Bulwark Takes - Jake Tapper Fact-Checked Kristi Noem in Real Time (w/ Jack Cocchiarella)

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Jack and Tim take on Jake Tapper’s on-air fact-checking of Kristi Noem, the rush to label a protester a “domestic terrorist,” and the dangerous argument that being in a car now justifies lethal force.

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Hey, y'all. It's Jack Hatcherell with the Bullwark. Happy to be joined by Tim Miller. Unhappy to be watching somehow the most disgusting version of Christy Noem. I didn't know that she could step it up a level, but the smartiness is up. Tim, were you aware that she could turn that shit up to 11? Well, I'm seeing this live with you right now. I've seen a couple of these clips on social media. I love Jake Tapper. But, you know, it's Sunday morning. We all need some peace.

We all need some peace in our life. You know, I try to usually catch up to things in the evening on Sunday. So I'm going in clean right now. And I take at your word that she is going to sink to a new low. I do think that's kind of challenging since she murdered her dog and then bragged about it and then lied about it. It's a tough bar to clear. But there were some, if you watch very carefully, which unfortunately we have to, there were some very inappropriate time smirking from Christy Noem talking about a woman being murdered in cold blood.

But I think the first clip kind of sets the tone for the feelings that she brought to this interview with Jake Tapper, who gives him pretty good pushback on Noam. but when she was asked about whether or not Jonathan Ross was disgracing a woman after he stole her life, she didn't have much to say, but she gave some pretty gross looks. Let's check it out. Is that Agent Ross's voice calling Renee Goode a fucking bitch? I can't determine which one it is, but it could be, sir. Sorry, there.

Is that Christy Noem in the interview there? Is that Jake with Christy Noem? It's hard to tell. She's updating her face monthly. And the last time I saw her, she was like under a big kind of Indiana Jones style hat. I couldn't see her face. So is that the Secretary of Homeland Security there? It is.

I think there's some new lip work done. Okay, can we see it again then? I'm sorry, I was caught off guard. I couldn't see her face. Can we watch it one more time? Is that Agent Ross's voice calling Renee Goet a fucking bitch? I can't determine which one it is, but it could be, sir. She does seem like she's pushing back a smirk there, as you said, Jack.

She does seem like she's pushing back a smirk. And again, it's just like there's no humanity in the administration. Not that it would make it any better. I mean, that they murdered a woman, but there's no sense of, even I'm trying to think of like what you would say in that situation that would, you know, even if you wanted to be defensive of the choice that Jonathan Ross made in that moment, you'd say, look, obviously this is very regrettable, highly stressful moment. We do not condone that kind of rhetoric.

But you know what I mean? Like you could do something like that, but that, but no, she doesn't even give you that. She just kind of like kind of holds back a little smirk. Well, I think it's especially because I think they saw this as a win. I know we talked about this being so stunned that it was like their idea. When we talked about this, what did you think it was AI when you first saw the club from his perspective? I didn't think it was AI, but I just wanted to make sure it wasn't AI because to me it was so, I mean, it was the first video from the start. I thought this was ridiculous, obviously.

But this video, to me, I thought just showed so clearly that there's no reasonable. way that you could spin this as this man being fearful for his life. And when you watch the video, because in that longer video, you see him first talked to Renee good and she's in good spirit. She's kind of teasing him cheerily. And then he comes back around. And then when you see the first person video, you know, which we now knows him holding it in his hand, there's no way to be scared. I mean, you know, I've, I've been in more dangerous situations in a Walmart parking lot with somebody kind of backing up a little too fast. And so, you know, before I posted that video you reference, I was ranting about this.

I was just like, I just wanted to make sure that it was real. Like, why would they put this out? And then why would they put it out and include the part where he calls her a fucking bitch? Well, I think that's where the smirk comes from is it's very notable to me that the first couple of words that Jesse Waters had to say were what? She had she, her pronouns in her bio. She was an alleged poet. That's how they think they can get out of this, is that they do believe they can create enough,

oh, this was a crazy lady to do it. And what was so interesting to me in the next clip we're going to watch as part of Christy Noem's supposed justification is she talked about how long Renee Good had been protesting as if that raised the stakes that her existing in her car, as Noem goes on to say, for hours on end makes it seem like she's more of a threat. I would say the opposite, right? If an officer is seeing someone just standing, sitting in a car peacefully, I think that de-escalates the situation, as we already saw in the clip. But it was very weird, kind of the justification that Christy Noem continues to use, especially when she gets pushed back from Tapper in this clip that we're going to check out for immediately jumping to the conclusion of domestic terrorism.

It was very weird to me what she had to say here. You've also been criticized for your comments. The shooting, we should note, was Wednesday at 1037 a.m. Eastern. Just over two hours later, the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement definitively asserting what had happened, defending the ICE agent, accusing Renee Good of domestic terrorism. That's a characterization that you reiterated in a press conference half an hour later. Now, Republican Senator Tom Tillis said, quote, it was very unusual to have a senior law enforcement official to draw a conclusion about an event where the scene was still being processed.

Generally speaking, law enforcement would recognize that a life was lost, that families are changed forever, the shooter's life will change forever. We're collecting video. We're trying to assess this situation. Why did you not wait for an investigation before making your comments? Everything that I've said has been proven to be factual in the truth. This administration wants to operate in transparency. I have the responsibility as the Secretary of Homeland Security to know this information as soon as possible, had just been in Minneapolis the day before, had already had conversations with officers on the ground,

and supervisors and knew the facts. and decided that the department and the people of this country deserve to know the truth of the situation of what had unfolded in Minneapolis. With all due respect, Secretary, the first thing you said was, quote, what happened was our ICE officers who were out in an enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis. They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.

That's not what happened. We all saw what happened. It absolutely is what happened. Those officers had been out an enforcement action. A vehicle had been stuck. They had come to help get that vehicle out. That's when this individual started blocking traffic for minutes and minutes before. You said that the woman attacked them and surrounded them and attempted to run them over and ram them with their vehicle.

Blocked the road for a long time and was yelling at them and impeding a federal law enforcement investigation. That's what you need to focus on, Jake, is they were breaking the law by impeding and obstructing a law enforcement operation. were breaking the law already. So then she goes on to say that there was like some secret extra footage that CNN hadn't played enough. And I find that just so weird. So the officers had engaged with someone sitting peacefully for hours on end and then all of a sudden she became a domestic maniac terror.

I don't get that as the justification. There is none, but I don't get that. Yeah. I mean, the galling lying about how like when she gave the first statement, any reasonable person listens to this and pictures in their head, right? Like officers, ICE agents and, you know, with their unmarked vehicle stuck on the side of the road in Minnesota and like people in the back pushing the car and then a crazed domestic terrorist like while they're out there pushing their car, driving up to them and trying to ram into them. Like that was how she

explained what happened, which is obviously it didn't happen. I mean, it's just absurd lying. Luckily, you know, kind of the filler like gives you, you know, you don't reveal kind of your true face as you do a lot of times, which is kind of a problem for me. Like, you know, people see what I really think on my face. But so it's a benefit for her in that, in that kind of brazen lie. The thing that I think is most relevant to talk about here, because like, we all know they're liars is basically the crux of their argument, as you point out in the lead in, is that this woman was a criminal.

She was committing a crime. And I want to, like, actually take them with their word on that. I don't exactly know what Renee Good or other words. Like, maybe they were impeding federal agents. Maybe that's good trouble. but sometimes you get arrested for good trouble, you know? And let's say that that she was following them around for hours before that and that her car was in the road intentionally impeding them.

The penalty for that still isn't execution, right? And like that is something that like these guys just will not deal with and will not accept. It's like, okay, it's like we deal with this all the time. Like there's a huge range of punishments for various crimes, you know, that is short of shooting them three times in the face. That's not how we do things in a free country. Like she has an opportunity to defend herself in a court of law. You indict her, you arrest her.

There are plenty of things that you could do. They didn't do any of those things. They ran up to her car. They tried to pull her out aggressively. And then when she tried to get away from that, they executed her. Like that's what happened. That is not defensible, even if you are of the belief that she was breaking the law and what she did was wrong.

The most, maybe most outrageous, it's hard to pick a most outrageous line from Christy Noem. I felt was the, oh, I was in Minneapolis the day before, right? Weird thing to say, so I was there before. That's how I know the feeling on the ground of these scared little ice agents. And, oh, one had previously been involved in a scuffle. So he was a little hair trigger and ready to fire on anyone. It is important just to point out on that point that these people are such bait-up was this. I think it's truly unbelievable.

These fucking guys, these past him, sorry to shit on past him, but they're just such like, such submissive little, little cuck boys like, why is that shit going to pass him? How do you not know if it's not present time? You never know what happening in my private life.

No, but these fucking conservative guys willing to jump so quickly to defend the fucking cops and their bosses, like could you be more pathetic that you are begging to be tread on, that you want absolute immunity for people to gun you down, for I guess, existing in your car because that's the new argument that every car in America is now a deadly weapon so ice can come and just fucking pop some open in you because you're sitting in existing. I don't know why they are demanding that this be the state that we exist in.

But that's what they want. I just like, oh, the defensive is oh, he had, you know, he'd gotten run over before. I'm like, I'm, okay, I'm sympathetic to that, but like, you can't be a scaredy cat. You can't just be a little scared. It's like, oh, the Honda pilots coming at me. I got to shoot. Like, you're in the wrong line of work, okay? If you're like, if you're that scared in that moment, because you just can't watch that video and think, oh, this was a moment that was so frightening and so scary that I had no choice but to take out my weapon and fire three bullets while I'm also holding my phone.

Like it's insane. They're like officers, ICE agents, regular police officers, good police officers get in more dangerous situations than that every day all over the country and they don't kill people. Do you think that this, I don't know, the Christine O'm Schick plays. I know she sees herself as a national figure, which is pretty funny. I don't know how many, you know, like landman slash Yellowstone reenactments of riding around on horses is going to give her any boost in the polls. What part of this do you think they see playing with just regular people? I don't know. There's been a little bit of the mockery that I've seen in the conservative circles that, like, unfortunately, I have to pay attention to saying like, oh, this is the I am George Floyd, I am Renee Good, liberals losing their mind over a criminal, again, how they want to frame her.

Do you think their expectation is that the protest and that the left losing their mind is how they went on this? Or do you think they? Yeah, I think it's that. I mean, it's finding a new foe. It's tough to be, like Trump is very good, all these guys, and no one isn't really very good, but any time. I don't really see her as a national figure in the future, but who knows, the future is unknowable. But they're all at their best when they're going after people, right? Like when, you know, like Trump is very good at belittling people, right?

when they have a foe. He's going to blaming people for other stuff, right? When you're getting in charge, there is a problem, right? When you control all of Washington is you can't just blame everything on people and talk about how they're suckers and losers and how they're stupid. And we need really smart people like the reality TV shows to host to take over, right? Like that shit doesn't work because you're in charge. And so I do think that they continue to kind of look for people they can blame for stuff because that's really their bread and butter.

You know, an economy owes Jerome Powell for a while. You know, it's the Somalis. for, you know, a couple weeks ago, you know, now it's whatever, the lesbian Honda pilot driving. The poets of America. Yeah, right. The most violent of them all. I think, yeah, I think that's, I think that's the strategy. Do you think that do you see that working, though, long term is the strategy of playing the poets?

I mean, I think that they're in a better situation today, just politically, right? Like, we're just talking to pure politics. I think they feel like they're in better political place right now and they were two weeks ago. They didn't have anything to talk about. They were really treading water, you know, are taking on water rather, you know, with Epstein, they didn't have anything, economy getting worse, you know, Trump being obsessed with getting trophies. They didn't have a lot to talk about. At least now they like have a foe. You watch this stuff. You watch Fox and stuff. They've got more material now. And they also got

Venezuela. Will it work long term? I'm skeptical. I think this is the time if you would ever want to to start talking about the surveillance state, the Palantir state, to start saying words that kind of register with the young man, don't look at my. phone and data class of people who are pretty apolitical. It seems like a good time to jump on that. If you're a Democrat and connect everything ICE does to, you know, Larry Ellison saying that he wants citizens on their best behavior. I don't know.

That'd kind of be my advice for Democrats right now. I'm with you on that. What else we got? We have more Christy Knoe. Well, we do have more Kristi Knoe. We have her on Fox. And this is a little word of warning for anyone who's going to be in their car in the future because Christy Knoem now has a different view of you if you were in a very big, scary

vehicle. These vehicle rammings, we've had over a hundred of them in recent weeks where people are using their vehicles as deadly weapons in attacking our officers and training them on how to block streets. And I'll remind everybody that if you get involved in impede a law enforcement operation, you are breaking the law. That is a crime. And at that point in time, that individual needs to be arrested and taken in and charged and convicted for what they're doing to stop justice in the United States. Okay. So one, one sec. We're just... One, training. The training element of this is pretty hysterical. So we're trading, training road blockades. Like, that's what's happening in liberal radical America. The second thing is, I can't imagine what would impede the flow of traffic more than every ice agent in America being able to just rip people out of their cars. And this, I think, probably especially comes from, I don't know, did you see the video of the woman just like holding down her horn and the ice agent saying, like, if you keep doing that, it's going to be a very bad. day for you. Yeah, yeah. I think this is a bottom-up operation right now. I don't know where

Christy Noem gets her ideas if they're from Corey Lewandowski after, you know, or if it's just from like the loudest complainers. But I really do believe that the biggest problems that these guys have are just the fact that they don't like middle-aged women hawking at them and that that is driving our policy and that that is leading to people getting shot. I can't get inside Jonathan the Norse's head, but obviously he was very triggered by both the victim who he killed and also the other woman, I guess, was her partner that was calling him Big Boy or whatever right before he shot her. So, and I think obviously that is in these guys' psyche.

I don't think you need to be professional psychologist to note that. And just two other things that want to say about that clip with Kristy Nob and how they want to deal with cars as deadly weapons down. The first thing is she says clearly on that Fox what they want to do with people. that want to impede with their car. And that's arrests take in charge. And by the way, I would be just fine with that. If that's what they had.

If they had done that with Renee Good, I would, we would not be here. We would not be here right now. They could have arrested her taking an in charge of her. They could have, they had her license plate. If she drove away, they could have gone to her house, you know, with a warrant and arrested her taking in and charged her. Nobody would be talking about this right now. That would be a totally appropriate thing to do.

She could defend herself in court. I would be on her side of that. but it would be a completely reasonable in a free society. That's not what they did. They shot her three times in the head. The other thing, just with these moving vehicles, it's worth monitoring. There's a story going around. I don't know if you saw this.

It's from 2014. So this has nothing to do with Trump or Trump derangement syndrome. Nothing to do with Republicans. This was Obama was president when this happened. LA Times obtained an internal review of U.S. Border Patrol's use of force policies. And one of the things they found was that Border Patrol agents were intentionally and necessarily stepping in front of moving cars to justify using deadly force against vehicle occupants. It's like this is something that has happened.

I'm not saying that Jonathan Ross did that in that moment. Again, he could just be a scaredy man. He could have been really triggered by the lesbians. They could have done it on purpose. I don't know what was in his brain, but it's just worth noting that that is something that they've done in the past. And now she's basically laying the predicate for that. The idea that just all things that exist around you are just,

justifications for you to use whatever force you want is kind of the place that they want to get at here. Like, obviously, like, Vance just wants to muddy the water. Like, what you're saying is right. Like, they want it to be that, okay, I can step in front of a car or I can, you know, I can have been filmed. I could have felt distressed and they can just lead you to do whatever you want. But the fact that a supposed law enforcement officer has his glove off in Minneapolis to record a woman recording him and that any of these things can be triggers to them is, is absurd to me that you would have your phone out, these guys want to get involved in conflict. Like, that's why they're there.

I'm glad that you have the report of it, but like, do we really need any internal study done to know that, like, guys who have nothing else going on who are fucking former oathkeepers and proud boys and January 6th, you know, pardoned patriots want to get into scraps with women? That's like exactly what they want to do. I don't know. with that, do you think that Democrats should be saying abolish ice or do you think they should be saying, let's put some tweaks around the edges? I don't have to be.

No, no, no. I mean, I think Democrats should be extremely aggressive on this. One thing that I, as an immigrant to the left, somebody who's come to the left, one thing that I do kind of, one thing that's who kind of annoys me about the left is like they're very people, progressers are very obsessed with like picking a particular word or phrase and be like, you must say this word or phrase or else you're a witch, like, or else you're We must burn you. It's like not accepted.

Like, this is the only. And I, and that's not, I just, I kind of think it's a silly discourse. Like, I think the candidates should think about ways

where they feel comfortable talking about it. I'm for abolishing ice. That's fine with me. I think you don't, you want to make that case to people in, in a way that, that people understand that this doesn't mean that you're for open borders or that you're not for arresting criminal immigrants and stuff.

And, like, we did this for, for a year. Ice just was founded in like 2003. It's like the country survived without ice. It only worries me, politically for the Democrats, it's like you don't just say the other thing, right? Like,

you do need to say the thing that like, these guys are thugs, they're masked. We need them to show their faces. You know, we'd totally reform how our immigration enforcement works. We should not be harassing nonviolent citizens or immigrants for that matter. Like, we should be doing what Trump said he was going to do, which is focus on violent criminals and getting them out of a country and what this is, and this is not that. Like, we shouldn't be a fucking papers police country. This is in East Germany. Like, that's, like, all that, I think is, totally appropriate. You know, my only quibble of Democrats on this is sometimes they, like, focus

just on the bad parts of what Republicans are doing, rather than, like, on the fact that, like, you know, we do need some law enforcement to. Yeah, for me, I just... Jacob Frye was... It's been... Jacob Frye was awesome on this yesterday, by the way, on my pod. I don't know if you, if you caught it, people should go

listen to it. And he is, and he has been mayor of the city. He was mayor during the whole abolish the police, uh, defund the police thing. He said in a debate for mayor. He was like, I don't think we to defund the police. We need some kind of police force that needs to be reformed, of course. People said at the time, your career's over. And now he's still mayor. That was like seven years ago. And I thought he was really good talking about police in the city and how they've reformed it and how much more responsible they are and better they are than ice and how he wants to get the fuck out of the city.

I don't think it's that hard to balance that. And I think he's one example. So he did a good job. Yeah, I think what, you know, the abolish ICE rather than defund the police phrase benefits from is what what do people think? ICE is. Like, do you think the average person knows what, like, what, what it's, what it stands for? It's also kind of complicated, right? Because, like, actually what is, you know, which is why you get politics is sloganeering. And so I'm, I'm open to whatever creative slogan hearing people want to come up with that's actually effective. But if we're just being factual, like the CBP is, the agents are doing the worst stuff right now. And in this particular case, this guy was ICE. But I mean, here in New Orleans, for example, and all across the country,

it's like little mini Bovino man, a CBP, and they've been more aggressive, really, than ice. And so it's kind of like, if we ever get out of this nightmare, you're going to have to reform stuff, root and branch. They got rid of USAID, so I don't know. And that feeds kids, doesn't leave them orphaned. So maybe fucking we should,

maybe we should bring that back. And on that note of let's get out of this fucking hellscape, Tim, thanks for handing out, man. This is, what a great conversation. I'm sad now. Happy to jump in with you, everybody. I'm sorry that you're watching this. Go out there and, you know, touch snow, okay?

We'll see you guys.