Some More News - Even More News: Handcuffing Senators and "Liberating" Los Angeles

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Hi. Alex Steed joins Katy, Cody, and Jonathan to talk about the protests in Los Angeles, the FBI manhandling Sen. Alex Padilla, and the return (and arrest) of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Here is Wired.com's guide on how to protest safely: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-protest-safely-gear-tips. Get the world's news at https://ground.news/SMN to compare coverage and see through biased coverage. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access through our link.Note: We recorded this a few hours before Israel's strikes on Iran. We'll talk about that on Monday. Have a good weekend. Stay safe.PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#evenmorenews #alexpadilla #kristinoemPluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. My name is K-K-K-K-Katey Stoll. I don't know why I did that. I do because that's what we K-K-K-Call you. Hi, I'm C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K- photographer, co-host of the podcast, You Are Good, our friend Alex Steed. Hi Alex. Hello, thanks for having me back in this eventful week. It is a very, very eventful heavy week. But don't fret because Jonathan is also here. Hi. Wouldn't miss it. Classic Jonathan, always being here. Isn't that just like me to be here? come on.

In the interest of time, we're gonna breeze real quick through today's holidays, but I do wanna highlight it because Friday, June 13th is Friday the 13th, but it's also National Kitchen Clutzes of America Day, and that's me, baby. My mom gave me a brick of new knives, nice knives, and she told me, now be very careful with this. And I'm like, mom, I'm almost 40,

because I was almost 40 at the time. I proceeded to cut the shit out of my hand multiple times the first week I had them. Kitchen gluts. Anyway, yeah, no one cares about that. Alex, thank you for joining us this week. It was kind of a last minute scheduling thing and we really appreciate it.

You have been out there protesting and you've been sharing lots of photos and video on Blue Sky. So just to start off, why don't, can you tell us a little bit about what your experience has been during this week and maybe some things that most media outlets aren't showing us? Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, I said this off recording. I truly do mean it after a long week of weirdness being

with y'all is such a delay. I love you guys so much. So this is a treat. Thank you. And y'all is such a delay. I love you guys so much. So this is a treat. Thank you. And to be able to process this with you, I would say is huge. So long story short, a friend of mine is a person who was in TGIF television shows in the 1990s. And on Saturday, he was going to be at a nostalgia convention in Anaheim. And I was going to go down and see him. So that was my objective. And on the way, I was like, I should see what's going on in Paramount because it seems significant.

Because Paramount is about 15, 20 minutes south of downtown. It's the area where there was the, where I did not know any of this yet, but it was the area of the Battle of the Home Depot. This whole thing, in my experience, is so uniquely American. I was going to a

90s nostalgia fest and I got swept up in the Battle of Home Depot. And I showed up there and the blocks and blocks each were sort of, on the way to the Home Depot, were fortified by different police presences. And within an hour, I was within among neighbors or people sort of of the of and from the neighborhood, almost exclusively brown folks. I think I think I was the only massive white person in the crowd there. And within within an hour, people were being shot at with gas balls and flashbang grenades were going off in order to keep people blocks and blocks and blocks away from this Home Depot where there was a raid that people had been protesting the day before.

And so I think like in that moment, I was like, oh, something is really happening right now. I think I want to keep showing up for this. I have a 25-year history of showing up to actions and demonstrations and going back to like early Pride stuff, the Iraq War invasion, that's kind of as far back as I go, where I first learned that police officers could net off areas and just arrest everyone that they trap in the street. And so this is all like kind of familiar to me, but when I saw in Paramount people being shot at

who were just neighbors standing around a like fast food chicken restaurant, eight and ten year olds in the crowd. I was like, oh, this is bad. And so I started to show up to the demonstrations downtown following Sunday, Monday into Tuesday, and seeing how intense things were getting where largely, you know, a largely peaceful crowd showing up, feeling angry that people are being not just kidnapped off the street, but aggressively taken off the street, flippantly taken off the street as a show of force by by ICE and then protected by sort of these larger militarized forces, the LAPD itself being a militarized force, that presence being just like inherently aggressive and leading

to a number of skirmishes. I mean, the amount of times, again, I have a heavy, a lot of experience with demonstration protests, et cetera. I think this is the most I've had rubber bullets shot in my direction. I think this is the most I've had to cover my face because of gas exposure. This is the most I've seen people

get directly hit with things. I was standing near the Australian reporter when she got shot. Oh my God. And into that, I was saying the other day, the thing that was especially egregious to me recently was, you know, you show, you're all familiar, you show protest online, and a bunch of people who are at home who maybe once went to a rally in 2007 have a lot of ideas about what the best way to

do it is, and they're not afraid to tell you, and it's all like, do this symbolic thing, do a cute thing, literally sing Kumbaya. And so on Wednesday, oh no, Tuesday, I'm sorry, a really beautiful thing happened down where there's the federal courthouse where it's all being fortified by all of these soldiers in LAPD. I didn't even know what to expect. I showed up at around like five or six, six o'clock, I think. I didn't know what to expect. I was a little bummed out by how few people were there. And then suddenly, a big beautiful swell of people arrive in song, singing, This Little Light of Mine. Or I don't know the full, is it This Little Light? They're

singing that song that we all are familiar with. A large, beautiful community of faith comes. And they're singing, they're doing the thing everyone asks, like a couple sort of leaders of faith get up and say some words. It was a really tasteful, beautiful thing. They march on, they come back. But when they arrived, the police response was to put on gas masks, which is an announcement that y'all are about to get gassed. And the community marched on with the intention of coming back. Which is an announcement that y'all are about to get gassed.

And the community marched on with the intention of coming back. They did come back. Everyone sort of landed in this area. And not long after, you know, there's a lot of sort of standing around in these things. Not long after, at 8.05, everyone gets the emergency text that a curfew has gone into, or it's the text says the curfew will go into effect at 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. We get the message and they lock off all of the streets and escape routes in order to get out. All of the, and I can't identify who is who because it's getting confusing now about which armed force is which armed force. who is who because it's getting confusing now about which armed force is which armed force. But with all of these community members of faith, I saw a man who I later saw on video

identified as like, I think a 90 year old Irish priest who was there. I saw him out in the crowd. Everyone gets locked into their position because you can't leave because every sort of every exit is occupied by literally 20 to 50 police cars on any given side. There's police there, they have gas masks, etc. And they just start running, charging into the crowd and or shooting rubber bullets into the crowd and or sending gas into the crowd and descending upon the crowd with, you've seen pictures of these mounted police, with horses. And so it was essentially a shooting gallery where people were left to get arrested unless

they had, you know, I've cultivated a 25 year spidey sense about this is I was like, oh, shit's happening. You got to sort of get out of here, whatever, get into this place. But a lot of people show up for the first time. I imagine the impression that was designed was this will be their last time. I feel like that kind of experience radicalizes you in a way. When you're singing this little light of mine and then you say, oh, the LAPD or some other force

has cut off the exit and they've put in a curfew on, like, memento rules that you need to know. Like this is something that a huge portion of the country does not see or experience either because they're not going or not watching. You know, if you go to ktla.com right now, which is our one of our local news here in LA, it is a very different experience than what you just said. Yeah, well, it's being illustrated that there is an existing chaos that needs to be quelled, and the quelling creates the chaos.

Interesting difference in some of the coverage. I've seen, there's this Washington Post article, the headline is, White House Opens Door to Historic Military Deploy deployment on US soil. Not the best. CNN, Trump is exaggerating disorder to justify use of military on US soil. That is pretty accurate. That is, that is.

Pretty accurate. Is exaggerating. You can go a little further, but like that's close to a headline that accurately portrays what's going on. Democracy dies in darkness. I feel like when these sort of things, quote unquote, pop off,

often it is an impromptu thing, like this Home Depot situation, where it's like, oh, just people start to show up. And there's no, this idea that, well, there's like, oh, just people start to show up. And there's no like, you know, this idea that like, well, there's one protest leader and they have all the rules for the protest and they're handing out all the things. And like, here's how we're gonna behave, folks.

It's usually with a lot of these things that have happened in the past, the first day, the first night is the one where you get the images of like, oh my God, there was a Waymo on fire and all this sort of stuff. And that's what everybody focuses on. It's 0.00001% of the protest, but those are the photos.

And so that colors everything else. And then they send everything in, they make it worse. And then you get these days now where you're talking about, like, yeah, everyone was just like full of love and peace and, but those photos were out first. So that's that. Yeah. And they need to lean into that photo and those optics or whatever to justify this continued force, this continued presence. I mean, we have a friend of ours that just posted being there either Tuesday or Wednesday night. I'm not positive. And it is

horrifying. It's very emotional to even watch it. And you have literally been there. So I'm preaching to the choir here, but hardly any protesters to be honest, but they're being trampled. They're being herded by people running at them on a horseback, clubbing people screaming. You see an officer raise a gun and take aim, point Blake at somebody that's like this. And then our friend is trying to leave and saying very kindly, very respectfully, sir, sir, how do I leave?

Yeah, how do I leave? Point you in the right direction. And then he got arrested. Yeah, if anyone is looking for substantiation of that, my friend Natalia Regan, you can find her on Instagram. She's a great entertainer. She found herself in a very similar situation to your friend. She got it all on her phone where she was just trying to move her car and she's surrounded

by officers, guns drawn, yelling at her, yelling at her, yelling at her, not conveying sort of like what the situation is. And so this is not a, I know a lot of people are like, where's the tape? I'm like, well, if you're just waiting for something to arrive in your algorithm, maybe that's not the right way. But there is plenty of tape. Oh yeah, that always. Yeah, oh yeah, it's everywhere.

I mean, I know this because he filmed the whole thing. Another woman the other night trying to get home, runs into like 10 cops, and she's just like, trying to get home least shoots her Hands up cheap hobble hobble my friend nobody around. I was out last night and I was out the night The thing I saw and described earlier was two nights ago And I was out last night and with other friends and peers and to your point Cody

I mean, it's like this is not one person is organizing all these people. People are showing up. Like, I'm, I do a lot of like sort of organizing community work and like sex work community. So like, I'm there with like sex workers, other people are there with like, with like their church group. Like, it's like, it's a, it's a, it's a disparate group of people. Right?

And so I, you know, I say to my friends who didn't see what I saw the night before, I'm like, we got to go at this time. We have to be in our car by this time. We have to be out of this radius by this time. And they're like, kind of, you know, dallying a little bit. I'm like, I am being real. Like we, and I'm watching as we're leaving people walking in and marching in. And I was like, y'all do not know. And maybe that's a thing that has to happen by way of confrontation and sort of illustrations of power. But I was like, some of you do not know what y'all are in for right now.

Some of you are walking into a terror, if you haven't experienced it before especially. You know, I'm sure many of our viewers and listeners, like the most recent experience of this kind of thing was the summer of 2020. And the LAPD got very aggressive there as well in certain situations. But going there, it didn't feel like a vibe of like,

the president's going to have me shot. That kind of didn't exist for me in 2020. So I'm sure there are a lot of people because these protests, the first few days were like a couple hundred people. I think, what is it? Sunday that got 5,000 was a big thing. I'm sure this Saturday is gonna be big.

But there's probably a lot of people who are like, we got to push back, I wanna go. Is this thing okay for me to go to, to like take a stand and push back I want to go is this thing okay for me to go to to like take a stand and push back what would you say to someone who is nervous yeah great that's a guy thought a lot about that with regard to Saturday because Saturday is a no Kings thing which is much more liberal forward event and people are used to going to like again they go to like maybe two or three Rallies a year at most and this is a family event type thing And so I know

Right and then so I know my brother my brother is younger He's 19 went to an event elsewhere in California is like what should I know and I sent him like wired Articles on what to know about like going to actual protest days So if you are going to a go to to one of these. Like I believe that you should go. B, this is one that you have to learn about dealing with actual adversaries at a protest. There are articles that are like 500 words that'll give you everything that you need to know. Wired has a great one. I can send it to you guys if you want to share it. The last thing is, and this is like, this is not pretty, but it's true.

I heard someone say this at the, at the, this event where people were like, um, you know, like in the civil, like again, like people will regurgitate what they learned when they were 10 years old about the civil rights movement. And they'll be like, and the civil rights movement, people marched and they showed up every day and whatever. And it's like, no, in the civil rights movement, there were a lot of like tactic tactically organized events that were, that were put into place to illustrate zealous overreach of power and

The thing that is potentially going to change something here Unfortunately is a zealous overreach of power when a bunch of people sort of clash and that is probably going to be someone getting killed It does seem like that is what I mean, that's what they want That's what they've been sort of going for for this whole time. I mean, I'm surprised somebody hasn't been killed yet I am I am honestly I am honestly as well that said The likelihood that that is going to happen when you show up to the event to like a large sort of larger scale event happen when you show up to the event to like a large sort of larger scale event, moderately unlikely. But it is a reality when you have this situation where you have uncoordinated, as we're seeing under resourced soldiers, armed forces, etc., showing up to this thing,

all taking orders from different people in various levels of like being ideologically on board with what they're being asked to do. There is inherently a chaos. When I went with my friend last night, she was like, I can't quite describe how the energy is off in this situation, but it feels like a situation where if one thing goes wrong, someone's going to get killed. Because everyone's all ready to go. They're primed. They're trigger happy. I was speaking with different political belief, former Marine, horrified at what's happening,

talking about the deployment of the Marines and saying, I don't know how I would feel being put in that situation where it's against people that I might stand in line with coffee, but your training is there and people will follow orders. And also they're keyed up, sleeping on the floors. They don't mind sleeping on the floors because they're trained for this, but it keys them up. And they're tired of wokeness.

Maybe, maybe not. But the point is that they're trained for a situation. And while they are also trained in deescalation, it's like edgy, you know? And you don't really want to see what the reaction is, but we, you know, in this situation. Well, and the thing, what I was saying about the sort of the civil rights stuff is that it's like, again, like the reduced ideas that was marching that did it.

And no, what happened was those people were very intentionally putting themselves on the line to get arrested on television and to illustrate a unfair exertion of power. And that's the situation that we're in now. So when you show up again, don't I'm not saying plan for like a, you know, the worst case scenario. But when you show up, know that in LA in particular, the No Kings thing is doing a bit more of a heavy lift than maybe it's doing in like a Butte. You know, it's gonna be a bit different.

I mean, I agree that it's LA is gonna, it's its own conversation, but I would urge people to exercise caution no matter where you're showing up. I'm nervous about it in my community because I've heard bad stories of what happened during Black Lives Matter. You don't know who's going to show up

from various communities. Things spiraling get out of control. It just takes one scared person, et cetera, et cetera. Well, and any time I hear revving, I think someone's going to drive into the crowd. I know, like, you know, with your experience at these kind of things, how many different police departments would you say I know, like, you know, with your experience at these kind of things, how many different like police departments would you say you've like, is it mostly with the LAPD or is it

sort of a wide range? It's so it's so funny you asked that it just just keeping track of who is who. So the first day where it was like it was like the police force maintaining the fifth block from the Home Depot was the LA Sheriff's Department. And you could tell that they were wildly over their head in this situation. They were out of their depth. And then there was very fast and again, I am speaking as in that case, the only white person in this crowd, with the exception of a couple of police officers.

There was a lot of exchange between people who had guns aimed at them and police officers of color essentially being like yelling out the awkwardness of this dynamic. And I saw at least one, if not two officers get emotional in response to that because it is a weighty class and race dynamic as well. And so in that case, it was the sheriff's department. I could tell that some were unsettled by the situation. I could tell that this was not their cup of tea typically. And then I'll see straight up riot, you know, on the event on Sunday, there were like, I

think maybe 20 to 30 officers, I don't know, protecting a street or something, and then, let's say, maybe 60 showed up in the back of a truck dressed for riot gear stuff. That's where you see people were posting a video of, they were like, the protesters are being violent, they smashed out this window and this SUV. I don't know if anyone saw this video. What immediately proceeded that I saw is that SUV sped up into the crowd. So you have that.

We can find it on Thomas Chatterton Williams's feed, I'm sure. That's where I saw it. That's exactly where I saw it. And then, and then, and that was the, that was the context I tried to provide for that is I saw, we thought that that SUV was going to kill people. Like they've sped up into a crowd. And and then I have seen guardsmen and they are pretty clear at this point. I still for the life of me can identify someone in ice visually based on just like how cluttered everything is. Yeah, that's that's by design. Yes. Yeah. Things

are very and just like just like, again, like things are cluttered at some point where it's like overlap on overlap on overlap. There are so many police officers just protecting intersections. And more cynically, routes of escape. What do you see in the sort of communication between protesters and these sort of disparate groups

that are coming together. Because I know you mentioned a lot of the optics conversation of people like, well, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this. And MLK did this. And I keep sort of thinking, yeah, but we don't have anybody like that. This isn't a movement in the same way.

It doesn't have these specific goals other than like, I stopped doing this, stop like kidnapping people. So, you know, we don't have like a figure to look at and get these sort of like, this guidance that everyone is like tweeting about, like, don't wave this flag, don't do this, don't do this. Do you see a lot of communication between these groups that sort of show up separately and then it like forms into the big crowd?

Not not that I'm aware of and that is on that's on me I'm I'm showing up to where I know events are happening and I'm I'm witnessing and documenting the events Oh, yeah, I am and everybody well No, I just I but I just want to be clear that it's like there there could be and I'm sure there is much more Existing coordination that I am not necessarily on like the mailing lists for like I will always sign up for something if I've gone to Demonstrations in the past I'll get a message or whatever But even just yesterday I found that knowing where people were gonna be and when was a full hour of my time I like got down there was like, okay where?

There were people in Boyle Heights now, they're not. There were people in Virginia Square, now they're not. Now they're going up to like, just tracking where people are because everyone is showing up from different groups. And you will see what seems to be like, and again, like that, I still don't know the full background of the community leaders of faith that came together, but that was so clearly a coordinated event. It worked from a level of nostalgia, and I don't, I'm not saying this in a diminishing way, but of nostalgic spectacle, because everyone's like, do it the way I've seen it done before. And you're like, all right, we did it. And it's like, it is very moving to be with people in song and stuff. It's extremely moving.

I do think more of that could and would be effective, but I also think that a lot of these, and this is like a bit of a side quest on that question, is that thing when people are like, less Mexican flags, more American flags, that stuff perpetuates this myth that if you act tidily, you're not gonna get the shit kicked out of you by a police officer, and you're not gonna get misrepresented by the media.

And it's going to happen no matter what. To me, the biggest task now is just showing up in a way that you can. And I want to acknowledge, because every time I say, I try to never give people outs, because I know a bunch of people are here enough about self-care yourself into a coma, and that's fine. But I do want to say, I understand not everyone can show up ready to get shot with rubber bullets, but you do want to say, I understand not everyone can show up ready to get shot

with rubber bullets, but you can contribute to bail funds. Yeah. I went to a, I went to an, um, an amazing fundraiser at the, the, this punk venue was like punk all ages venue. Uh, I don't know if it's all ages, but like a punkish venue called makeup club last night where they were trying to raise money for, for, uh, families affected by ice raids. Like there are ways that you can show up, but you just gotta show up.

There's no perfect way to do it. There are, I mean, he'd obviously listen to the community that you're coming to represent. That's the most perfect way to. For sure, but I think that's a really, really important note because there's a lot of anxiety and worry or guilt if you are not physically able to be at a demonstration or feeling like you're, there are multiple ways to show up and support.

And I think, and every way that you protest is valid. Totally, and every, and I just might, my note for anybody is like, do you, are you in a place where if you look at what you did last week, you feel good about it? If not, do a little bit more. You don't have to become perfect at it. Just do a little bit more until you feel a little more comfortable and go from there. Cause don't I'm a big, it's showing my age. I was a big like jello Biafra spoken word kid. And like when he was like, don't burn yourself out, like maintain your light. And I heard

that from someone on the first day where she was like, don't get arrested because you can't show up tomorrow. And that was, and she was a good mom, you know? Like she was like a mom to me. It was a lovely, it was lovely. Like I, we'd never exchanged, I hoped she somehow hears that was meaningful to a lot of people.

She's listening and watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm great, I'm very grateful. But it was, those are important. There are times to get arrested, but sometimes it's just like, you know, preserve your ability to keep showing up. And I have found the more, I'll say two things.

One is the more vocal I am with my friends conveying what's actually happening. People who don't typically take actions have reached out and they're like, show me what I can do, where I can go, where I should sign up. I've brought people down. It makes me a little nervous because I'm a six foot five white man.

I'm kind of, unless I get shot in the right place, I'm more or less invincible in this society, but like bringing other people and being responsible for. I'll stand behind you. They won't be able to see me. I'm a tiny man. Yeah, yeah, totally. I can absorb a shot or two,

but the one thing that I'm trying not to be very paranoid about, I'm very outspoken, I have a little bit of an audience, I've had these photos shared wide and far. In the past two days, I have had police vehicles sitting idling in front of my house for an hour at a time that has never happened before. The fuck? And I don't know if it's, I don't know, I don't know, but there's enough of me to be sharpened. There was one that was unmarked two days ago.

There was one when I just arrived to my place the other day. And so I do think that, I do think that like this has people nervous, right? Yes, it does have people nervous. There's a lot, I mean, just, we've been talking a lot about the, people are being kidnapped. People are being kidnapped off the streets. People are-

Well, I just wanted to unrecord, you know? But yeah, I know you've said that out here. That's staying in. There's every reason to be nervous, and I acknowledge the not jumping to conclusionness of it but a cop shows has been idling outside of your house an unmarked vehicle after you started showing up to these demonstrations and sharing stuff online. Yeah, I don't.

Don't even have to finish the thought. I don't want to be, yeah, I just don't want to become one of my uncles, you know, but I am, I am, I am watching Patterns. We'll get into uncle territory here pretty quickly with some of the stuff's going on. It be too late to alter course mateys, Ad men tell no tales, except this one me hearties, ground news that there's a website and an app we sought out to sponsor this expedition. They be gathering news from round the seven seas, sorting headlines by political bias so ye can see through the murky storm and spy who's twisting a tale. And once

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Oh, like from the National Guard? Oh no. Alex Padilla started asking questions. He identified himself as Senator Alex Padilla, which they say he didn't. And then he was roughly ushered out of the room by the feds and thrown on the ground and handcuffed. I'm Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions question for the secretary because the fact of the matter is a half a dozen criminals

that you're rotating on your hands off. Many of our ICE agents have been doxxed for doing their duty. Hands on your back. Hands upon your back. Hands upon your back. If you let me, if you let my hands go, I'll put them behind my back. Alright, alright, alright. Cool. Hands on your hands.

Lay flat. Lay flat. Other hand, sir? Other hand. There's no recording loud out here. Alright, I did not know. There's no recording loud out here for FBI did not know there's no recording allowed out here for FBI. Cody, did you not know this? I've got... This looks new to Cody.

I saw his name mentioned, but I'm sort of rushing between a bunch of stuff. I don't know, folks at home. I'm got jury duty this week. So I'm like trying to catch up a lot with this. That is... Yeah. It's one of those like, this is not, I know it's a cliche, but this is not normal. No, I'm good for him. Um,

like unconditionally that is the energy we need. It's just, that's the terrifying energy to receive after putting that energy out. Well, uh, the Homeland Security Twitter account, which is like run by a racist 15 year old kid, I don't know what they're doing. You know, they said that, uh, they said that Pidia did not identify himself. Um, and the feds thought he was an attacker cause they just saw some Latino guy walk in and, and so they,

they did throw him on the ground and put handcuffs on him. But then Kristi Noem said that they afterward had a 15-minute meeting to talk about his grievances. And then he came out. He was not arrested or permanently detained. And of course, he spoke and said, if they're doing this to me, imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers. I'm so glad. Not glad that it happened, but I'm glad that it's one of those pieces, again,

the movement was about illustrating the overreach. And this is a part of that illustration. And I am grateful. I'm grateful that the Senator knew what they were walking into, and I'm grateful for them doing that. That's great, we keep doing it. Do it in every state. As you were talking about that earlier, I was thinking actually Alex Padilla doing this on camera, having this, is an example of showing an extreme crossing of a line

in this media ecosystem of ours. It's hard to know what lands with people, but also I don't think Twitter is reflective of reality. I know that we all understand that, but it's easy to forget it when you're like, the fuck did you just say? And when you drill down and talk to actual people, as reflected by the polling,

which we will talk about soon, I'm sure, I don't think that this is going over the way that they want it to. Well, you know one place that is not a representative media ecosystem, we all know, is Nextdoor, my favorite outwardly fascist social media ecosystem. Which is wild on Nextdoor.

But they, I will say, like the Glendale area next door is like, oh, this is bad. The people who are normally like, I saw a man crossing the street in the wrong place, I'd love to see him executed, are like, this is bad. I didn't wanna say anything. And I think that the Democrats helped them believe this

by not saying anything, right? The Democrats for so long are like, we can't talk about immigration. It's a winning issue for him. So everyone just believed what they were saying about immigration. Oh, there's 10 million illegals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But now polls are coming out. People don't like this stuff. They don't like sending the National Guard of the Marines to Los Angeles. A Quinnipiac

poll yesterday is like the worst of Trump's terms so far. 38 job approval to 54% disapproval, including 40 to 56 on handling of deportations. People are legitimately like the median voter is balancing this thing where they're like, yeah, I support Deporting the illegals in general blah blah blah. Oh, but not people with jobs Not people who are married to us citizens Not people who had kids here Which is like of course who's getting swept up when you go to Home Depot when you go to 7-elevens when you go to Car washes it seems like we're seeing is what we talked about many many months ago before the election just It seems like we're seeing is what we talked about many, many months ago before the election.

Just those signs, that sea of signs that say mass deportation now at the RNC, not understanding what that means and what that would entail and who that would affect and then voting for the guy and then they do it and they're like, oh, that's what that sign meant. We shouldn't have voted for the sign. Yeah, no, I'm not making an excuse for this because my views are much more humanist, I would say at the beginning. But I do, I've had texts from friends in Maine

who are like, there's, and again, let's unpack why this is okay anyway, but there's no one left here to do agricultural work. It's a little depressing that that's what does it, but yeah. And like, that's when they're noticing. You know, there's, but you get told for years and years, and I'm not justifying this, but you know, point taken, the Democrats just gave on the messaging,

et cetera, but you're told for years and years, we've got all of this massive invasion of people coming here and we need to get them out. Playing upon people's fears, they don't think that that includes the person that's been working with them for 20 years. Or their sister-in-law. Or their sister-in-law, but part of the disconnect here,

a big part of border apprehensions are people coming across the country, across trying to get here, and then they send them back. So, but people aren't coming here right now. It's a terrifying place to try to come. So they literally cannot meet those numbers that they've promised because people aren't coming here. Exactly.

Because there are, but like in order to do whatever statistic 3000 a day, you have to grotesquely overreach. You have to append American life completely. Yeah, it's Doge, but with people you've overshot and you're making up stuff and you're doing terrible things, but to human beings this time. So this is a perfect transition into like, who's in charge and making these orders? Because this morning, President Trump truth socialed, our great farmers and people in the hotel

and leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. So he says, this is not good. We must protect our farmers and get the criminals out. So he was asked about this during a press conference. Like, are you backing off?

Can I play this clip for you? What made you change your mind about targeting in California farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business? Well, we're not targeting. In fact, if you look today, I put out a statement today about farmers. California, farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business? Well, we're not targeting. In fact, if you look today, I put out a statement today about farmers. Our farmers are being hurt badly by — you know, they have very good workers. They've worked for them for 20 years.

They — they're not citizens, but they've turned out to be, you know, great. And we're going to have to do something about that. We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not. And you know what's gonna happen and what is happening? They get rid of some of the people because, you know, you go into a farm and you look and people don't — they've been there for 20, 25 years and they've worked great and the owner of the farm loves them and everything else.

And then you're supposed to throw them out. And you know what happens? They end up hiring the people, the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else. So we're we're going to have an order on that pretty soon. I think we can't do that to our farmers and leisure to hotels. We're going to have to use a lot of common sense on that. This is the most Tim Robinson in a hot dog suit meme that there has ever been

he says people are being hurt by and then doesn't finish the sentence which is Me I'm the one doing it him I feel I feel like I'm losing my wanted to do it. I talked about doing it I talked about doing it so close to saying Steven Miller. I talked about doing it. I talked about doing it for years. He's so close to saying Stephen Miller. I talked about doing this. People are being hurt by Stephen Miller. We gotta get Miller out of here. Couldn't even keep his wife around. Because this loser came in and took her from him.

God, that is infuriating and so weird. And I'm sure he'll not do anything. He already has backtracked on it. Yeah, obviously. Of course. Of course. Right, so like, Stephen Miller got back control of the Truth Social account and then sent out this rant I'm not gonna read the whole thing, Biden let 21 million unvetted illegal aliens, many of them rapist, murders, blah blah blah. No one knows what the policy is and it does seem like we have a aged potentially senile old man who keeps giving the presidency to different people to do

whatever their little pet project is and right now Stephen Miller's running the show with his racist pet project and maybe Trump doesn't even know what's going on he got a call from the CEO of Hilton who's like what do you what are you doing you're taking all my workers, and he's like what? They work yeah I did no tax on What's interesting is like he's almost dancing up and do an interesting conversation Where he says they've been here 20 years and you know they they're they're illegal to be in 20 Why have they why is it taking a long time? Why isn't it easier for us to award people citizenship?

Why, you know, there's a whole conversation about immigration. You don't want people here illegally? Cool, let's make it easier. Let's- Amnesty, amnesty, amnesty for all these people who he gets phone calls about specifically. I mean, it's just frustrating for me because you're dancing up so close to the actual conversation

we should be having, which is do you want to reduce illegal immigration and improve our country? Yeah, he said it. He said it last year. He supports legal immigration. He's made that very clear. And that's what he's been trying to make happen. But he like rants.

And so you're like, wait, is the new policy that if you've been here 20 years or if you have a job, like what are you saying? And then Christina was like, well, we're going to continue this and liberate Los Angeles. And the like, what's the policy? Yeah, there is. I mean, it's just, it's just, it's fascism vibes.

It's just violent fascism vibes. That's what they're trying to continue to do. It's wild to hear him say like, you know, maybe they've been here for like 20 years, you know, and in that case, like, wait, keep going. Like, what do you, is that your, is that actually your opinion? I just expect him to get up there and being like,

these tariffs are hurting so many people We've got to do something about like they say they're gonna He's gonna do an executive order to fix the farmer hospitality situation what executive order just pull them back Just stop doing what you're doing especially now that he's I mean all the past few days like he can't he's not gonna He can't stop he can't like pull this back him like I did I shouldn't have called in like you know It's he's I mean he can and say he can't like pull this back. He like I did I shouldn't have called in like, you know It's he's I mean he can and say he fixed it whether it's whether it's Yeah, Haco he could say I mean I think of my sense I think you're I think you're right in theory if this if this was a normal situation

But my my sense is always and you guys cover this every day Is so you have much better sense than I do that. He just gets bored And you guys cover this every day is so you have much better sense than I do that He just gets bored that he's like I don't care about it moves on pretty quickly like and then and then the people like to Your point the millers are like ah, but we've got we've got some plans Bored but he He doesn't like people being mad at I mean he doesn't care right right He doesn't like people being mad at him. I mean, he doesn't care if people are mad at him, but he's like, oh no, my polling is starting to tip.

So actually, fuck that, I'm gonna distance myself. But he doesn't give a shit about things. He only cares about how it reflects him. And so he'll just spin it however it was. He'll pin, if something really blows up in his face, he'll pin it on somebody else or try to. But like, yeah, yeah, it's just, but this is the project and always has been.

I keep coming back to, and like, kind of in relation to like, don't bring the Mexican flags or whatever, like that sort of conversation, and his like, well, if you've been here 20 years. But ultimately, and I want more people to remember this every day, the first thing he said, the first thing he said when he wanted to become the president, the first thing was,

the Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers. Some are good people, I assume, and I guess I have to assume because there's no due process, so I have to assume. Like that's the first thing he said, that's the reason that he did this. He wanted to build a wall to keep the rapists and drug dealers out who are Mexicans in his mind.

So I don't know if that will, I don't think he can pull back from that because it does seem like that is still in him. Even if he's getting old and tired and bored. Totally, totally. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that is the foundation for sure. I think that there's like an interesting mix

of all of these things where it's like, I agree too with David. He's like, when he gets bored and gets an angry call from a friend, he's like, oh no. And then he's like, yeah, totally. It's like, it's not just, I don't ever want to take away from the racism of it all. He's an inherently racist bad man. And it's clear that he has no problem with people being hauled out of this country.

He does not have any personal problem. Cody, I want to flag that you're dangerously close to being in contempt of court. I should be leaving now. Thank you so much for having me. For the short time. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Alex, for being here and for everything you've been doing

and Katie and Jonathan and everybody listening, love you very much, et cetera and so forth. Goodbye. Okay, thanks again to Cody for joining us while he could. We're gonna try to talk about some other things that we didn't even have time to get to on Monday and that was the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. So the man who was mistakenly sent to the El Salvador Forever prison that was

ordered by the Supreme Court to bring him back facilitate we don't we get it bring him back months ago they finally brought him back, facilitate, we don't we get it, bring him back months ago. They finally brought him back. But they only brought him back to charge him with a crime. They're charging him with like human trafficking, basically, because he was pulled over in November 2022 for driving nine men in a Chevy suburban. He claimed them. He claimed he was driving them back from a job in Missouri,

but there was no luggage in the car and he had $1,400 in cash. Whatever. So now they're bringing him back to do this like he was part of a decades long trafficking conspiracy. And so they're like, see, this is not an inconsistent thing with our policy. We're just bringing him back to charge him with a crime, despite the fact that they say they're deporting the criminals. So if you think he's a crim- it doesn't matter. It makes no sense. So he's back, yay, but now they're charging him with this thing that happened in Tennessee years ago that he was pulled over for but never ticketed or charged with anything then.

It's a bit of a, yeah, bullshit. It's weird. It's very weird. And then didn't the prosecutor, top Nashville prosecutor resigned rather than file these charges himself? Yes, that's typically a sign. That's typically a sign. We knew when all of this was happening

that there was some sort of story from his past that didn't amount to anything and he never got charged for him, assuming this is the same thing. It feels very convenient that they are hammering home this story, which again, didn't end up with as anything when it initially happened. But ultimately what I wanna say is the whole point

is that we believe that we know our country's, a basic principle is due process for everyone. And to just deport somebody with wild stories and MS-13 tattooed on hand, jumping through every roof, roof? Roof? Hoop. Too many words trying to come out at once.

Jumping through every hoop possible to try to paint this person as a monster, refusing to bring him back, but without showing any evidence that he had committed any crimes is unacceptable. So we want due process. This does feel weird, what they're painting, but maybe it's true.

I mean, I don't give a shit, even if it's true. Like, I don't care, but right. But yeah, you get that they're going to charge him with the thing. Do what you have to do. But it's clear that, like, you are backing down on this. Thank you for doing that, for bringing back the guy you sent to the Forever Prison.

There's still a couple hundred people down there of like dubious criminal records. We don't know what they did. So this is like, all this stuff is still going on, but since this man was the centerpiece of this story, until like Democrats were told to not talk about it anymore It's good that he's back It does upset me that there are still so many people there that were sent there without

To process and then it becomes this look we brought kilmar brock and it's like well, no bring them all back Bring them all back Also side note. I said said this before we started recording, can you even believe that this time last week we were just happily talking about Elon Musk and Donald Trump going at it online? I was going to my 90s nostalgia conference. Things were different and now Musk has returned with his tail between his legs. Oh god. I can't, I mean I know, I know, like just like talking about it is so evident in gauche

and whatever, but like, I've never been more secondhand embarrassed for him than him trying to make amends in a way that's never going to happen. It's so embarrassing. Yeah, I went a little bit too far when I called the guy a pedophile. I shouldn't have said that one. Yeah, they had a phone call on Monday, but I don't know how you come back from. Like, I paid a lot of money to get this pedophile elected.

It's like, you know, when you're in a relationship at some point, like young, and you have an argument, you say too many things. And then you're like, no, no, no, no, no, I didn't mean it like that. I've been pretty sad. You're like. I know that intimately.

I was joking, well, behind every joke is a kernel of truth. No, no. Yeah, exactly. Then you're like, let's maybe work there. No, it's like that's where they're at in their relationship, is it's like they, someone said too many things in a big way.

Democrats missed their window to get him back, I guess. They had a two-day window where they could have, oh, got this amazingly popular guy to help them buy elections. Dang. I can't, I do wanna say I can't say enough. I don't know if you all ever covered it in any real way or whatever or have read it, but Josie Reisman's book,

Ringmaster, which is ultimately about Vince McMahon, but about the correlation in modern American politics with the rise of professional wrestling, specifically Vince McMahon's professional wrestling, specifically the idea of neo-kfabe, which is like the the idea that we all know it's fake, but like there's, we live in a liminal world between sort of like fake and real. That book is so essential for understanding. The book is called Ringmaster. Thank you.

Josie has written a number of essays around this. You just want to look up Josie Reisman in this sort of context. And it's so essential also for understanding these, like... I'm sure that there's beef between these two, but I'm also sure that part of it is playing up the theatrical nature. And that there's some plan. Yeah, exactly. It's beautiful. It's the book for our time. Speaking... Seeing the song of our editor, Nick... I'm gonna buy it for you, Nick, ringmaster, because it sounds right up your...

I will read it as well, but I haven't read it, Nick. This present. All right, well, I think that does it for us today. Alex, thank you so much for showing up here, for sharing your experiences, your advice, venting. It was a pleasure to have you. Thank you. Just my only pitch is if people,

I've been documenting the photos on Instagram, I'm gonna keep doing it as long as there's stuff to document, so I'm at Alex Steed on Instagram. And stay safe out there, everybody. We will see what happens this weekend. Very grateful for all of you. I'm very grateful for this show giving us a space to process these traumatic events.

Oh no, I didn't get an emotional all show and it's starting to happen. Hey, we love you very much. Stay safe, everyone. This is a story that begins with a dying wish. One thing I would like you to do. My mother's last request that my sister and I finish writing the memoir she'd started about her German childhood when her father designed a secret super weapon for Adolf Hitler. Germany wins! My grandfather, Robert Lusser, headed the Nazi project to build the world's first cruise missile, which terrorized millions and left a legacy that dogged my mother like a curse.

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