at the memorial for Alex Preddy. It's really hard to describe this mix of anger and heartbreak and frustration in this moment that is leading to pressure and people here hope will lead to change.

1:36Katie Simpson:Yeah, clearly stakes are very high and the White House seems to be realizing that. Things they're evolving very, very quickly. And Katie, I'm really curious to kind of get your assessment of what's happening in Minneapolis. Everyone is on edge. We're going to be talking about all of this on today's episode of our podcast, Two Blocks from the White House, where Willie and I are sitting. Katie, of course, in Minneapolis. We're asking whether this event could be a tipping point for American politics. I'm Paul Hunter. I'm Katie Simpson. And I'm Willie Lowry. All right. So, Katie, as we've been noting, you're in Minnesota.

2:12You've been there since Saturday, the day Alex Preddy was killed. We're recording this episode early Tuesday afternoon. Katie, you've given us some hints as to what you've been seeing and hearing, but tell us a bit more. What's it like there? When you show up at memorials, the event is generally pretty solemn. People are showing up with flowers, they're lighting candles, they're laying down signs and messages of hope and messages of thanks to Alex Freddie. One thing that really stands out to me is that the way that people are openly weeping and openly sobbing and the tears are coming from a place of not just sadness but anger.

2:51I interviewed a gentleman yesterday who was standing outside of the hospital, the Veterans Hospital, where Alex Preddy worked. And he was just standing there by himself, minus 20 degrees, holding a giant sign that said the word hope. And he said, I didn't know what to do in this moment. I feel so angry. And he compared seeing the video of Alex Preddy being shot and killed to the moment he saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center. He said he had that same sense of anger, outrage, sadness, frustration. And in some cases, we are seeing people openly sobbing and having those moments of grief together.

3:33And then we see the anger take on different forms. I was at a protest on Monday night outside a hotel where ICE agents have been staying and it had spread online here on the ground that possibly this was the hotel that Greg Bovino was staying at. Greg Bravino has been leading the ICE operations in Minnesota. He has been very widely criticized. He's the guy that made the allegations without any evidence that Alex Preddy showed up at this ICE enforcement event and wanted to massacre officers. This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

4:13And of course, there's been no evidence to back that up and nothing to sort of make that case. at the protest last night. It was very tense. Demonstrators gather at night to try and make as much noise as they can outside the hotels where ICE agents are staying because they don't want them to sleep. It's their form of protest. And they've been doing this quite regularly all around sort of Minneapolis and sort of the surrounding suburbs wherever they find ICE agents are staying. And when we got there, it had been going on for about 45 minutes at that point. And police were in position. We saw dozens and dozens of officers.

4:47They easily outnumbered the protesters who were there. And they started getting on the loudspeaker saying, you have three minutes to leave. If you don't leave, you could be arrested. You could be subject to chemical irritants or tear gas.

5:06You could be targeted with less than lethal force. The rubber bullets or the beanbag bullets that we've seen and heard about. And when the crowd did not push back, that's when you saw officers sort of line up in formation and push into the crowd. The officers were trying to create space between demonstrators and this hotel. And so they kept pushing and pushing and pushing. And my colleague James and I, he was the cameraman, we were right in the middle of it. There were three younger demonstrators who were sort of standing in an area where we were. And when the officers decided to push, they were state officers, not federal officers.

5:41When they decided to push, they move fast and they quickly jumped on, tackled these protesters. There were two or three agents per person. One young woman, as she was on the ground and officers were sort of holding her hands back, tying her hands with zip ties, she's screaming, call my dad. Somebody please call my dad. And she had a bloody nose from when she sort of hit the ground. And others were screaming, you know, leave us alone, leave us alone. and they were picked up fairly quickly and taken off to waiting vans. The tensions, again, it's really hard to describe. People in the city are exhausted and they are angry.

6:21And, you know, this is the way some of them are showing it. It just illustrates just how raw the tensions are right now. I would say persistent as well and growing. All the adjectives you use, Katie, but it's not easing up, right? I mean, I was in Los Angeles as a sort of OG of these things. push back against this. We've seen it in Chicago. We've seen it in Memphis. But it's next level. I mean, obviously, because of Renee Good and Alex Preddy takes things to a next level effectively by definition. But it's like the throngs, the fury and the persistence and the growth in Minneapolis. It's mind-boggling and jaw-dropping.

7:04Willie, what's your sense of what we're hearing from the White House as this has all been unfolding in Minneapolis?

7:10Katie Simpson:Yeah, I mean, it's reaching the White House for sure. And I think, as Katie said, Greg Bovino initially started this rhetoric that he was there to cause, this is Alex Preddy, was there to cause maximum damage. Kristi Noem and Deputy White House Advisor Stephen Miller labeled him a domestic terrorist. But the videos from multiple angles just don't bear that out. And the White House is realizing that just yesterday, Caroline Levitt essentially distanced Trump from Noam and Miller's comments. Does the president agree with them? Look, as I've said, I have not heard the president characterize Mr. Pretty in that way.

7:53However, I have heard the president say he wants to let the facts and the investigation lead itself.

7:58Katie Simpson:It appears that the protesters have essentially run Bovino out of town. The White House clearly realizing that they're losing the messaging on this. But I want to go back to the video aspect of this. I think one of the things that makes what's happening so far-reaching in its impact is the fact that all of these incidents have been caught on camera. And it seems many times they contradict what the White House is trying to say about them. And at a certain point, you know, you can say what you want, but people are seeing with their own eyes what's happening. And generally, usually not just from one angle, but from multiple angles.

8:44Katie Simpson:And it just it makes it a lot harder for the White House to control the narrative. Interesting to hear Caroline Levitt then yesterday saying the facts will lead the investigation when half the questions were about, well, wait a minute. That the way the facts, quote-unquote, air quotes, were presented by administration officials off the bat is completely the opposite of what the video suggests. I was – like so many – on Saturday, I was driving in my car. I was listening to coverage of what was unfolding in Minneapolis. And then the anchor read one of the statements about the domestic terrorism or the brandishing a gun.

9:21And I just thought, oh, man, this is going to change the nature of the conversation in Minneapolis because it sounds like this guy was a bad guy and he had his gun out. And then it was only hours later when I saw the video, like millions of others. Wait a second. That's not – like what the government said, what the administration said is demonstrably not true. It's remarkable to the point where, and Katie, I'm sure, you know, you can speak to this as well, like Tim Walsh, governor of Minnesota, is advising Minnesotans to pull out your cameras and video everything because that's the only way to document for real what's happening.

10:04Yeah, he described it as collecting, you know, images of atrocities being carried out in Minneapolis and hopefully that they will be used for future prosecutions. One thing I want to point out is word spread so quickly about the shooting of Alex Preddy. And the first video was out within the hour after those shots were fired. We do have video now that we're able to share with you. It is very disturbing for anyone who may not want to. A lot of people saw that video before they heard what it was the Department of Homeland Security or senior officials in the Trump administration were saying. And so when they'd seen those images in that video, and that was just one of several videos capturing what happened on Saturday, when the words very clearly did not match what people saw with their own eyes, it only fed into the way people look at the Trump administration here from everyone I've spoken with, with one exception, and I'll talk about that exception in just a moment.

11:01But the vast majority of everyone I've spoken here, they view the Trump administration with zero credibility. They do not trust what's coming out of senior officials mouths because there's been so much resistance to the immigration enforcement operations here on the ground to begin with. So you already have that underlying undercurrent. And then when the way that federal officials described what happened with the shooting of Renee Good, and that did not match the video that people had seen. And then again, with Alex Preddy, you're seeing it again there. It just added to that sense of you cannot trust anything you are hearing from the administration.

11:39And that is widely what I am hearing from people on the ground. Now, I said there was one exception. We were doing a live hit for Ian Hanamansing on his show on Monday night. And I'm standing outside the Veterans Affairs Hospital where Alex Preddy worked. And as I'm standing there, there's a sort of a candlelight vigil happening. And a gentleman in a large white truck pulls up and he starts shouting at me and he starts saying, what about Jocelyn Nungere? What about Lakin Riley? People who were killed by individuals who were illegally in the United States. And at the time he was yelling at me, we were live on TV and then he started swearing at me.

12:26I'm like, OK, if someone starts swearing at me, it's not going to lead to any sort of productive engagement and trying to get opinions and that kind of thing. But I did hear that. That was the first time I'd heard that on the ground where people brought that up. And certainly that is something that we've heard from some, not all, some in some American conservative circles when there's been pushback about the ICE operations on the ground.

12:49Katie Simpson:We've heard it from the White House before as well. Caroline Levitt has brought up those victims as well. And Donald Trump has. Yeah, exactly. I would say it's almost like after the killing of Renee Good, despite the fact that video told a different story than what the administration was telling or saying, the administration had enough inertia with these ICE operations to kind of power through and keep going. But this second instance, it just seems like it's kind of stopped them in their tracks. The fact that we're seeing this twice, two Americans killed in the span of just a few weeks with the videos, seemingly the facts on the ground, so disparate from what the White House was initially saying.

13:40And just to add another layer to all of this, now, you know, we talk about Tim Walsh, governor of Minnesota, and also what seems a lifetime ago, the Democratic nominee for vice president under Kamala Harris, a point not lost on Donald Trump. We should put out there in a state that voted for Harris, not for Trump. These are all part of the mosaic of what's going on there. So Tim Walsh has now activated the National Guard in Minnesota and is calling for calm, but also calling out the federal government in this country and asking Americans broadly to pay attention. You're allowed to decide at any point that you're not with this anymore.

14:21If you voted for this administration, heck, even if you thought Operation Metro Surge was a good idea, sounded like the thing to do a month ago, you're still allowed to look at what's happening here in Minnesota and say, this isn't what I voted for and this isn't what I want. Even if you voted for Donald Trump, even if you voted and supported this kind of stuff broadly is his message. It's interesting, isn't it, Willie? He calls this a moment of inflection, an inflection point possibly. What are the polls suggesting about how Americans feel about all this?

14:57Katie Simpson:Yeah, well, I think it's interesting. Walls there was kind of acknowledging the fact that a lot of Americans, a majority of Americans, are supportive of the idea of cracking down on immigration. But the numbers have really started to change in the last few weeks based off of ICE's actions in Minnesota. Just last week, the New York Times and Siena came out with a poll that said six in 10 Americans say ice tactics have gone too far. Now, these polls don't even take into consideration the killing of Alex Petty because they came last week. But Reuters, Ipsos came out with a poll that was taken from Friday to Sunday.

15:40Katie Simpson:So some of the polls will reflect the change in kind of opinions after the killing of Petty. And those numbers are not very favorable for Trump. 39 % approve of Trump's handling of immigration. That's down from 41 % the month before. 53 % disapprove. And here's the real number. 58 % disapprove of ISIS action. So the White House and Trump are seeing these numbers and I think you're seeing them begin to course correct. What that course correction ultimately looks like we'll have to see, but the numbers are not in their favor at all at the moment. Although important to point out, there's still plenty who agree.

16:23This is true.

16:24Katie Simpson:And independents were quite significantly against these actions, but Republicans still more or less overwhelmingly in favor of them. I don't think – I'm not sure if we've mentioned Renee Good, the woman who was killed a couple of weeks ago or so now. And that, Katie, was not far from where George Floyd happened in Minnesota. That kind of felt like things were going to change then. It felt like a turning point of a kind in some aspects of American life. What are your thoughts? I mean does this feel like a turning point in America? In a lot of interviews we do. Something that is pointed out to me quite frequently is that Minneapolis is a community that knows, has been through things like this before.

17:11These kinds of, you know, moments of outrage and anger and heartbreak and disappointment and sort of frustration, broad frustration to the point where people are pushing very hard for change. and the point that the Trump administration, at least in this moment, seems to be trying to take on a different tone, it demonstrates that perhaps the backlash, the pushback, the outrage is resonating in the places where, you know, change can happen. I got to say, I don't know how to, where I land on this. I was in front of the White House the other day because a big storm came in and wanted to go down and just, you know, take the perfunctory, the photo of the White House in snow, et cetera.

17:58And there were some tourists there. And I started chatting with people and I was saying, well, you know what happened here a couple of years ago? That was Black Lives Matter Plaza. That building over there was on fire. I stood here and watched people throw rocks through that window of that lobby of that building and set that on fire. And then I got to thinking, so what has changed since then? Because we all thought that was an inflection point. And I'm not rocket science to say that the race issue and the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement have been resolved. They have not. I was in Newtown after the massacre at Sandy Hook and everybody thought that was an inflection point and that the gun laws would change in America and they did not.

18:34We've all covered monster storms, hurricanes and what have you where at different times people have thought, well, this is the climate change moment in America. And then people went back to lives as usual. And yet in this instance in Minnesota, we've got the NRA and the Democrats on the same side of things arguing it together, which is not unique but certainly unusual. I don't know. Willie, what are your thoughts on where we're at?

19:05Katie Simpson:To borrow a kind of idea from our own prime minister, I think perhaps the inflection point was the 2024 election. And this is just the kind of continued fallout of that decision, right? It was a decision by the American people to fairly overwhelmingly elect this president. And what this country is experiencing are the repercussions of that decision.

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19:56Katie Simpson:Listen to TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. What about Capitol Hill, Willie? What's going on there in terms of pushback? Yeah, well, Groundhog Day, anyone? Come Friday, there might be yet another government shutdown. essentially all over what's happening in Minneapolis. So last week, the House passed with some Democratic support, a funding bill that included funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which, of course, ICE is part of it. That bill would also include about$10 billion for ICE. Now it's up for vote in the Senate, but now Senate Democrats, after witnessing the killing of Alex Preddy, are saying, wait, hold on.

20:47Katie Simpson:Let's try and decouple the DHS funding from the rest of the funding bill. But that requires buy-in from Republicans at the moment. Doesn't seem like they're going to get it. For this bill to pass, they need 60 votes. Republicans hold 53 seats. So they need seven Democrats. That doesn't look like they're going to get it at this point. So come Friday, the betting odds appear to be that we might be headed for another government shutdown here. I've got about 150 questions on that for you, Willie, but instead I'm going to turn to Katie. I've got about one answer, so let's see where we end up. If this were to come to pass and there somehow emerges real pushback from Capitol Hill against the White House, how big a deal would that be, Katie?

21:29Well, it's going to start another sort of fight, like the one we witnessed in the fall when Democrats refused to support the continue funding the government. It led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, and it led to some real significant consequences for people all across the country that either rely on federal resources or work for the federal government. Democrats are looking for moments where they can sort of stand up and say, we are trying to do what we can, what's within our power, even though we don't hold the majority in either of these chambers. So it could set up another moment where we see Democrats trying to take a stand to show their supporters, listen, we can try and do something.

22:14Katie Simpson:I think, as always, Katie is spot on there. You know, Democratic voters want someone to stand up for them. They don't want the whole onus to be on state and local authorities to kind of protect the citizens. But what I will say is ICE has already got$75 billion in funding guaranteed over the next four years, right? That's from the big, beautiful bill that was passed this summer. So some of this would really just be about optics, right? The agency has the money they need to keep carrying out the operations that they've been doing. So we'll have to see if ultimately the Democrats decide that it's not kind of worth it.

22:54Katie, don't you love it when someone says you're spot on and then they say but? But! But! Guys, no, what?

23:00Katie Simpson:No, I'm in charge of team morale here, OK? Here's something we haven't – just before we move on, we haven't talked much about prominent Republicans. You know, the polls are interesting that Willie was talking about. But it's my sense that it's not just the usual suspects who are not hinting, actually saying out loud that ICE has gone too far, that this is not good, that this is however they want to phrase it. Is that something that could have an effect on the thinking of Donald Trump? Because that's the ultimate question here, right? How is all of this going to play with Donald Trump? Katie, what do you think about that?

23:35Is this contagious, I guess, is the ultimate question with Republicans pushing back? The thing is, it is an election year, right? It is the midterm elections. And Donald Trump has openly said that if Republicans lose control of the House, if they lose control of the Senate or if there's a shift in power, he is concerned that he is going to basically be impeached for all kinds of different reasons. that Democrats, particularly the House, will push forward and try to move ahead impeachment proceedings. Even though he is not up for election, this next set of midterm elections, it really matters. Cue two years of investigations and impeachment processes if the power changes on Capitol Hill.