The Adam Mockler Show - 🚨ICE Cover-Up Gets BLOWN WIDE OPEN

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

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I truly think this situation elevates beyond right-wing, left-wing, independent. This elevates beyond politics, and anyone who is an American citizen should be concerned. I've seen some right-wing podcasters struggling to spin this because they know deep down that anybody who sees this video, or even hears a summary of events, knows this is deeply un-American. Just think about this. So a man was on the street exercising his First Amendment right and his Second Amendment right. We've all seen the videos. He's quite literally just exercising his constitutional rights that every American is given.

as he's doing that, he goes to help a woman who's being pushed over to the ground because instinctually, as an ICU nurse, I'm sure he was thinking and said, I got to go help this person. As he's helping her, he gets violently pepper sprayed over and over, violently pepper sprayed,

like a continuous stream of pepper spray, and then from there, he gets pulled to the ground, he gets his gun taken away, they then shoot him, and it's not just, the amount of times they shot him is what struck me.

The first time I watched the video, I remember hearing like four pops and then four more pops, and I was like, minute, he's just laying there motionless and they're continuing to shoot him, any American that sees this video or here's a sequence of events can see that this is deeply un-American and fascistic. So for the administration to then get on TV on Sunday morning news today, doing their circuit, I see Scott Besson, Pristine Homme, Cash Patel have gone all over Fox News, CNN, and even

Fox News hosts are pissed. Maria Bartaromo in her episode was kind of just going off on a few people. Maria Barteromo was pressing Cash Patel and Comer saying, how could we let this happen? Why is this happening. So it's obviously breaking through and it's it's really grim. Yeah. Well, these Republicans completely embarrassed themselves this morning on the morning shows because there's no defense of the shooting. I didn't think it could get worse in terms of visuals and optics of a police shooting or law enforcement shooting. I don't want to call ICE police because they're an insult to police and they're an insult to my dad who's serving the FBI for for three decades. But Bevino, Greg Bevino, who's the head of Border Patrol, was on this morning.

and he was asked who the real victims are of this. And he says that the victims are ICE agents and Border Patrol agents. They're the victims of what's happening right now. And I had a meltdown. I was buying, this is so dumb, but I was standing outside of Petco waiting for it to open so I could buy pet-friendly,

I ate rock salt so that I could put it on the sidewalk. And I was just steaming mad heading into this petco. It was so, it's just awful. And like, they executed this man. And then now they're going to do the same thing that they always do, and they're already doing it, is they're going to attack his kill. character. They're going to do the same thing they did to Renee Good. They attacked her for her

pronouns. They attacked her wife. They attacked her family. They went back and dug through her life. And they tried to dehumanize her. And now they're going to do the same thing for this man who was a nurse, somebody who supported veterans, somebody was a Boy Scout, somebody was a really good human being. And his last thoughts, like his last moment, the last thought he had before they pulled him to the ground and started being him was to help that woman, was to help that woman. Like, that was his crime. His crime was recording ice. And, his crime was helping that woman, who, by the way, I shoved down and attacked and then pepper sprayed her for no reason.

Like, that officer moved a full 15, 20 feet just to get in front of that woman and knock her to the ground. And you can only hope that, like, in a moment like that, I mean, you and I have both been at protests. We both put our bodies out there, and it's a scarier thing to do. But, like, you'd only hope in that moment you would have that kind of courage. And his family called him a hero. Yeah, he was a hero.

The video is really harrowing. And Greg Bovino's complete gaslighting of the entire situation, his flipping of the situation is super awful. Do you ever get the feeling? I get this incredibly intense feeling watching these people go on the Sunday morning news that they would not care if any of us died or were murdered on the street.

Like you, me, anybody watching in this chat, if we were murdered in cold blood, not only would they not care, they would then be on TV the next morning running defense for the agents that killed us. And it's sickening watching this, watching them call Alex an assassin and even Renee, a domestic terrorist,

I got this sick feeling while I was making a video earlier watching Scott Besson. And you can tell, like, some of these people are uncomfortable playing this defense. Not all of them, like, are as shameless as Donald Trump. We know the Marco Rubio syndrome where he sits there paralyzed sometimes. Scott Besson's kind of awkwardly stumbling his way through this defense. And I'm like, dude, I feel like if I just got murdered in cold blood along with my family and my dog, Scott Besson would still be on TV the next day. I know it's very brutal and grim, but he would still be on TV the next day going well.

The official DHS report says this. It's just, it's sadistic. and sick and it leaves a bad feeling in my stomach. The way they're treating. I've had the same thought. It's like, what would they say about me if I died? They'd be looking in front of my weight. They'd be coming after my family.

They'd be like finding some dipshit I smoked weed with in high school and talking about how I was breaking the law. They would do everything they can to dehumanize you. And like, that's what they're going to do. And it's like for all the emotions that we're feeling right now, like we have to stay some measure of composed because we've got it, we've got to organize. And I think like the people of Minnesota, the people, the people of Minneapolis,

which by the way, Minneapolis is an amazing city. I hate watching Republicans do this to every Democratic city, but I hate watching them do it, especially to Midwestern cities because Chicago, Minneapolis are amazing places to live. And like, I'm a huge Viking fan. I'm a huge twins fan.

I married into a Minnesota family. And so I spend a fair amount of time there and rooting for their sports teams. And like, I hate watching it happen when the people are so good. But I'm proud of them. Like, they keep showing up. But I don't know if you saw that video

of like the old man who was just like screaming and then basically disappears into a cloud of tear gas. It just was like, what the hell are we doing? That's representative of so many Americans right now who are just angry. There's also the video that went viral about a week ago of the guy who is screaming like, I shouldn't F&B here, just a normal guy who was incredibly pissed off. And it's because the administration's cover up is only inflaming things. There's a huge parallel, in my opinion, between this and what happened in Minneapolis

five years ago or so with George Floyd, because the impetus for the protests and the change wasn't the murder of George Floyd that was caught on video. I mean, that was part of the catalyst, but it was the lack of accountability that followed. That video ended up resurfacing, I believe, like weeks or even a month later, and then after the video resurfaced and people realized, wait a minute,

Eric Chauvin is just walking around free and they covered this up with zero accountability. That's when the protests really began to spark, and you're seeing a parallel here, only this time the videos themselves are so visceral that they can't cover it up no matter how hard they try, but the more they try to cover it up, you see

this cyclical pattern where the protests in flame, ice hurts more people, Trump and Christi Gnome, surge more ice troops. I think right now we need a unified Democratic Party, and to move on to a topic I had written down, that's something that I'm really happy to see. So Chuck Schumer seems to have gotten the Senate caucus in order and seems to be pushing towards a shooting down of this appropriations bill on the 31st, which includes DHS and ICE funding. Senator Mark Warner, who earlier this week on Pod Save America, said he would likely be voting for this funding bill, came out yesterday and said he is no longer voting for it. So it seems like Schumer has his ducks in order,

and it seems like Democrats are being very clear that we need to have moral clarity about all of this and stand up, which I really do like to see. Yeah, and I think it's 100% the right call. Like, we should not be funding ICE at all, let alone at the current funding level, which I think AOC did an amazing job reminding people in the wake of Renee Good's murder

that it's coming at the expense of Medicare and Medicaid and people's critical government services that they rely on. But this is just an incredibly scary moment. I agree with you that we need a unified Democratic Party. And I've been I've been defensive a little bit towards the seven Democrats who voted for it in the House. But like, I'm not doing that anymore. Like I get that there needs to be some kind of leeway for people who are in R plus 10 districts and we'd rather have them than not. But like in the Senate right now, there's nobody in the Senate representing any district that's as conservative as most of the people who voted for the spending bill.

Every single one of them, including John Federman, who I'm pretty sure, is going to be the one who breaks and crosses. party lines here because he doesn't like government shutdowns and because I think at this point he's just secretly a Republican and coordinating with them. I don't want to see a single Democrat vote for this bill and they should shut the goddamn government down. And I want to make one additional point on this too that I just think is like super important. The reason that this shooting yesterday happened is highly correlated with what happened to Renee Good and highly correlated to the January six partings at the beginning of last year. Because you have Donald Trump coming out and saying, hey, all of these people who bullied their way into the Capitol, beat cops, attacked people,

tried to overthrow an election. You're getting out Scott-free because it sends a message that I'm going to have your back. And so when the agent who shot Renee Good is thinking through in the back of his mind what his actions are going to be and how they're going to escalate, he's thinking about getting his pardon. He's thinking about the White House having their back. And so when Renee Good gets murdered and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance come out and they say, oh, these ICE agents, they all have total immunity. They didn't do anything wrong. They watched the whole conservative media ecosystem rally around them. every member of the Trump administration rally around them. And then it happens again.

And now they're doing it right now. So there's no accountability for the agent who shot Renee Good. I'm worried there won't be any accountability for this agent either. And this is somehow worse than what happened to Renee Good. And if we don't hold this guy accountable, the next thing is going to be even worse. Because they want to blame it on this guy having a gun at a protest with a couple loaded magazines, which is a normal thing for a concealed carry owner to have. And it's bullshit.

But the next time they're just going to execute somebody who isn't doing anything, who isn't even recording. They're just going to walk up to somebody and shoot them. And it's going to get worse and worse. and worse, like a snowball rolling down a hill. Absolutely. I want to build on a few things you said there because when it comes, going back to the government shutdown, it's worth pointing out this will only be a

partial government shutdown. So it will affect certain services like airline travel, but a lot of the funding has already been allocated towards SNAP in the military. So that should be good. It won't be as bad as the last government shutdown. So I say, yeah, use any leverage they have available. Also, the January 6th point is so

incredibly true. And I want to build on that. Did you see the article from Slate a few weeks ago where a journalist applied for ice but didn't apply correctly and still got in. So when she applied, she had smoked weed

five or six days before. She still somehow passed a drug test. So they're obviously not drug testing properly. She had also failed to submit any criminal history. She didn't have a criminal history, but she didn't submit domestic battery check. She could have had a domestic battery assault and they would have let her in.

And then, and then the key part right here is she has a history online of being an anti-ice activist. Yet they didn't check. and they still let her in. That indicates they are not ideologically screening people, meaning a January 6 who was pardoned could hypothetically reapply,

not get screened for ICE and be out there abusing people. I mean, I don't know if this is actually happening, but a literal January 6th could be out there doing this. Militiamen are obviously out there. These are obviously far bright militiamen who are getting plucked off of their couches, are having masks which emboldened them, given the funding of some national militaries,

and then sent out on the street. There were videos that came out months ago of ICE agents muttering under their breath, these effin liberals, fn liberals. We're going to like thinking that they're in a battle, an ideological battle. This is not how any sort of, I don't even want to, I say law enforcement loosely because they're not, this is not how law enforcement, federal agents, ice, border patrol, nobody should be operating in this manner without ideological screening. That loops back to J6. Yeah, they feel emboldened because they know that Donald Trump has their back. That is a signal that he sent when he parted those J-Sixters on mass. finally the Second Amendment piece

it's really scary because all of the Trump admin officials, maybe not all of them, but a handful of them like Scott Bessent, Christy Knoem, and Greg Bovino were all on TV this morning making vague anti-second amendment arguments. They're justifying this because like you said, they're like, you had a gun on him. He had a gun

on him. Since when is having a gun on you a death sentence in America, he legally had a gun on him. It's disgusting. Yeah, I mean, and it's why to me, I'm going to make two points here. The first is why this argument from the like moderate, of the Democratic Party about how we have to retrain these ICE officers is horrendous political messaging and just morally wrong. Like whoever came up with that should like look for another career, in my opinion,

because it's just, it's awful. Like these are bad people. Every single one of them should be fired and sent back to their mother's basement to go play video games and they can pretend to be cops like that because they're not real cops and they're an insult to law enforcement. And the few who need to stick around are the ones who need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for killing people for attacking people for all the shit that they're doing and we can't like accountability here is super important and like i know there's this ongoing conversation about whether or not for the party to fully embrace abolishing ice and that's like a political communications thing but like we have to fire and not replace every single one of these guys and we've probably got to merge this with another

department so that we can keep the legitimate parts of immigration enforcement but get rid of this culture because the culture at ice is just broken and bovino's got to go and tom homin's got to go by the way tom Homan should be in prison right now for taking a $50,000 bribe. But Pam Bondi and Donald Trump covered that up for him. It's embarrassing. And then, like, I just, I don't know, these are not good people. Like, they're not good people. And on the Second Amendment stuff, where the hell is the NRA?

Where the hell are all these Second Amendment people? Anytime somebody like you or I or a Democratic member of Congress is like, hey, maybe we should stop school shootings in America. Maybe when I drop my kid off in the morning, I shouldn't have to worry that somebody with a long gun or an AR-15 is going to show up at my kid's school and shoot. where were they in Minneapolis when there were kids that were shot at a Catholic school just a few months ago. They're nowhere to be found, and they're nowhere to be found right now protecting or at least speaking out about what the right is doing because they're attacking this guy for having a gun. He didn't pull his gun. He didn't brandish his gun. He didn't fire at the officers. He didn't do anything. He had a legal gun on him. He had a legal concealed carry license. I often carry my concealed carry license because I get death threats from people like Laura Lumer and other crazies on the internet. I mean, I hate to be the like that could have been me out.

there, but like, that could have been me out there. Like, it would have been easy for me to be standing on a street corner in the city of Chicago, having my gun in my bag, and, like, shooting a video because some random ice thing happened on the corner. Like, that's, it's an easy, it's not about me, but like, where the hell are they? Like, the NRA is a feckless, useless organization. And all these Second Amendment guys, they don't care. And, like, I thought this was something they actually believed that, even if it drove me nuts, but, like, they clearly don't give a shit. They don't care when it happens to us. Yeah, that is the point that you just made is the exact point, that it could have been you, it could have been me, it could have been anybody watching this,

and they would have still gone on TV the next day and ran defense for it. The Second Amendment aspect is disgusting. The NRA's not only silence, but they made a comment yesterday about how Governor Walls is the one in flaming. Absolutely sickening rhetoric. I had a point regarding, I guess I want to transition over to the Pam Bondi letter that she sent Governor Walls, because that was absolutely absurd and need some attention. Pam Bondi is trying to use these murders as leverage. by saying, hey, Governor Walls, if you want ICE out of your state, if you want us to remove

the federal agents that we've sent, one of our demands is for you to send us voter data or voter data roles so that we could use that data to hypothetically rigged the midterms in 2026, precisely eliminate voters that don't agree with us based off of technicalities. And then in 2028 continues. So that is a disgusting use of what they deem as leverage. I don't know if Calling it leverage is sickening, but that's a disgusting use of human lives. They are using human lives to rig the election. It's so gross. Well, and the state of Minnesota cannot give into that on any level because it will create

a precedent that this federal government will do where they'll go to major Democratic cities. The states create as much violence and chaos as possible just to extract political desires and demands from our elected officials. Imagine if they'd done that in L.A. and then debated something from Gavin Newsom. Imagine if they came to Chicago and demanded something from J.B. Pritzker. These guys are bullies, and it's like, I mean, for people with kids out there, my son is a book called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and if you give that mouse of cookie, he's going to keep asking for more stuff. And that's why it's super important to stand up to these guys and go, no, this is not how things work in a democratic society.

And the other thing is like you and I both do a lot of a right-wing media. We go on Newsmax and News Nation, and we argue with these guys. And I find that, and I imagine you do too, anytime I call them a fascist, you get a lot of them that they're so offended. Oh, my God, how could you call them a fascist? you're calling them Nazis. Oh my God, blah, blah, but this is fascism. Like, fascism is about abusing your power and attacking your political opponents and using it this way. And this is the same thing to me as the Trump administration using the FCC to get Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air. It's the same thing as going after Jim Comey and Tish James. It's the same thing as going after

law firms and Harvard and everything else. Anybody that stands up to this administration is going to be targeted. And so they chose Minnesota because they thought that Tim Walls and Jacob Frye would be good political targets for them and they thought they were soft. And what they're finding is that while the people of Minnesota are really good, kind-hearted people, they're also tough as hell. And it's the same thing they found here in the city of Chicago. They thought they could turn Chicago into a war zone and a powder keg. And what they found was a very well-organized and empathetic resistance to protect people, not to attack ice agents and create all the violence that they want to justify the Insurrection Act. So I hope that Tim Walls says no. He's already said no. And I'm glad that they leaked that letter,

because it's disgusting. Chris Murphy spoke out about it. Senator Chris Murphy, I saw that. But that's the kind of shit that they're going to do. And no precedent can be said here because if he say yes to even anything, it's going to get so bad everywhere. Yeah, I want to make a quick note to make sure to like this substack stream. Subscribe to us on substack. You can like a stream, right? There's like a heart button. Yeah, there's a little heart in the corner. Tap that little heart button. I've only watched a few substack streams. But if you want to support independent media, you can you can subscribe to both of our substacks, Mike Nellis and Adam Mockler.

One more thing, the speed of escalation in which it happens in the video really freaked me out. That's one more point that I wanted to make regarding your, this could have been me point, this could have been anybody point. Part of the reason why this could have been anybody is how quickly things got out of hand. There was no moments where they could stop, reassess. It's honestly like a nightmare. It's like those nightmares where things spiral out of control and before you know it, your car is driving off of the road.

And before you know it, you're like flying in the middle of the air. That's exactly what happened, but it was a nightmare. It was quite literally a nightmare where the agents within 20 seconds had him on the ground and had multiple shots into him and then continued to shoot over and over. If that speed of escalation is replicated across the country with under-trained ice agents, then more people will be killed. And this administration, part of me wonders, and this is what Pritzker says a lot, the governor of our great state, Governor J.B. Pritzker,

if this is an operation to desensitize the American people to the hyper-militarization of our cities and streets, Now, I don't know if we'll ever be desensitized to American citizens getting shot in such a gruesome manner, but what if this happened a third time? And then what if this happened to fifth time? And then by the ninth time, we can't even keep up with these anymore. It's like the school shootings that happened. And by the time the midterms come, they're regular. That is a dark thought that I had the other day. It could be, you know, cyclical or escalator. Yeah. I mean, well, that that's essentially what happened with school shootings, right? Like now school shootings happen and people just blip away. So, but again, I think that one of those things, is for parents, the school shootings are really hard. And like me, I have a six-year-old boy, and they're hard and they stick with me. And I know for any parent out there, they stick with them. And so I think in this instance, tyranny like this and militarization like this is so hard-corded into the American people's DNA that I don't know that they'll ever be able to turn away, no matter how many times it happens. And I want to kind of just, in the context in this conversation, talk a little bit about the difference between the shooting of Renee Good and the shooting of Alex.

because the way they were able to kind of wiggle enough for their way out of Renee Goods murder was because she was parking her car in the middle of the street and impeding the ICE investigation. And so to a certain segment of people, particularly like former law enforcement officers or Republicans, people who are more inclined to go with Donald Trump and what he says,

they're like, okay, well, she shouldn't have been there in the first place, yada, yada, yada, so there's a little bit of blame that they can pass over there. I want to be super clear. It's a bad shoot. It was a murder. I'm not saying those things,

but that's why they were able to weasel their way with the people that they still had inside. To build on to that, There's a bunch of confounding factors. Like there's videos, none of this justifies it. This was awful. But I see them posting these videos of Renee's wife screaming at the officers. And they will cite that as this being an entirely escalatory situation.

Whereas I'm sure what you're about to say is this one is a straight up execution. Yeah. This is, no, this is super clean and super clear from every angle that you see. He was standing there peacefully recording them. They got in his face. They shoved the woman down. He never lays his hand on an officer. He never grabs his firearm, brandishes it or any.

anything like that. He goes to protect that woman. They shove him to the ground. They pepper spray him in the face. They execute him. There's no reason for it. It is, I honestly, I know I said it earlier, but I didn't think the video footage you could see could be worse than what we saw to Renee good, but apparently it can be. And so, like, they have nowhere to run. And that's why on all these Sunday morning shows, they're swarming. It's why Trump has been pretty freaking quiet in the last 24 hours. He posted that first thing to try to, like, lay it out, but he hasn't been super active out there. And J.D. Vance, I don't think it said a damn thing because J.D. Vance tends to disappear on the internet. He's got no problem when he thinks he's got leverage on something, but he's gone right now.

And there was a poll overnight that showed Donald Trump going from negative 12 percent in a Rasmussen poll on immigration to negative 20 percent this morning. So they're losing people in droves. Now, it still means that 35, 40 percent of Americans are at least approving broadly of what they're seeing. But, I mean, I had a conversation with my dad last night, actually this morning, excuse me. My dad's a three-time Trump voter and he's like, bad shoot. you know, bad shoot. He's like, I can't justify it. Like, that guy who fired those shots is in trouble and he needs to be prosecuted. And that's a hard thing for my dad to say because he rallies around law enforcement every time. And then they're out there arguing that ICE officers should have supposed absolute immunity or total immunity, meaning the 2000 sexual assault allegations

that have been incredibly levied against ICE since their inception, they'd all be immune to, meaning all of these shoots, the cracking of ribs of elderly people, hurting United States citizens and non-citizens like. The guy they choked to death. an ICE detention facility in Texas that was moved on the hot side. Yep, there's so many stories like this that it's easy to even miss one. I mean, they shot the eyeball out of a 21-year-old a few weeks back. I mean, over and over, story after story after story. So many that it's hard to even point them out.

And I think the broad conclusion that I'd like to come to is that this is a desperate administration. Every single act of authoritarianism you see from this administration is a sign of desperation that they know they are losing. They do not want democratic accountability heading into the midterms, so they scare people. They scare people who are protesting and bring an accountability. They try to sue the media because the media brings transparency. They attack colleges because colleges create critical thinking Americans who vote against Republicans,

and they even are thinking of attacking independent media in the way that they went after Don Lemon. So over and over, they will attack every facet of society, but I will say, we are the variable they did not think of. They were able to make CBS bend the knee. they were able to make other organizations and colleges maybe settle, but not us. Over independent media, we're going to continue to push every single day. So make sure you guys subscribe to the substack.

Mike Nellis, Adam Mockler substack. I'm going to throw this on YouTube a little bit later. Mike, anything? Yeah, I want to just give one final thought to build on that too, because the reason that we are here right now where Trump is on the run and underwater on every major issue,

according to the New York Times earlier this week, last week, I guess, because now it's Sunday. is because of people who were standing up and making their voices hurt. Because if we didn't have people who were standing out there with their cell phones like Alex was and putting their bodies on the line

and now it's even more clear how they're putting their bodies on the line, we would have to trust the Department of Homeland Security on their first version of the events. And they have lied every single time. And if we didn't have people out there protesting, it would be harder for people to turn away and move from this.

And if we didn't have independent media reporting on it, if we didn't have people out there who were being activists and forcing the Democratic Party to address this issue, I mean, God damn, like, I'm a Democratic strategist, and I've been doing this for two decades. And at the beginning of this year, during the beginning of last year, during the Kilmaro-Bigo-Garcia debacle, there were so many people who were Democratic strategists and consultants who were leaking into Politico going, Democrats can't be talking about this. We can't be talking about due process.

Like, people hate us on immigration. Why are we defending this guy? Because we had to get in their faces about it. Yeah. To make people understand that they were violating his constitutional right, that they were kidnapping people off the streets. So to everybody who's been out there who's been demanding better from the Democratic Party, who's been demanding better from the Republicans, who's been holding this administration accountable, we are in a position to win this fight and end this violence because you've been speaking out,

not just in the last couple days where it's gotten really bad, but because you were speaking out a year ago when about half the Democratic Party was like, I don't know what to do right now. Let's try to work together. So like keep speaking out and keep hanging in there and God, like for the, we've got what, 2,500 people who are watching this right now, make sure you take some time for yourself and and take a nap and drink water and put your phone down because like, spend time with your kids or whatever you like to do because I just don't want you to get burned out. And it is, it is hard out there on the internet right now. So just know that Adam and I'll speak for Adam, but we both love you.

I want you to be okay. Thank you, Mike. Thank you for everything. People in chat are saying thank you. But I want to say thank you to everyone in chat. Thank you to the protesters out there on the streets. Maybe we'll do some travel to Minneapolis soon. We live in the Midwest. I haven't been able to travel due to obviously some personal reasons, early year stuff. But maybe we do take a trip. Or we protest to together, Mike, and we can do a live stream on Substack sometime this week. We should get out there. Thank you to everybody. I'll talk about the episode every time.

Yeah, sweet. We can even take a visit to Broadview detention center, which I'm sure we will be protesting at. There's a lot of stuff we can do to continue to speak up. So thank you all. Thank you for being on the ground. Continue to peacefully and patriotically exercise your First Amendment rights. I love you all.