Breaking News from Pod Save America - Lovett and Tim Miller React to the ICE Shooting Fallout

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

On this episode of SPEECHCENTER Lovett is joined by The Bulwark's Tim Miller to discuss the ICE shooting fallout, Trump's comments on Jerome Powell, Greg Bovino on Fox News, and James Comer on the Epstein List. CHAPTERS 0:00 - Intro 1:19 - Greg Bovino 5:12 - James Comer 8:17 - Trump on Jerome Powell 12:04 - Trump's economic speech 16:20 - Trump gets called out Catch Lovett or Leave It in a city near you! Tickets for the Lovett or Leave It: Live on Tour are now on sale. For more info head to www.crooked.com/events Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Someone there working shouting pedophile protector at him, and then he sneaks him the bird. He, like, has the tiniest middle finger. He could not possibly have ever pleasureed a woman with that finger. Tim, I don't think it would ever even have occurred to him to try. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Speech Center. It's a new year. It's off to quite a start. Tim, this is where I would ask you about the NFL playoffs, but is that even on your mind right now?

I do a little escapism, okay? You know, the Broncos got the bills next week. But I do have to tell you, I was doing a lot of doom scrolling. of like man on the street interviews of the jackbooted thugs pushing women to the ground and shooting them in the face while watching the playoffs

it did take a little bit away from the escapism, I do have to say. Given the amount that we're seeing, I do think you're getting a sense of what it's actually like to be there by seeing all of these videos, especially when you, in this deeply strange way, watch these altercations

from multiple angles. You're both skeptical that you're not seeing the whole thing for starters. You see these videos. You're also skeptical of like, is this cherry-picked? Is this the algorithm playing tricks on me?

You know, they want to make me mad. But the more I watched them, and then the more I kind of went down rabbit holes and heard from people who are actually in Minneapolis. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like potentially even kind of worse than it seems. On today's show, we're going to talk about Jerome Powell, we'll talk about the Epstein Files, and we will talk about what is happening in Minneapolis. But first, let's go to Greg Bevino. He is Trump's immigration crackdown czar, a roving commander.

Here he is discussing the killing of Renee Good. when he was on Sean Hannity. I think he's sitting on a phone book here. There is no ambiguity for anyone with eyes to see that the individual that ended up getting shot in this case have been taunting officers along with her partner for an extended period of time. And then you hear her partner say to drive,

she goes in reverse and right in the path of an officer. Now, is that justified use of force? To me, that it's not even a close call. As Sean, we call that a means intent and opportunity. Did that individual have the intent? Look at those minutes leading up to the shooting, and we will see what I would consider some pretty important intent. Did that individual have the opportunity?

Yes, did that individual take that opportunity? Yes, a 4,000-pound missile is not something anyone wants to face, especially in a split-second decision-making process in a very very, in already in hospitable environment. Hats off to that ICE agent. I'm glad he made it out alive. I'm glad he's with his family. They're so unwilling to just say

we believe in enforcing our immigration laws. We believe we have great officers, but obviously this is a tragic loss of life and there's going to be an investigation and we don't believe in the excessive use of force. There's a host of things he could say. And ironically, it would have made the incident less important because it would have made the interaction

the interaction less of a salient and kind of politically defining confrontation. But no, they want to own this and suggest that they will defend anyone, no matter what they do. I hate to focus on the costuming. He's directly going for the look of the little Nazi and glorious bastards. It's hard to think that that's unintentional. They want to agitate, right? Like the hats off. And this stuff is just unnecessary. What they're trying to do is turn this woman they killed into a domestic foe, into a domestic enemy, rallied people watching Fox against her, rally them to the side of the guy that shot her through the side window twice after shooting her once through the front window. They don't care if it's preposterous, like this idea that cars are 4,000-pound missiles now.

It's just, it's ridiculous. A car can be very dangerous if someone is aiming it at people and trying to them and driving at great speed. But we watched the video. We know that it's not a deadly missile because their claim is that he was hit by the car. And so he is fine. Did he die? He's fine. I forget what happened. I don't believe he died. I think he's okay. And then the idea that they're going to start saying, well, she was taunting. If you look at ICE's own materials, you know, they're not saying this publicly, but they're clearly telling their officers behind the scenes that taunting is completely allowed. These are not individuals when they're,

they are representatives of the state. And the state is not meant to have an ego. When they are being taunted and mocked and told to fuck off, they're supposed to just take it because the First Amendment protects it and it shouldn't be impacting how they do their jobs because they are not individual agents.

They are agents of the state. That's the difference between a gang and a police force and they are acting like a gang. Well, really they're acting like, you know, kind of like Cartman in South Park. Like, you will respect. my authoritai. You know, it's like, what? This is not what this is about, right? I'm sorry that your feelings were hurt. You know, like, I'm sorry that, like, you're a little jittery, you know,

because like a lesbian had taunted you and called you big boy. But like, you don't get to then shoot people three times. Meanwhile, as Minneapolis continues to be occupied, James Comer remains occupied with, of course, targeting Donald Trump's enemies. through an Epstein files investigation. Here he is being pressed on why the files haven't been fully released yet. The DOJ has yet to release all the files. What is your plan with that?

Are you pressing for the release? Well, first of all, let me say it. I subpoenaed Pam Bondi. I don't remember Jamie Raskin or Elijah Kevin during whenever subpoenaed a Democrat Attorney General of their own party. We subpoenaed Pam Bondi for the documents. She started producing the documents.

Then Congress voted for the. The discharge petition, the Democrats were unhappy. They said there weren't enough redaction, so now the DOJ is going through, trying to make sure they redact everything. President Trump is answering your questions about Epstein. He's answered them over and over and over again. Who we haven't heard from is Bill Clinton. And I stated why, the amount of time that Epstein spent with Clinton while he was president

and post-presidency. So I don't think it's out of line for former. President Clinton to come in for a bipartisan subpoena. As we're recording this, Bill and Hillary Clinton have put out a letter explaining why they are going to refuse this subpoena. What did you think of that letter? I thought it was too long. I don't know.

And it sounded like a Bill Clinton convention speech. Right when you thought it was going to be over, you realize he's round in the corner to the halfway point. You know, like old dogs can learn new tricks. Jerome Powell's response to the Trump sham of that. investigation against him was great. It's two-minute video straight to camera directly calls Trump what it is. Couldn't show testify. I, maybe not in front of Comer because he's a, he's a clown, and it's a scam, but like they should be cooperating. The bigger story, though, is, and you know,

who knows, maybe things will change by the time this video's even out, or maybe things change the night next week. But as we sit here now, they've just quit releasing the files. Yeah. I like they had an embarrassing batch of files that were released for Trump. And they also said that they a whole new batch of information that they got in from SD&Y. And they're not, they're sitting on it. So I don't know. Maybe they've decided just to sit on it now. The letter from the Clintons is quite long.

And it does begin with some throat clearing about the ways in which Donald Trump is attacking the government in all kinds of ways. The point that it makes is very good. It's just it doesn't really then tie back to. And so therefore we're not going to do this. It's like with everything that's going on in the world, with the health care thing and the attacks on the government, we're not going to. testify. I think the points you're making are strong. I just don't understand why it leads to this

conclusion. I get the deeper point, which is James Comer has decided to turn this committee into a weapon of Donald Trump at a time in which the committee should be trying to defend the government against Donald Trump's lawlessness. But I agree with you that the Jerome Powell statement to camera pushing back against, about of all things, building renovations was really. strong and obviously what Powell did touched a nerve with Republicans. Gehras Trump responding to questions about his tactics against Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Well, that's why Tom Taylor is about to say that the subpoena. Well, that's why Tom's not going to be a senator any longer, I guess, right? But I like Tom Tillis. He's a nice guy.

But look, he's not going to be a senator any longer because of views like that. We have a bad Fed chairman. He's bad in a lot of different ways, but he's bad because his interest rates were too high. And today we had a great inflation report. And today we had a really great growth report. So we have great growth and low inflation. He's building a small, he's renovating a small building. It's the most expensive construction job in history.

And it's only a renovation. I could have done that job for $25 million. They're spending billions and billions of dollars. He either doesn't know what he's doing or. It's worse than that. And you know what I mean by what? So hopefully he'll be out of there. It was reported that Janine Piro had approved going after Jerome Powell.

Powell puts out this statement. Piro appears to have been cowed in some way because she then put out a statement explaining that we're just trying to get information because they're not giving this information. And I didn't say indictment. Jerome Powell said indictment. So clearly something got to her that said, hey, this feels like too much and we shouldn't have done this. But where are you on what's happening?

Yeah, successful win for Jerome Powell. I'm scared of needles that have never had a tattoo. I've always could have wanted a tattoo. Do you think a Jerome Powell tattoo is a little much, though? When I grow older and look back on that, is it kind of feel short-sighted? I just think that in terms of sort of tribunes for the saving of American democracy,

I'm not saying he can't be on your list. I just got to think there's a few people higher on the list. Yeah, I don't know. I think it would be funny just to say when people are like, who, is that your grandpa? It's like, no. It's Jerome Powell. Look, he, obviously they're backing down.

Yeah. And all it takes is, you know, folks with a stern backbone and some onions. And Jerome Powell did that in this case. And so we'll see how it shakes out. I mean, it's terms up in May. And, you know, I'm sure Trump will put some stooge in there after that. And we'll see, you know, how stern and stuff Tom Tillis is made of. I don't think Trump's point just as a point of basic economics.

I do think I should say that he wants to insurates to be down, making the argument that the economy is doing great. is not actually a case for lowering interest rates, but I don't know that he's like doing macro one-o-one. Right. Well, he wants like the economy ripping and he doesn't seem to care about inflation. The Powell thing, like, instead of he's in a good position to be bold, he feels like he, first of all, can't be fired by Trump. He can stay on even after he's no longer the chair.

And he knows that there's a. enough big time finance people, corporate people, non-political people, Republicans who are rightly view this as like a red line on the central bank because they know that when central banks get taken over by the political leadership, suddenly you're talking about double-digit inflation and economic crises that erases the wealth that these people have built. It's the one way in which suddenly very, very rich people aren't very, very rich anymore. So maybe that's part of it. We will see what happens when Trump puts forward a sort of hack. Fed chair. Right now, I don't know if he's going to back down off of this, but Tillis' position is

no Fed votes move forward as long as this investigation is ongoing. So we'll see what happens there. All right. Now, let's go to Trump at the Detroit Economic Club, where he gives another classic detailed explanation of his economic views. We won the popular vote by millions and millions of... Oh, so nice to win the popular vote. I won the popular vote all three times, too, but we're not going to get into that. Democrats, they say, I don't know if we should have done it as well. I don't know. Anybody that says that hates our country, okay? That was as flawless an attack as there has ever been. You are so lucky I allow you into this room to even be with me. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

The fake news will say, we'll say Donald Trump thinks these hot stuff. Right now I'm feeling pretty good, though, I will say. Grocery prices are starting to go rapidly down. Rent is down. Airfares are down. Hotel rates are down. Cell phone prices are down. Even more plans to help bring back affordability.

And again, remember, that's a fake word by Democrats. Prices were too high. They caused the high price. You ever noticed Joe would always cough before a speech. State of the Union, he gets ha! Ha! I feel like the setup was pretty good for that last one, but then he didn't really land the impression.

That's not what Joe Biden did. That's not how he did. I mean, he often did seem to have to clear his throat. What do you make of what he's been doing the last couple weeks on housing and going after housing speculation on credit card interest on some of these sort of populist moves? You know, the whole little, we're going to pivot to Elizabeth Warrenism, kind of like a soft Elizabeth Warrenism with, you know, we're going to cap the credit card rates. It's all fucking fake. You know, it's fake.

And so I think it does show they've at least accepted that they have a problem on the avoidability. thing and that's interesting. But like he then does it in the authoritarian way. It's like he was asked, I think, yesterday on the plane, you know, what happens to the credit card companies don't lower their, you know, interest rates to 10 percent. And Trump's like, well, they're breaking the law. We'll go after them. And it's like, his decrees are not law. Right. You know, like there's process. You go through the House and the Senate. Like, we don't, we don't have a fucking king who just gets to make random decrees about fun, populist sounding things. Well, capping credit card interest rates and stopping kind of usury credit card rates would be great. You can't do it by fiat and we'll end up being

held up in courts, though. He's clearly trying to put these companies in a difficult position where they will announce some concession that he can declare as a win and then kind of run on that, which is, I think, his MO when doing kind of lawless economic populism, he kind of puts out a statement like this. And then these companies feel afraid of some sort of regulatory retribution and they come up with some announcement. Can you imagine if your people did that? I know. This is the thing that actually pisses me off the most about this. All these CEOs, like, why are they such wusses when it comes to Trump? Had Kamala Harris won the election and said that she was going to put, by Fiat, a cap on credit

card rates, and that the companies had to make concessions to her or else she was going to sick whoever ran the CFTC after them. It would be Armageddon at the Wall Street Journal. They'd be doing special editions, full-page things with, like, pictures of Kamala dressed up as a communist dictator. Yeah, I mean, I think there's like two ways to take that. One is, obviously, we do, we want, we do not want a president that abuse the authority this way. But the other is that I think a lot of Democrats were way too afraid of being attacked as being, you know, socialist by the Wall Street Journal and their various sort of allies. Because one lesson from Trump is you just power through. You know, if there were, there were aggressive economic policies that that Democrats thought we could. could do legally by executive order. Isn't it the lesson of the last couple of years? If there are 10 things like that, do them all. Do them all in the same fucking day because everybody will move on

and then you'll get the credit. I just kind of feel like I turned the, you know, kind of dialed, or maybe like pulled the string on the back of Woody from Toy Story and just kind of got you going there. I'm angry. I'm angry, Tim. I'm angry. I'm pissed. And I don't know where to put it today. Is there a message you want to send? Maybe there is, Tim, because as it has been a bleak start to the year, let's end with this moment in which we were reminded that America continues to be filled with Americans. And that will ultimately be our salvation because here is a lovely time that Trump had on his trip to Michigan. Tim, tell us what we just saw. Pedophile protector, I believe that someone there working at the auto floor shouting pedophile protector at him, pedophile protector.

And then he, I'm not a lip reader, but he seems. to say fuck you to him with like several points and then he sneaks on the bird and i could see how you might not have noticed that because he like has the tiniest middle finger i mean he really he could not possibly have ever pleasureed a woman with that finger tim i don't think it would ever even have occurred to him to try don't want to be touched by him i'll tell you that uh certainly not against my will shout out and had to experience shout out to the person yelling pedophile protector at this pedophile protector that it takes I salute you take stuph-tong from Tony Ducopal speaking of our Secretary of State we salute you yeah we still yeah that's right we salute you guy that told

Trump he's a pedophile protector to his face that's the American guy know and love that's where the people are they're out there on the streets of Minneapolis they're out there yelling at our terrible pedophile protector president that's a beautiful thing they can't stop that and I know that I was in a bad mood today but that is a reminder of why I ultimately, I ultimately am filled with grit and resolve and anger and some sadness. And the creatine. And the creatine now. And the creatine. Tim, it's been great to see you. It's great to hang with you today. Any final thoughts on this rough news week?

Fuck ice, go Broncos. Good point, Tim. Now you have to like, subscribe, and leave a comment. Help us build this channel. Thank you for watching Speech Center. Thank you as always to the Bull Works, Tim Miller. He's out there, day, scoring, points. Isn't he? Doing something. He's doing something. We're all doing something.

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