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All in with Chris Hayes - Season 14 - Episode 10
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00:00tonight on All In. All we heard was boom and every airbag deployed. The federal occupation
00:08of Minneapolis continues. Who is here to protect us? We are under attack by our own federal
00:17government, which is unprecedented. And the Trump Justice Department opens investigations
00:23into the mayor of Minneapolis and Governor Tim Walz. Mayor Jacob Fry, Governor Tim Walz,
00:29Attorney General Keith Ellison, have deliberately, willfully and purposefully incited this violent
00:37insurrection. Tonight, the latest political targets of the Trump administration, the push
00:43from the family of Renee Good for an investigation, and why all of this is playing so poorly with the
00:48American people. But All In starts right now. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes.
00:58The Trump administration is weaponizing the Department of Justice against two top Minnesota
01:02Democrats, Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry. The two men are, we've just learned,
01:08apparently under federal criminal investigation on allegations they are impeding federal law
01:14enforcement. MSNOW reports that subpoenas are going out. Of course, all these men have actually done,
01:20as we've seen here and covered, is publicly defend with their speech the rights of their constituents,
01:26who are actively under assault by Trump's federal agents. Right now, there are 3,000 of those agents
01:33in the state, mostly in Minneapolis, a city that only has about 600 sworn police officers,
01:39meaning local law enforcement's massively outnumbered, just to give a sense of the scale here.
01:43And the feds, as you can see there, as we've been playing for two weeks now, are acting,
01:49frankly, like an occupying force, like they are an enemy territory, that they're there to subdue the people.
01:56Walz and Fry have emerged as two very vocal critics of that regime, especially in the wake
02:01of the tragic killing of Renee Goode by an ICE agent last week. Fry famously offered this blunt
02:08declaration for the forces in his city.
02:13They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense.
02:19Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly, that is bullshit.
02:25There's little I can say, again, that'll make this situation better, but I do have a message
02:31for our community, for our city, and I have a message for ICE.
02:38To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis.
02:42We do not want you here.
02:45Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety,
02:49and you are doing exactly the opposite.
02:53Minnesota Governor Walz has been a near-constant presence in Minneapolis,
02:56calling for peace, acting as a bulwark against Donald Trump's, essentially, invasion of his state.
03:04My fellow Minnesotans, what's happening in Minnesota right now defies belief.
03:09News reports simply don't do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma
03:15the federal government is raining down upon our communities.
03:19Two to three thousand armed agents of the federal government have been deployed to Minnesota.
03:24Armed, masked, under-trained ICE agents are going door-to-door,
03:29ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live.
03:33Let's be very, very clear.
03:35This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement.
03:38Instead, it's a campaign of organized brutality
03:41against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.
03:45In response to the reporting about these investigations,
03:48both the governor and mayor have released statements tonight.
03:50Mayor Frye said, in part, quote,
03:51This is an obvious attempt to intimidate me for standing up for Minneapolis,
03:55our local law enforcement, and our residents against the chaos and danger
03:58this administration has brought to our streets.
04:00I will not be intimidated.
04:02My focus will remain where it's always been, keeping our city safe.
04:06Frye told MSNOW that he has not received a subpoena.
04:09Governor Walz said, quote,
04:11Two days ago it was Alyssa Slotkin.
04:12Last week it was Jerome Powell, before that Mark Kelly.
04:15Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents
04:17is a dangerous authoritarian tactic.
04:19The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good
04:23is the federal agent who shot her.
04:26The governor is exactly right.
04:28In fact, just last week, Trump lashed out at federal prosecutors at the White House.
04:32According to a Wall Street Journal report,
04:34he complained that the prosecutors were weak
04:36and not moving quickly enough to prosecute his critics.
04:39That's according to people familiar with the matter.
04:40MSNOW has not confirmed that reporting, but of course,
04:44Donald Trump has publicly called for his critics to be indicted and investigated
04:47many, many, many, many, many, many, many times,
04:51including in an explicit message to Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media.
04:57And now we have seen those federal probes and indictments unfold rapidly.
05:02Look at that graphic for a second.
05:03Take that in, okay?
05:06Mark Kelly, Alyssa Slocken, Jerome Powell, now at Walls and Frye,
05:11join the growing list of the president's critics to face trumped-up investigations and charges.
05:16Joining me now with the details, MSNOW Justice Intelligence Correspondent, Ken Delanian.
05:21Ken, what can you tell us about what we know about these, quote, investigations?
05:25Good evening, Chris.
05:26Well, details are sparse, but I'm told that the premise of this investigation is a statute in the U.S.
05:32Code
05:32called 18 U.S.C. 372, which makes it a crime to commit a conspiracy to impede or injure an
05:40officer.
05:40It's the same thing they're charging some protesters with.
05:43And it's based on their public statements, as we understand it,
05:46just like some of the ones you played tonight.
05:49And we understand that grand jury subpoenas in this case have been prepared,
05:53but neither the mayor nor the governor said they have received them yet,
05:57and that this investigation is being run out of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis,
06:02no doubt with consultation from Washington.
06:04And, of course, it's raising the very questions that you just raised,
06:07which is how can these public statements by these senior officials amount to the crime of impeding
06:14federal immigration enforcement?
06:16How can just words do that until they have a First Amendment right to make these statements?
06:20And how could the Justice Department be doing this,
06:24targeting these Democrats who are opposing Donald Trump and his policies politically, Chris?
06:29Now, I know we don't, you know, what we know is small right now, sparse, as you said.
06:35So I'm aware of that.
06:37I mean, first of all, there's the First Amendment problem, right?
06:40But just to get into that office, I mean, you've got a U.S. attorney there
06:44appointed by Donald Trump, sort of a local Republican guy.
06:49But six U.S. attorneys, assistant U.S. attorneys, including the number two in that office,
06:54very respected career official, resigned just a few days ago.
06:58And they resigned, we think, because they were being pressured to start some sort of criminal
07:02investigation of Renee Goodes' widow.
07:05Isn't that right?
07:07That's correct. We've reported that as well as others. And they were concerned about
07:10the direction of that investigation, not exclusively focusing on her, but just the fact
07:16that it was focusing on the victim of this incident, the person who was shot and killed,
07:21when normally the Justice Department and particularly the Civil Rights Division, but also
07:25local prosecutors, would investigate the conduct of the officer. The officer actually is the one that
07:30killed the citizen. And so that's normally the subject of the investigation. They were very
07:34troubled by that. But the thing about resigning in protest, Chris, is that it sort of creates a
07:41problem of who's left. And the Justice Department, hundreds, if not thousands, of prosecutors and
07:48attorneys and support staff have left the Justice Department in the last year. And the people who
07:52remain are either clinging to their jobs to pay the mortgage and feed their kids, or they support
07:58what's going on. And increasingly, people who support what's going on are getting in senior roles,
08:02even in the career ranks of the Justice Department, Chris.
08:05Yeah, precisely the reason I brought up that context, again, this is just a few days ago,
08:09in the context of this story, is just because I think it's important that we now, it appears
08:14that whoever the lawyers are in that operation are lawyering this. We don't know at what stage
08:20the investigation is. The second thing, aside from the First Amendment issue, which just seems
08:25dispositive to me, I'm not a lawyer, but like, that's just squarely constitutionally protected
08:30speech. Obviously, obviously, obviously. But this section of the federal code, you mentioned this.
08:36I mean, there have been a number of occasions in which protesters or other folks have been charged
08:41with this. And we've gotten a few no true bills. Grand juries refusing to indict. I think there's
08:45been a few acquittals. They have used this quite a bit. But actually, just even with like low level
08:50people, people on a sidewalk have had a very hard time actually securing convictions on facts that
08:57might even seem better for the prosecution than just the words of a public official.
09:03Yeah. And this is where you get to the extraordinary way this Justice Department is being
09:07operated, because normally the federal government, the Justice Department, only brings cases they know
09:11they can win. But in this case, and it takes very little, actually, predicate to open a criminal
09:17investigation. That's all that's happening here. Grand jurisprudence is going out. We have no idea
09:21whether this will ever get to charges. It may never get to charges. But the point is,
09:25they've got their headline. It's intimidating. It's chilling. The force of the federal government,
09:30grand jury subpoenas going to the offices of the mayor and the governor, demanding documents.
09:34So that's maybe the goal here, in fact. And it's not how the Justice Department is supposed to work.
09:39The power of the federal prosecutor is an awesome power. It needs to be wielded responsibly. It has
09:45historically, even in the first Trump administration, we did not see things like this. But we're seeing
09:49it on a weekly basis now, Chris. The other news today, legally, is the widow of Renee Good securing
09:58counsel for a possible civil case against the federal government, sending messages for them
10:03to retain messages and stuff. It seems, you know, obviously the bar for suing federal officials is
10:08quite high. But it also seems that, you know, the law works in both directions. And to your point before
10:14about how the victim here was not really getting any kind of investigatory heft from the government
10:20on her behalf, it does seem that there will be some sort of private cause of action here from
10:25surviving family members. Yeah, they'll certainly try. It is extraordinarily difficult under various
10:33precedents and Supreme Court rulings to sue the federal government if the officer was acting within
10:38the scope of his duties. And that's certainly what he would argue, whether he was negligent,
10:42whether he was reckless, he was acting within the scope of his duties. And that's a really I've
10:46seen a lot of cases where you saw obvious negligence by an FBI agent dismissed. And, you know,
10:53but they may have other causes of action that may allow them to get discovery to get to more of
10:59the
10:59truth of what happened. That'll be sort of little consolation, but it'll be something.
11:04All right, Ken Delaney. And thanks so much for breaking this news and joining us the last minute.
11:08Really appreciate it. Sure. I want to bring in now Elliot Payne.
11:12Who serves as the Minneapolis City Council President. Councilmember, I've I've I got to say
11:19that I have seen so many people from your city praising your actions over the last few weeks and
11:27how you've been basically out in the street all day long. And I want to ask you about what you've
11:31seen before. I want to just ask your reaction to this news about these supposed criminal investigations
11:36directed at the mayor of your city and the governor of your state.
11:40Well, first, thanks for having me. And I had I would learned about this news on my way into the
11:45studio. And my first reaction to it is that it's laughable. It is completely incompetent. It is a
11:51reflection of the recklessness of this administration that I'm seeing actually on the streets every single
11:56day. The people that are out trying to terrorize our community are the most untrained,
12:03undisciplined, chaotic people I have ever interacted with in government. We in Minneapolis
12:09have been going through a reckoning for many years. I ran for city council after the murder of George
12:14Floyd. I have been at the forefront of the work of transforming and reforming a public safety system
12:20that failed our community. And I've been working side by side with police professionals that actually
12:26have a dedication to demonstrating some competency in this space. And the people that I'm interacting
12:31with from the federal government are completely untrained. They're completely lawless. They're
12:38careless. They're reckless. They're disrespectful. And I think that's a reflection of how this DOJ is
12:43approaching these just complete farce of an indictment. One consistent theme I've heard from
12:50people living in Minneapolis that I've been personally in touch with and also just through
12:54social media and reporting is just the difficulty in conveying just how chaotic and disrupted daily
13:02life is. And I wonder if you could just walk us through, like, what is your day life right now?
13:05I know
13:06that you're basically going around the city trying to kind of put out fires caused by these federal
13:10agents. But try to give us a sense of that if you can. So what I'm trying to do most
13:18days is spend
13:19time along my most active corridor. That's Central Avenue Northeast in Minneapolis. And this is one of
13:26our cultural corridors, areas that we have designated as diverse and culturally significant to our
13:31community. The Ecuadorian Consulate is on Central Avenue. And what we do is we just find a coffee shop
13:39where we post up. And all you have to do is wait before you see an SUV full of militarized
13:46thugs drive
13:47down the street. That's exactly what happened on Monday evening when I was recording a video just
13:53to update my community on the lawsuit that we were bringing forward to the Trump administration.
13:57When they started shining their flashlights on us, a whole group of people started chasing after
14:04them with their whistles. I got on my car and caught up with them. And they had pulled over and
14:08started
14:09harassing a U.S. citizen on a bus stop who was just trying to get home from work. I went
14:14up to them.
14:15I introduced myself as the council president. I had my phone in my hand. I asked, you know,
14:21did this individual have a warrant? Are they free to go? And there was one of their officers
14:27abandoning about his taser, pointing it at everyone, pointing it at one of my staff members in the chest,
14:33just completely operating without any sense of discipline or control. So I had my eyes on him
14:39when all of a sudden another officer walked by and shoved me into the street. I'm physically fine,
14:45but this attempt at terrorizing our community is just it's unsustainable.
14:51I've heard stories from reporters of just watching, you know, a Latino woman at a bus stop just
14:58essentially disappeared, like zero to 60 seconds. SUV pulls up, people get out. Michelle Norris,
15:03who's our great colleague, told me this story in the podcast I just did with her. And they just
15:07talked to her for 30 seconds. Then she's in the car. I've heard multiple stories like this. I've also
15:11heard incredible stories. And I wonder if you can talk about this and just community resilience. I mean,
15:15you've got churches that are putting together 12,000 meals for people that are essentially
15:21sheltering in place. You've got volunteers ringing schools in vests. There's something very beautiful
15:27and inspiring about how the people of Minneapolis have come together across lines of difference to
15:32defend each other. Inspiring is the absolute right word. Our entire community is organized right now.
15:40They are coming out and they are scheduling shifts at the, you know, at pickup for school,
15:46shifts for a school getting out, shifts for schools at recess. We heard reports today
15:51of a school having ICE agents scoping out kids at recess. This is just completely depraved activity.
15:59And the shining light here is just the love, care and consideration our community has for each other,
16:04how much we're stepping up and organizing to make sure that they're not going to be able to move
16:09throughout our city without having eyes on them and without those whistles going off. And so
16:15they're not able to snatch up our neighbors when we know that we are organized and we are out there.
16:19And that's the thing that's giving me a lot of hope in this moment.
16:23We just got news and I don't have the details. I basically have a headline that a federal judge
16:27has issued a temporary restraining order from federal agents targeting protesters. I think that's
16:33pursuant to one of the lawsuits. There's a bunch. It may have been the one that your office was part
16:38of
16:38filing. Do you have in other cities, we have seen the federal courts have actually stepped in and
16:45even if not, it's been definitive, have ruled in favor of plaintiffs and have exercised some
16:51meaningful kind of friction on these sorts of operations. Are you encouraged by that? Is that
16:55your hope here? I am encouraged by that because honestly, this is amateur hour. The way that this
17:03federal government operates, whether it's subpoenaing elected officials or sending thugs
17:10throughout major cities, this is the work of despots. This is the work of a president who's
17:16desperate that he's not in control. He thinks he's a king, but he doesn't understand we live under a
17:22constitution with separation of powers. He doesn't have the authority to do what he's doing. And he's
17:28lashing out at the citizens of America because of the failures of his presidency.
17:34One other thing that I've heard from a number of people in Minneapolis I've been talking to is
17:38just that there's this, I mean, this is an obvious point, but the suspicion is racialized,
17:44right? That they're going up to people that they quote unquote suspect of being immigrants,
17:48and that's people largely who are black or brown or present as non-white. And that it has had a
17:54really
17:56apparent effect of just public life in Minneapolis. People of color are being forced out of public
18:03spaces. This is the kind of world that this occupation has created. And I'm wondering if that
18:09syncs up with what you've seen. Oh, absolutely. There's no rhyme or reason why you would pick
18:16Minneapolis to do a surge of this nature. We don't have a huge undocumented population in our city.
18:23Other states have much larger undocumented immigrant populations, especially with this
18:30targeting of our East African community. Over 90 percent of that community are citizens. They're
18:37either born here, they're very young, or they came here as refugees and have full legal status in our
18:42country. This is pure politics. This is pure intimidation. This is a president that does not
18:48like, that we are a welcoming, loving, and caring city. And he rejects our values and is attacking
18:53us for them. Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne on a very busy day and a very busy
18:58moment. I really appreciate you taking time for us. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
19:04Well, much more on Donald Trump's latest attempt to prosecute people who stand up to him. Next.
19:13Donald Trump's attempts to destroy our most basic constitutional fundamentals on full display
19:18tonight. Subpoenas now issued for Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry,
19:23Justice Department accusing them apparently of impeding law enforcement amid the chaos that ICE
19:28has brought to their city, and seems directed solely at the speech, the words they've said about the
19:34occupation of their city. And this is part of a pattern. As Trump has spent his first year back in
19:38office publicly demanding that top law enforcement officials in the U.S. use the remarkable powers of
19:44the state to go after perceived political enemies. Harry Lipman served as a U.S. attorney as well as
19:51deputy assistant attorney general, and he joins me now. Harry, I want to talk about the subpoena news,
19:55but first I want to start on this TRO we just got. That's temporary restraining order. It's from a
20:01federal judge, Judge Menendez, in the district of Minnesota. She is a Biden appointee. Plaintiffs
20:07basically saying that their constitutional rights are being violated by the use of pepper spray and
20:13rough treatment at the hands of federal agents for purely constitutionally protected activities such
20:19as protesting. And it appears that the judge basically agrees with them and is telling federal
20:23agents to stop using pepper spray and things like that and for grabbing people out of cars.
20:29I'll read it differently. But as you say, it's come in the last couple minutes. She goes through
20:34all the allegations. They're bad. She says they are concrete and defendants, meaning the U.S. have
20:39given nothing. But she gives the U.S. a chance to answer on Monday before entering what is under
20:48circuit law, a really severe remedy of a temporary restraining order. So I don't think she's done that
20:53yet, but she's really set the table to do it. Gotcha. OK, that's helpful. So that we don't
20:59have it yet. It's it's it's it's paused till Monday. Now, we had something similar that was
21:05issued in Illinois by a federal district judge, again, against ISIS tactics using pepper spray.
21:12We saw them, you know, using pepper spray and tear gas in like, you know, outside an elementary
21:16school at two thirty in the middle of the day. And a federal judge saying you cannot do this.
21:21This has been a recurring problem. One hundred percent. Although what the judges have said to
21:26date is follow the damn law. This is, as Rodriguez says, a kind of a cutting edge issue having to
21:33do
21:33with states rights, the Tenth Amendment. I think it's going to be a sort of growth area around the
21:39country. But she calls it a constitutional kind of, you know, new, unexplored, fully issue. So all
21:46she's doing is giving the United States a chance to respond. But she lays it all out in pretty
21:54damning detail. And it's clear that the U.S. comes in with nothing, hasn't even tried to rebut the
22:01allegations. Final point I'll make on this. And then I want to talk about these subpoenas that are
22:06going out is that there's been a pattern that federal judges the closest to the facts, that is to
22:11say district judges across an ideological spectrum, across the spectrum of being pointed by presidents
22:16when seeing the activities, particularly of ICE and federal agents, but generally the Trump
22:20administration have used the most sort of pointed language about the constitutional violations that
22:28they're seeing when they're closest to the facts. So true. And they until recently kind of
22:35tiptoed up to it. Even today, you have Judge Young in Boston accusing cabinet secretaries of conspiring
22:41to violate the Constitution. That, you know, there has always been an assumption of regularity for what
22:47the department does. That has been completely exploded. And you see judge after judge appointed by both
22:56parties basically saying that's a pretext. That's not true. You didn't cooperate. The sort of thing that
23:02would have been stunning in a previous Department of Justice, they are now increasingly emboldened to
23:08just call out what it really is. And that brings us to where we are tonight with the news that
23:12there's
23:13some formal criminal investigation and grand jury subpoenas going out to the governor and the mayor.
23:18You know, here's a list just of some of the people that we have either indictments for or subpoenas
23:24or investigations. You know, Kate Abogazala, who's running for Congress in Illinois, I believe,
23:317th District, who was outside a DHS facility where she was shoved twice by two different federal
23:37officers. She's been charged. John Bolton, of course, who was searched and been charged. James Comey,
23:41Jason Crowe, who is in that video. You've got Mark Kelly, LaMonica McIver, one of the first instances
23:47we've seen this, who was outside that ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey. Jerome Powell, the Fed chair,
23:54who's now in the crosshairs. I mean, at some level, Harry, the irony is that they have cheapened
24:03the meaning of all of this and the teeth of it in some ways by abusing it so obviously and
24:11pretext and manifestly pretextually. I mean, that's it. It's it's completely pretextual meaning
24:18it's going nowhere. I think Ken is right. This is one of those. And I'll get back to in a
24:22moment
24:23that have really been engineered just for its interrarum effect. They know they can't get any
24:29kind of conviction here. But I would say you showed that whole tableau. It's gotten worse in the last
24:34week or two before he was doing tawdry, petty, nasty personal recrimination. Now, on the losing
24:42side of policy battles, he's trying to bring to bear the blunderbuss of the federal prosecutorial power
24:48to win battles he's otherwise losing. He's getting beat in Minneapolis. He's trying to change the
24:55interest rates of the Fed, and he can't do that. And then is when he's coming in with these criminal
25:00charges, that's a whole different level of outrage, it seems to me, because it tries to
25:06corruptly play dirty with the actual political process that he is otherwise losing.
25:12Yeah, it's a really a great point. There's some talk tonight about, you know, he had said something
25:17yesterday. And again, Trump has this weird there's always this like weird game of telephone of how he
25:23has interpreted some either kernel of a fact or a piece of law. He said the other day, if he
25:29would be
25:29asked about considering Insurrection Act, which he clearly has been teasing and talking about and
25:33Stephen Miller keeps talking about. And he said something along the lines of if a governor or
25:37mayor impeded our abilities, then yes, I would do it. And there's some thinking that maybe this is
25:42essentially this criminal investigation is both to browbeat and to get the headline and to intimidate,
25:47but to lay some, you know, very, very weak, thin predicate for an Insurrection Act declaration.
25:56And it's more it's too. But you're right. All the way through, it's been just complete tirades
26:02against walls in particular buffoon, dumb. It's all his fault. This is a complete nonstart of a
26:08prosecution. The statute that Ken refers to requires force, intimidation or threats. There's
26:15no way they could prove that. But even more, as you say, Chris, the First Amendment prevents any kind
26:22of action unless it is imminent and lawless. He'd have to basically be going. It's a little bit like
26:27January 6th to the people of Minneapolis and saying, run in the streets and lay your bodies down and
26:34keep the feds from doing their job. So it can't go anywhere. However, besides the interim aspects of
26:41it, that subpoena. It's so easy, as you say, to issue a subpoena. And it's a it's a grave thing
26:48to
26:49try to defy a subpoena, even in a total garbage lawsuit as this is. So the question is, will they
26:55be able to forage in the files of walls and fray? That is probably their game. It's not as ridiculous
27:04as the rest of it. But I'm here to tell you the actual charge under 372, a complete and utter
27:11non-starter will never happen. All right. Harry Lipman, always great to get to hear your
27:18perspective on nights like this. I really appreciate it. Much more on the Trump offensive
27:23in Minnesota and frankly, on the country and the Constitution. Jamel Bowie joins me next. Don't go
27:28anywhere. For two weeks now, armed mass federal agents have laid siege to Minneapolis. This week,
27:35the Trump administration has floated the idea of using the Insurrection Act of 1807 to sick the
27:41U.S. military on protesters there. Today, we're just learning about these federal subpoenas from
27:46Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry. Jamel Bowie's New York Times opinion
27:51columnist, his latest piece, This Is Not How a Normal President Speaks, examines Trump's obsession
27:56with king-like power. And he joins me now. Jamel, you've been doing some great work on both Trump
28:03and what's happening in Minnesota. I guess it's not surprising that this happened, these subpoenas,
28:09but it does strike me as genuinely menacing, another rip in the constitutional order. What do you think?
28:16I think that's right. I think it represents a president and administration who does not believe
28:22that anyone in the country has any legitimate reason or ability to criticize them, critique them,
28:28even exercise their rights, right? Like states are co-sovereigns in the American system.
28:33Governor Tim Walz has every right, but to criticize the president, has every right to direct state
28:39agencies, state law enforcement, to investigate violations of state crimes, state laws, rather,
28:45even if it's committed by federal agents. That's all well within his purview as governor. But Trump
28:50rejects that. The other thing is that Trump, Stephen Miller, the administration,
28:54does not know how to make any move other than escalate when it comes to political conflict.
29:00And so in the face of what looks like a real political defeat, right, the public has turned
29:06very decisively against these ICE operations. Their next move, as always, is to escalate in hopes that
29:13their opponent will back down or will break. It's one of the hard things to do in covering Trump is
29:20to
29:21maintain two different categories, which is what he wants to do, his aspirations, which I think are
29:26plainly essentially the end of the constitutional republic. It's replacement with a presidential
29:31dictatorship, cult of personality around him, what he wants to do and what he's going to be able to do.
29:37And you've written and thought about this a lot. What's striking here, again, the aspiration is
29:43authoritarian, but also ineffectual. I mean, I think at least in the limited, right, there's there's a big gap
29:49here. There's almost something like he's almost making it kind of impotent and pathetic to do
29:55these criminal cases because he's tried to do so many. And so many have been essentially tossed out.
30:03Trump thinks about the presidency and presidential power like a 12 year old. He thinks about it like
30:09someone whose understanding is the president presses a button and a thing happens. This is not to
30:14diminish the seriousness of the subpoenas, right? It is very serious that the president is trying to
30:20criminally investigate his political opponents. At the same time, as you mentioned earlier in the
30:25broadcast, the DOJ only really like does cases when they think they can win them. These aren't
30:31winnable cases. These are a waste of time. And the DOJ is already hemorrhaging lawyers as a result of
30:36the purges last year and just people leaving because they don't want to be a part of this. And so
30:41they
30:41don't really have the resources to really pursue these things. They're kind of just they are threats
30:47similar to the kinds of lawsuit threats that Trump would make as a private citizen against his against
30:53people who were in his way or who were trying to get something out of him or trying to hold
30:58him to a
30:59promise or a deal or something. He'll threaten to sue them and hope that the threat of litigation
31:06pushes them up, pushes them away, causes them to back down. And he's basically trying to do that
31:10with the U.S. federal government, sort of not understanding, right, that like, A, other people
31:16can push back as well. There's like other people are actors here. They have agency. And that B,
31:22doing this repeatedly just makes you weak. It makes people, it makes the next set of people more likely to
31:27say, oh, this is this is just nonsense. Yeah, exactly. I think our reaction to the news of
31:33Justice Department launches subpoenas against a governor or mayor a year ago would have been very
31:38different. And it would have felt scarier, I think, for the targets a year ago in some ways than it
31:44does now because of precisely what you're you're saying. There's also the kind of sword and shield
31:50dynamic here, which is on a day when he's sicking the Justice Department against political opponents
31:55who have done absolutely nothing illegal and purely constitutionally protected speech.
32:00We got a whole new raft of pardons today, too. And there's an incredible irony here because some of
32:05them were people that committed fraud, which is the ostensible predicate for this entire surge.
32:11One woman was convicted of fraud for selling counterfeit energy drinks and then commuted by Trump in the
32:18first term. And then she got out of prison because of Trump and went and committed another fraud,
32:24an unrelated fraud and Trump pardoned her for the second one.
32:30The other one is is this this gem, which I just have to bring up.
32:33This is a portable toilet executive who was sent to prison in an illegal dumping scheme.
32:39The owner of Diamond Environmental Services, the portable toilet empire based in San Marcos,
32:44sent into five months in federal prison. Basically, they were taking the stuff from their
32:49porta potties and illegally stuffing it in the sewage systems of municipalities, which is like
32:56incredibly illegal. And that guy got a pardon. And the point being, all this stuff traces back to
33:01which side of the friend or foe line you're at. Have you hired the right lawyers? Have you given
33:07donations to the super PAC, which is the only dividing line in the worldview here?
33:13Yeah, no, fraudsters stick together and the president sees pardoned as an opportunity to
33:18make some easy money. I'm going to say something real quick. I think that should there be a
33:23Democratic president in twenty twenty nine, should there be a Democratic Congress that we should
33:27treat all of these or the Democrats should treat all of these pardons as basically null and void,
33:33just treat them as null and void. I don't know what that looks like legislatively. I don't know
33:37what it looks like legally. But I think there's a pretty good constitutional case that these are
33:42illicit, illegal pardons and should not be treated with any kind of respect.
33:48Yeah. In fact, the thought experiment of essentially a quid pro quo pardon for pay
33:54was one of the things at the center of the oral arguments in that famous Roberts case
33:58that granted the immunity the president has so egregiously. But even they were like,
34:04seems something wrong about that. That shouldn't be in the constitutional order. So we may find out
34:09people stick to that. Jamel Bowie, thank you very much. Thank you. Still had the latest evidence that
34:15most Americans hate just about everything Donald Trump is doing, really. We'll share the numbers next.
34:24When Donald Trump was sworn in, immigration was his strongest issue. It was where he pulled the highest.
34:29Take for just one example, but there's tons of these. This is a CNN poll from last year showing that
34:3451 percent of people approved of his handling of immigration at the time versus 48 percent who
34:39disapproved. That was in March. It was even higher before he was sworn in, when he was sort of riding
34:43the crest of his victory. Now those numbers have more than flipped. Just 42 percent of people
34:48approving his approach to immigration and 58 percent disapproving. People particularly dislike what
34:54Trump is doing with ICE, sending agents to occupy their cities, snatch people out the streets,
34:58tear gas protesters, children, babies of six months. Here's an example. So this is just in the last few
35:04days. Quinnipiac University did a poll after ICE officer killed Renee Good last week, found that
35:0957 percent of people disapprove of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws and just 40 percent
35:15approve. In the main, people do not like the chaos Trump has brought to their streets and the damage
35:20is dragging Republicans down. Data journalist G. Elliott Morris is the author of the excellent
35:25strength in numbers substack, which I read, and he joins me now. Elliott, let's just start on the
35:31immigration stuff. Because again, you don't want to take too much from one poll. And a lot of phrasing
35:35around this stuff can get complicated. But it does seem to me we've now got polling on immigration and
35:40polling on ICE and enough data to come to some conclusions. What are you seeing and what you're
35:45looking at? Chris, I think first, thanks for having me. I think that there are two numbers people should
35:51take away from this segment. OK, the first is minus 17. That's the number in the Quinnipiac University poll
35:57that shows the difference between the percent of Americans who think the ICE shooting of Renee
36:01Good was justified, a justified use of force to use the language of the poll, and the percent of
36:06Americans who say that this was not justified. It's also similar to the overall approval rating
36:10of ICE from from that same survey. The second number is minus 30. That's the same question,
36:17but among political independents. So among political independents, 59 percent of them say that they don't
36:22think that ICE should have used the amount of force that they used against Renee Good in prosecuting
36:27Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. OK, 29 percent, just for context, they say that it was
36:33a justified use of force. So if I can interpret this, I think it tells us one big thing. The
36:38people
36:39do not like the main reason that they elected Donald Trump or the voters elected Donald Trump in 2024.
36:46The first big reason being inflation, the second one being immigration. If Donald Trump is at minus
36:5130 among swing voters on his supposedly number one issue, I think that that renders a verdict
36:57on this presidency that people should pay attention to. It tells us something about the sanctioning
37:02of power by public opinion to the president and is sort of squarely in the negative about what they're
37:09seeing from from their White House and how they want the country to change course. Yeah. So it's not
37:14just on immigration. I mean, we're seeing pretty abysmal numbers across the board. You're arguing today
37:19that there's in the polling average. And again, all this stuff is like we're in aggregates and
37:23we're getting into tenths of percents. But there's an argument that he's he's less popular now than he
37:30even was at this point in his first term, even though that's slightly counterintuitive because
37:34there was a sense that like he won an outright majority this time. He was more popular going in.
37:39But the the sort of slope downward has been steeper so far.
37:45That's right. So Donald Trump starts higher in his second term and he is where he was at this
37:51point in his first term. Forty percent of Americans say that they consider themselves
37:55Republicans at this point. That was forty six percent when he started. To put more spin on this,
38:01right, there's if Donald Trump was at thirty nine percent, thirty nine percent of Americans saying they
38:07were Republicans, that would be a record low. It has not been that low since since quarter four of
38:132008, the middle of the financial crisis. Donald Trump is a great recession president. I mean, we can
38:19even go back even further than that. There hasn't been this negative a verdict against the president
38:23so quickly compared to Gerald Ford, who pardoned Richard Nixon after Watergate. So if your question is
38:31like, how do Americans feel about this and what do they want their government to be doing? The only
38:35data driven conclusion you can draw is that they they hate it, to use your phrasing from this
38:40segment, and they want things to change. And I think that we live in a democracy, so people should
38:45pay attention to that conclusion. Yeah. And so there's there's another vector here to consider.
38:50So there there's you know, how do you feel about given issues? Right. And those issues can be in the
38:54news. And there's been polling on Venezuela and there's been polling on Greenland, which, you know,
38:59people do not seem particularly enthused about the U.S. invading Greenland, to give one example.
39:03But then there's also the question of like, well, what do you think of what the president is focusing
39:07on? And this, I think, in some ways is the worst number for him or in some ways the most
39:13revealing,
39:14because there is this real palpable sense of a bait and switch. Right. Runs on groceries. I'm
39:19going to lower prices on day one. And now all he can talk about is like, maybe we're going to
39:23pay
39:23each Greenlander half a million dollars so I can take over Greenland. And I want someone else's Nobel
39:29Peace Prize. And I do think for people that are not super aware of politics, aren't locked in every
39:34day, you are getting a lot coming out that doesn't seem to be about the thing that you're most concerned
39:40about and that presumably got him the kind of necessary three or four percent to win. So this
39:47is polling on his priorities. Does he have the right priorities? Thirty six percent say yes. Sixty four
39:53percent. No. This strikes me as possibly the single biggest problem they have right now.
40:00Yeah. And it's striking, right, because the entire narrative about the Democratic Party in 2025
40:05was that it didn't have the right priorities. Right. And I wrote on my substact strength
40:10of numbers at the time that actually, if you look at the Republican Party's priorities, they look even
40:14worse. There was an entire narrative in the sort of Democratic consultant class that they lost the last
40:20election because of this. Even if you believe that that's true, cast it forward a year, cast it
40:25forward nine months to November. And the conclusion I think we draw from that is very similar. People
40:33not only do they not like what they're getting or they don't feel like they got what they voted for
40:38in 2024, they don't like how far Donald Trump has pushed public policy on all sorts of things.
40:44Right. We've talked about some foreign policy here. We should mention Iran also. Donald Trump now says
40:49he's going to be the sort of savior of the Iranian people. People don't like this public policy in
40:55the Middle East either. I'm actually struggling to think of one thing. And I look at polling data
40:59all day that Donald Trump has the public at his back on. And to your point, that is an entire
41:06flipping
41:07of the narrative from the 2024 election, which sort of states Donald Trump is the dominant sort of
41:15mandate winning public figure. He's the only person with his pulse on American democracy.
41:21I think those of us in the know knew that that was B.S. at the time. And the data
41:26now really proves
41:27that point, I believe. All right. Elliot Morris, his Substack Strength in Numbers. Check it out.
41:32Thanks a lot. That was great. We'll be right back.
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