Breaking News from Pod Save America - MAGA Has Sold Their Souls After ICE In Minneapolis

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Jon Lovett and Tommy Victor react to Megyn Kelly’s appalling statements on Alex Pretti’s tragic killing and Tim Pool’s psycho-sexual bootlicking, and discuss the ramifications of Border Czar Tom Homan’s dispatching to MN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Mushrooms with me, Maddie Matheson. You know what's better than thinking about dinner too hard? Not. Stop that. And just choose mushrooms. Five minutes. Done. Dinner's that easy and you feel like a genius. It's not magic.

It's mushrooms. Stop stressing at mushroomcouncil.com. Hey, Tommy. Hey. All right. So a lot of developments in the Twin Cities. There are right-wingers desperately trying to defend what the administration is doing and try to spin what everybody has been seeing.

While at the same time, the Trump administration seems to be recognizing that, the images have been bad for them. I don't think they're doing any kind of moral reexamination. But let's start with Megan Kelly, who said one of the most appalling things I've heard in the past few weeks. Let's watch it. I know I'm supposed to feel sorry for Alex Prattie, but I don't. I don't. Do you know why I wasn't shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations. It's very simple. If I felt strongly enough about something the government was doing that I would go out and protest, I would do it peacefully on the sidewalk without interfering via a whistle, via shouting, via my body, via any other way. I would make my

objections known by standing there without interfering because interfering is where you go south and laying hands on a police officer trying to or border patrol officer or ICE officer trying to conduct a law enforcement operation is a felony. And now you are going to get arrested. And if you do anything, anything that resembles resisting, you're in serious trouble. So I think there's two things to talk about with that. One is just the facts of what she's saying, which are just wrong. Alex Prady was on the side.

And he only comes forward when. a border patrol person comes running towards them and a woman is knocked down. He tries to help her. He wasn't interfering in any way. He was standing there. Recording. He was recording. And he has his hands up, right?

He isn't actually the one that instigates this confrontation. And then there's just like even if he did, it's not a capital offense. That is not why police or any kind of law enforcement has the authority to kill anybody. They have to be in mortal danger. They have to be afraid for their lives. and they had already removed the gun and his hands were up. So it is just sort of on the facts, ridiculous. But I do think the reason this is this matters is because there's something like deeper and more ugly about what she's saying, which is trying to convince herself why she's

right to not feel bad. I don't know what you thought about it. I mean, it's, you can't just feel bad for a person. You can't feel bad for a person who was killed. They're a human being. They have a family. They have a life. They didn't want to die. Like, clearly he didn't deserve to die. Like, Like, it's absurd. I'm struck by a couple things. The first of all is a lot of people were recirculating what she said when Kyle Rittenhouse got off in 2021. She basically was like talking about how cruel the media was. She said, we forget people's humanity in the press. We just want to kill them. We want to go for the jugular talking about like, I guess Kyle Rittenhouse's reputation. It's like, there was that empathy. Why doesn't that empathy extend to an individual who had been killed when you have empathy for someone who shot three people at a prognal? You brought a gun to a protest who did all the things you're suggesting were irresponsible or irrational. And then also it's like, I don't know, I guess I just again naively thought that these people really did believe in limited government. But instead they just think that all of us should bow down to the state and that with, you know, unless you follow every order to a T, you deserve to die. Yeah, it's just this like it's also just this strange like you feel attention like this like she's trying to prove to herself that she doesn't have to feel bad for someone.

doesn't like. Like she also, now, there's a video circulating. I don't even know if it's verified or even verifiable that may be Alex Pretti in a previous instance where he kicks a vehicle and cracks the taillight. I think it's been verified, yeah. Is it now been verified? And now, even if that is him, first of all, there's no bearing on whether his killing was justified. 11 days later. But Megan then goes on to say, she's been on a tear about this. She said, Preddy was itching for another confrontation with Border Patrol, whom he'd been stalking, harassing, and terrorizing. He had been victimizing them.

His felonies are on tape. He was reckless and it cost him his life. Find another poise poster boy, illegal loving leftists. She also says he was an agitator. He was in a physical confrontation with the feds a week earlier. Still, he went back and injected himself into a law enforcement. Fuck around, find out. As for me, I have plenty of compassion for innocent Americans being killed, et cetera, et cetera.

That was in response to someone's pointing out the fact that she was such a showing, and a lack of compassion. Look, I've seen this video. Like, obviously, we don't know what happened before this video. Obviously, you should not go up to a federal agent's vehicle and kick their taillight and smash it. Like, that's going to get you arrested. That's against the law.

It sounds like he was pretty severely beaten by these ICE officers during that incident. Like, they broke his rib. And I think it says a lot about him that he felt strongly enough to go back out into his community and still try to defend people, even given that situation. And that's suggestion that something he did 11 days previous has some bearing on how these CBP guys acted in the moment. It's fucking crazy and stupid. And again, it's just this like rationalization of this cruelty and of their love for the state just trampling on our rights. Yeah, they're trying to call him now into the Antifa, leftist agitator.

There was a lot of, like, fake news about him circulating that he was fired from his job at the VA where he was a nurse for sick and dying veterans trying to claim that he had been fired. that they're trying to, they're trying to do anything they can to just deal with the, to, to not deal with the fact that this seems to be a incredible person. Yeah, like a nice human being. Yeah, they want to strip away as humanity. They want to make him, what they're trying to do what they did originally, which is make him a domestic terrorist, make him an assassin, all the bullshit that the Trump administration has officially walked back. But, you know, the MAGA kind of media sycophants have seized on this video as their aha moment. They think it's like, it rationalizes or justifies the entire thing, which is like, what's wrong with you if you think that? Yeah. Now, let's go to another,

right-wing YouTuber who had an interesting argument for why he is in favor of this aggressive, big government intrusion into our civil liberties. First of all, when these people come out and go, Tim's a bootlicker for defending us. I'm like, no, no, you misunderstand. It's my boots. It's mine. I voted for them. I'm wearing the boot.

I'm stomping on the ground. I ain't licking anybody. I'm clapping for these people that I said, please go out. enforce the law. And anybody else who's cheering for, who voted for it too, we're all wearing the boots. You're the one crying. I've not seen that yet.

It is, first of all, I love it. I just think that like put that in the Smithsonian. Wow. I'm wearing the boots. First of all, it's lovely to see, thank you for just saying that, right? That you are getting some sort of like psychosexual pleasure from watching these interactions by imagining that it's your foot inside of the boots.

And that actually part of this for you is the feeling. It's not that this is not a government going too far and a federal government that is lawless and out of control. It's that you feel like you're on side. Yeah. That is your boot. That's your team. Yeah, Tim Poole watched American History X

and the curb stomping scene and was like, ooh, how do I get me some of that? It's like, all, Tibby, first of all, the boot is up your ass, right? Like you're just doing whatever the government tells you. You're not a fucking libertarian. you'll do whatever Donald Trump says. And also, can we just get rid of the beanie?

You know what I mean? What's going on under there? The boot has been rub it on your hairline. We all know it's gone. It's okay. It's okay. Just age gracefully. Yeah, or don't.

Or don't. Go to turkey. I don't go to turkey. Yeah, I refuse to age. Hey, Tim, this is a beanie. I'm wearing a beanie. All right. I'm just doing a different way.

Yeah, the other part of it, too, is like, hey, look, I know it feels like you're the one wearing the boot because you're, you're For now, you might be. Yeah. Yeah. But you should, I would just suggest you go do a little reading about all the different people who thought they were wearing the boot. Exactly.

Until they found out that no matter what boots they had on, suddenly a boot was on their neck too. It doesn't end well for the people who think they're inside the circle. The circle gets smaller. And suddenly you feel like you're on the outside. And then you wish you understood, you wish you had reflected a bit more on the enjoyment you were taking from this government going too far. He is not the brightest bulb. I guess we should not expect much more from someone who we learned in 2024 was being paid

by the Russian government for a long time through this tenant media operation, which was secretly funded by the Russians. But yeah, these guys say and do whatever it takes for money, I guess. They're all up in arms of the Epstein files a little while ago. Now they're just forgotten about that. And now they're just all in favor of killing American civilians. It's also like you're not even, I don't even know if you're wearing shoes. I don't even know if you're wearing pants.

You're recording into a microphone, as we are doing. You're no, like, forget being a guy on the street in ice with a boot on. You're nowhere near as brave as all the people on the street without the fucking boots or the guns that are just trying to document all this. Like, these people on the streets are so much braver than you could ever be while you're sort of taking sick pleasure in all this. And he knows this because he like got to start covering the Occupy Wall Street protests and pretended to be like a kind of edge lord, you know, vice style lefty. And now he's whatever that is, just, you know, suck it up the Trump. Pod Save America is brought to you by Cook Unity.

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Let's hear what he had to say about what he is doing as he takes over operations in the Twin Cities. That said, I'm not here because of the federal government has carried his mission out perfectly. First thing I said to senior staff and I walked in here, is why I told you earlier. I didn't come here looking photo ops or headlines. I come here looking for solutions. I do not want to hear that everything's been done here has been perfect. Nothing's ever perfect and anything to be improved on. And what we've been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient by the book.

The mission is going to improve because of the changes we're making it in terms of the changes we're making it internally. So, Jesus. No one has ever looked more like a corrupt cop than that guy. I know, I know. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like a different brand of villain from an 80s movie. Like he's like kind of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, manets, yeah, none of the web bandits. Yeah. Or, like, the villain from that show about the, where the guy set the Confederate flag on their car, but they were the good guys. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, boss hog. He reminds me of, that's who it is, boss, boss hog. Also, what's like, he's using the thing.

It's like, are our operations so far have not been perfect? What an understatement. Yes. What an understatement. And, you know, it's actually a technique a lot of Trump defenders use. I want to take a moment on this. It's called like Lytides, I believe it's called or Littotes. I think it's the term maybe pronouncing that wrong.

I don't remember. It's when you do understatement by double negative. So like when, like if you were to say, you know, the California's response to the has not been great, right? It's a, it's a rye way of avoiding actually saying what's bad about it. Rubio does that kind of thing. You won't be sorry. Right. Yeah. Right. It's ironic understatement. Yes. And no, man, no one thinks it's been perfect. That's not, no one is, that is not what anybody is feeling about what's happening in the Twin Cities. Yeah, it's suppressing that that's what passes as for contrition. But, you know, I, look, I saw that. Honestly, my honest reaction was like, okay, good. That's a little

bit of a relief. I mean, my guess is, Homan is doing this more as a dig at his internal enemies within the Trump administration, Christy Noem, Corey Lewandowski, Bovino. Again, this is a man who will now be, I guess, liaising with federal and local law enforcement. And in 2024, allegedly accepted 50 grand from undercover FBI agents posing his business executives trying to buy future contracts. So, like, he is as corrupt as they come. I'm sure he has the same sort of authoritarian instincts. It does sound like he wants to focus more on traditional ice techniques of like working with state and local governments to get people out of prisons rather than just like driving around doing these sweeps. That would be an improvement for people

on the ground. I think we should cheer for improvements for people on the ground. But it doesn't mean it's good. Now, and he did also say that they're going to reduce the footprint, which is just that that's a, that's an objective improvement as well. And I also just, by the way, to Tim Poole defending whatever the administration does, the administration hasn't been in agreement. And some of this is about a tension between Homan versus the Millers and Nome's and Lewandowski's. They thought that doing these kinds of big public, like dominating raids of cities would be good press for them. And it hasn't been. And so I think the question is great.

Like they're going to, they're turning the tone. They're changing the tone, though I think that the fact that noam was so fucking terrible and monstrous highlighted what they were doing and why it was wrong. But then the question is, are they asking? actually going to change their tactics. And then, more importantly, Stephen Miller still going around trying to hassle people day to day to try to get to a million deportations. Because there's no way to do that without going

after people's neighbors. There's just no way to do that. That's right. That is the broader concern. Like obviously, murdering to American citizens was so egregious and doing it on tape. I mean, there's been a lot of reporting today, NBC News, that a great TikTok report about how Trump kind of was moved on the issue.

And it was because he didn't like the images on cable news. He didn't like seeing Americans getting I've been like the sets of chaos and, you know, things being out of control. It's very easy to make that go away. What's not easy to make go away is just the broader terrorizing of a lot of these communities. And like, this is Washington Post story from a week or two back about kind of like a day in the life of people in Minnesota. And they, they interviewed this family. And there was an eight year old, a 12 year old and a 14 year old who hadn't been to school in a month.

And the 12 year old, like, wasn't allowed to go outside in play. You know, and it's like, it's horrifying. Like, these kids are the learning loss, like, the, fear, the anxiety, like, there's so many costs to this that we're not quantified by like whatever ICE is doing or Tom Holman says. People rip from their families. But I was, you know, in the Twin Cities over the last couple days. And you also met the people through their unions, through other mutual aid groups, bringing supplies to those people. You saw people all over on every street corner monitoring for when ICE. And I do think, look, it's not over. And

even any improvement would still lead us in a dangerous and a dangerous and, unacceptable policy by the administration. But I do think we should all just take a moment and say the people of the Twin Cities went toe to toe with the Trump administration. And they absolutely won. And I think that that is an amazing thing that we should not lose sight of, even as we have to like not going to be polyanish about how much worse it could get. And that's why we're here doing this coverage. We want to thank our sponsor, Melania, a new film by Brett Ratner. It's available now. And Palance here.

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Do you see how much they're spending on marketing for Amazon? 35 million dollars. I know we're done. At least Tom Holman had the dignity to try to get a bag of cash in a secret way, like under the table. This is a bribe in every fucking movie theater. 40 million dollars. Every movie theater is a bribe.

Every empty theater is a bribe in our faces. It's at the fucking grove. There's a bribe, a federal bribe at the grove right now. The fucking Americana. All right. This is free. Subscribe. Subscribe.