Bulwark Takes - Sarah Longwell: Cops Are Worried ICE Turned People Against Police

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

Sarah Longwell joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline: White House, explaining why the Minneapolis shootings—and the Alex Pretti video in particular—have shifted public opinion.Watch Deadline: White House on MSNOW: https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house

Access Storage presents the Olympic spirit. Hi, I'm Piper Gillis. And I'm Paul Pori. And we are Team Canada Ice Dancers. When we're in Milan, we aren't just representing all the accomplishments and the success it takes to get to the games. We're celebrating all the people at home. The people that have supported us, they're going to be cheering for us. When we go out on the ice, we're going to be skating.

We know our community is going to be cheering for us. We know the country is going to be cheering for us. And that's such an important and special feeling on the biggest stage. Thank you, Canada. Brought to you by Access Storage, proud partner of Team Canada. Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show.

Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario.

Hey guys. I was on with Nicole Wallace earlier today. Also Alex Wagner and Andrew Weissman, they were on with me. And we were all talking about Minneapolis. But I specifically was talking about a lot of what we've been hearing in the focus groups since the Alex Preti shooting, including from a brand new group of police officers, law enforcement types that we just did. And so a lot in there. Obviously, I have talked a lot about Minneapolis. But I really was focused in this one on. on the shift in public opinion and how frustrated Americans are after seeing, you know, their fellow citizens get shot in the street. And it is having an impact on public opinion. And really for the first time, we're seeing the Trump administration blink in the face of public backlash and outcry. So that's what we're talking about. Hope you enjoy it. Go watch. Sir, Longwell, let me start with you. What do you see happening in the country? in terms of the public mood? Well, you know, I listen to voters week in and week out in focus groups,

and I cannot overstate how big of a shift there has been on just Minneapolis. And one of the things I want to start out with is just the fact that everybody knows what is happening. You know, I talk a lot about what it takes to break through in this noisy information environment. You know, voters often, we will be talking about something on the show or in Washington, and voters won't have heard about it. Not only has everybody heard about these shootings, but everybody's seen the videos. They've examined them for themselves.

And people were already deeply uneasy after the shooting of Renee Good, but to have a second shooting with Alex Preti where I gotta say for voters, the Preti shooting is just much more clear cut. They looked at the Renee Good one, and people were able to tell themselves, well, she was in the car

and how was the car turning? the mask agents, six of them jumping on Alex Pretti, shooting him in the back, him clearly having his hands up, just trying to defend a woman that an ice agent had shoved into the snow, has created a really different environment

where people are now saying they are fed up with these sort of over-zealousness of these ice agents, the fact that they're paroling the streets in masks. The back, and look, obviously, hardcore Trump voters,

many of them will stick with him on this, but the vast majority of the country is just reaching kind of a tipping point on not only do they think this is wrong what is happening, right? They hired Trump to secure the border. They hired Trump to deport dangerous criminals from the country, but they did not want this,

people in our streets. The other thing is Donald Trump is not doing the thing that voters hired him to do the most, right? If the economy was booming and people's prices were going down, they might, sometimes voters can forgive Trump for a lot of the things he does in that context, but at a time when Trump is not addressing their concerns and he's creating chaos in the streets and they're shooting Americans, that's when you start to see public opinion really start to move.

Sarah Longwell, the child separation practice has been, thanks to people like Jacob Soberoff and other great journalism and activists has been part of the Trump story. But to your point, people are now focusing in on the plight of young, young children like Liam Ramos, who was used not just detained in Minneapolis, but used as bait to lure out other family members. At a time when, to your point, everyone has seen the images of how Alex Prattie was killed. I wonder if the whole project of going after the worst of the worst has now been, blown apart as a lie. Yeah, I mean, look, there's a few lies, actually, that American voters understand.

And again, I just can't overstate how interesting it is to me to hear Trump voters, and many of the people we've been talking to have been Trump voters talking about Ramos, talking about, I mean, they know these stories. And many of them are calling for Christy Noem to be impeached or gotten rid of, which I was actually. pretty surprised to hear Trump voters saying. Now, these are swinging your voters, people who went from Biden to Trump. But they say this idea of using kids as bait of going into schools, of going into churches, these are the kinds of things that Americans reject. They say, yes, get dangerous criminals. But somebody who's been here for 20 years, like, don't come into our streets and start dragging

our neighbors out. Like, they want a policy solution to it, but they do want people to be treated humanely. Like, the American people have not lost every sense of what is decent and what is right, and they think that using kids' bait is wrong. Separating kids from their families is wrong. That was true in the Trump First administration, and it's true now. Sir, I think we have some footage from your focus groups. Let me play that for our viewers. Whenever there's a highly publicized

police shooting, and it's getting publicized, because there's questions over whether it was a good shoot. I think in law enforcement, there's usually a, well, you have to put yourself in that moment. You have to understand or making a quick decision. You have to understand. Law enforcement is usually quick to, I don't want to say defend, but kind of explain or justify why it was a good shooter or a bad shoot. And over the last few weeks, months, year, it's getting harder and harder for people around me to have, like, a good faith conversation about why something was a good shoot. I don't know anybody who saw the video. the most recent one in Minneapolis.

ISIS single-handedly set police back easily 100 to 50 to 100 years easily. I'm glad that I medical doubt because I would kind of hate to be a cop right now because you're dealing with because what one badge does, everybody gets blamed for it. So, sir, explain who these voters are. Yeah, so we just did this group last night and these are law enforcement officers. Some of them are correctional officers. Many of them are beat cops.

Some of them are federal law enforcement. But they're all people who have operated in law enforcement communities. And they were all, they did all vote for Kamala Harris. We are doing two groups. We're going to do another one tonight of people who, let's say, are more Trump-friendly. And we'll see how different those are. But in this particular group, it wasn't just that they were all talking about how this made law enforcement look bad, how it broke trust with the people

that they're supposed to be protecting, could also just feel like they were sad. They were devastated by what was happening. Like, they're cops who feel like their duty is to protect people. And I think watching, especially for law enforcement, and I think you're going to hear more of this, watching people who are not trained,

who treat people horribly, who shoot, you know, quickly and thoughtlessly, and taking American lives and creating chaos in the streets, they view that as something that is going to, because ICE are not the same, right, as the police officers that we deal with every day or Border Patrol is not the same, but they feel like what it is going to do

is break the trust between the American people and law enforcement writ large, and that that's something that you can't just get back in a day. Sarah, does that seem to be breaking through with voters that it's all in Donald Trump's, political mission and service and that there is no part of the federal government looking out for the American people. Not sure that that specifically breaks through.

I mean, Americans, man, when it comes to the institutions, the big institutions, they are often not following the minutia of it. I will tell you what has broken through. And this has been pretty striking to me. The fact that Donald Trump, Christy Knoem, Stephen Miller, all came out and lied about both the shooting of Renee Good and the shooting of Alex Prattie, but especially the shooting of Alex Prattie, that has broken through. What the American people are, the fact that there was a video that directly contradicted the idea that he was a domestic terrorist or that he had come

there to do maximum damage, those types of, that's smearing of him is something that voters took note of. They're like, that's not what the video shows. I'm watching it with my own eyes. That is starting to break through. I don't want to say it's creating a legitimacy crisis because I'm not sure how much legitimacy they actually had with voters. But it is causing people to say, well, we can't trust their statement of events because we can see that they're lying to us.