The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Trump Is Humiliating Us

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

The president's demented rant that the United States has to take Greenland because the Nobel committee has not awarded him his much coveted peace prize is farcical and embarrassing—we are in 25th Amendment territory. At the same time, Trump's alternate claim that conquering the island is about being tough on Russia is so phony since he's busy trying to help give Ukraine to Putin. Meanwhile, ICE agents' constant videotaping of members of the public may be tied to their use of facial recognition software. Plus, in this particularly horrible period of news, we are remembering the hope and optimism that pushed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to fight for a better America.Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.show notes Tim's interview with "Minnesota Angry Man," Chris Ostroushko  The holiday-themed Bulwark Pod with Wright Thompson  Monday's "Morning Shots" Go to Dupe.com today and find similar products for less. It’s 100% free to use. Stop wasting money on brand names and start saving with Dupe.com today.

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Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's Martin Luther King Day. We're here with you. Hopefully you are having a restful holiday or a non-restful protest-filled holiday. Either of those are acceptable. Hopefully you're not working. A couple of notes really quick.

So Saturday night, I taped a discussion with Chris Ostrushko, who's the angry guy. He's branded himself as Minnesota Angry Man, which I like that branding, who we played at length his rant. from the streets of Minnesota last week on the pod. I was happy to talk to him. You can check that out in the Bullwark takes feed. Also, it's wonderful feedback about Friday's pod with Wright Thompson. If you skip that, give it a listen. And also, you know, it's maybe the kind of pod that's a little bit off of the news enough.

If you've got a friend in your life, you want to introduce to the Bullwark, might be a good one to share with them. And the Monday mailbag, it's coming back soon, I promise. We're just working on getting that right for y'all. So it's Monday. It's a holiday. He doesn't care. He's working.

It's editor at Large Bill Crystal. How you doing, Bill? This isn't really work, you know? This is just, this is, if this were work, this will work. That's a great point. This would work, everyone would like work. That's a great point. You know, you and me together again, you know.

So happy together. Okay, anyway, the news is bad. Yeah, the news is bad. Not so happy together. Happy to be with you, Tim. Needless to say, good, of course. We're going to start with the imminent invasion of Greenland, I guess. I mean, this is like the kind of thing that if it had been, you know, in the writer's room at VEP, people would like pitch this.

So, like, this is too much. Okay. Like, this is like not even Selena Meyer would go along with this. But the real life president is, I just want to read a couple of things because it's important to actually like read the exact text of the official statement of the president of the United States about this. This first one came Saturday. And he writes this, we have subsidized Denmark by not charging them tariffs or other forms of, remuneration. Now after centuries, it is time for Denmark to give back. World peace is at stake. China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing Denmark can do about it. They currently

have two dog sleds as protection, one added recently. He goes on for a while then talking about how dangerous the situation is in Greenland. And then he announced what he wants to do about it. Starting on February 1st, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland will be charged a 10% tariff on any goods sent to the U.S. On June 1st, they'll be increased to 25%. This tariff will be due and payable until such time as a deal is reached for the complete and total purchase of Greenland. There's more this morning, but I guess just on the tariff part of it, Bill, I'd even

react to this. We're going to do a 10% sales tax on Americans until Denmark gives us Greenland, I guess is the plan. Yeah, for goods from the EU, right? which is kind of a major trading partner and a lot of important goods come from there and components of other things that we assemble. If you weren't me thrilled for their pharmaceuticals,

you know, wine and cheese, auto parts, you know, they're thrilled for that to cost more as part of Donald Trump's like dick measuring contests with the North Europeans. I mean, it's so insane. The Trump administration issued its national security strategy at the end of November, I believe it was, not that long ago. 35 pages.

You know, it's not very detailed as these things go, but it's their strategy such as it is, Western Hemisphere, you know, tough guys and so forth. Greenland is not mentioned. It's utterly fake. I mean, he's now decided that fighting Russian and China is a little better of a, you know,

on-ramp for sort of Republican-ish and conservative-ish types to tolerate this or to go along with this. I've noticed this myself in some arguments that, you know, Bill, we've got to be serious about Russian and China. And I don't know. and the Danes can't really hold them off. It's so utterly fake.

I mean, he's not anti-Russia anyway. China is very much enjoying our fight with the EU. We're not fighting Russia and Ukraine, so why would we fight them over Greenland? Let's give Ukraine to Russia, but then we'll be real pseudo-tuff in Greenland. So it's all totally fake. The fact that it's fake and it's all about him, I guess, wanting to be on Mount Rushmore, someone who expanded the size of the U.S. or something,

doesn't mean it's not unbelievably damaging. And the degree to which I do think the Europeans having put off with a lot and decided to cater to Trump in all kinds of ridiculous ways that we've all noticed over the last year. I mean, they've now snapped, as they is understandable. And I mean, the Canada-China deal announced to it late last week, I guess. Europeans are going to decide that China is a more reliable trading partner than the U.S. They don't like China much. They know what China's up to in terms of stealing intellectual property and undercutting their own products. But at the end of the day, they can sort of live with that. China doesn't arbitrarily slap on 10%

tariffs every week. know, China's farther away. They can't really mess with the Europeans quite as much at this point. It's such a disaster. I mean, it's interesting that something that's so farcical could also be so disastrous, so damaging, you know? You're not compelled by the Golden Dome argument, you know, that we must have Greenland to build a Golden Dome to protect from Russian missiles.

Why did no one ever think of that until two weeks ago? Or we have a military base there, and we could have five more if we want, And we can build whatever golden dome, you know, things we need in those bases, right? We don't need the, it's just ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? Isn't it just, is it just vanity and bullying?

I mean, it's vanity, bullying, stubbornness. Greenland looks big on it. Got the idea in his head. He wants what he wants. He's a child. You know, he's like a rich kid inside F.A.S. Schwartz at Christmas, like demanding that he gets the most expensive toy and yelling at his parents, throwing shoes them if they, right? It's just like a tantrum is what it's about, obviously. The tariff thing is also

farcical, right? And this is all we're waiting for the Supreme Court decision on this. But the idea that he has to do this unilaterally because of some emergency, they can't even defend that. Bessent was on over the weekend and was asked like what the emergency is, it rationalizes this. And he's like, emergency is preventing from an emergency. It's just nonsense talk. And we are in an actual, like not a hot shooting war, but like a hot trade war now. You know, not just, oh, you know, statements about how we wish the French would be a little bit stronger allies or whatever. You know, this has happened before in our lifetimes, but like we're leveraging actual real economic consequences. You can really almost think of this as like a sanctions type

policy on our European allies and on our own citizens, right, over nothing. That, is real. Like, it's not just rhetoric. To that point, late last night, I guess Donald Trump sent a text to the ambassador of Norway, or someone did on Trump's behalf. Here's the text of that. Dear Ambassador, President Trump has asked that the following message be shared with Prime Minister Jonas Storr and be forwarded to your, in parentheses, insert named head of government state. So they didn't get that fully done. King Harold is who they're looking for there. Here's the message.

Dear Jonas, considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight wars plus, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace. That's ominous. Although it will always be predominant, but I can now think about what is good and proper for the USA. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a right of ownership anyway?

There are no written documents. It's only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there also. I've done more for NATO than any of the persons that's founding, and now NATO should do something for us. The world is not secure unless we have complete total control of Greenland. Thank you. Unfortunately, to learn about such things now,

I will say that there were written documents. There was a Treaty of Kiel, 1814, which transferred Greenland from Norwegian to Danish rule. Folks can Google that if they want to learn more. He didn't get the Peace Prize. and so now he's like we can steal Greenland is basically the it's basically the case he's made there

I mean it's just so idiotic but also so dangerous I always come back that's one thing we've all learned right that something can be really farcical and just stupid and vanity and so forth and do a lot of damage I guess is Charlie Sykes thing about the clown or the flamethrower

you know the flames are no less damaging if they're exercised by a clown as opposed to a resolute serious you know arsonists and and, of course, they have a combination of both in the Trump administration. I mean, it's just a humiliation that he's our president. And I would like to say, to return to Iran, you and I both engaged in many times.

Congress has some power over this. Tariffs, you know, I believe Congress is supposed to be the body that institutes tariffs. They exist. They are all background comments. This is worrisome, you know. Didn't some delegation go there or something to Denmark maybe? And they're clucking about, really kind of perturbed about what Trump is doing. I love their statements when they sort of advisors to Trump are leading him in the wrong direction here.

But they're still pathetically weak. But, you know, Congress could stop this. I mean, they can't stop everything, obviously. And they can't stop the tariffs, for starters. They could stop the tariffs for starters. They could pass a war powers resolution saying no use of force in Greenland. That would be two things that would at least put up some barriers to Trump's damaging insanity. Humiliation is a good word for this.

It's important to say that because we've all been so humiliated. over time. Sometimes you forget to connect with that feeling. But the feeling of humiliation is actually important because it prevents people from doing things. Like Donald Trump is a sociopath, right? So he can't really be humiliated. But maybe some of these members that you're talking about if Congress can. I'm happy you brought them up because I want to mention this bipartisan delegation that went to Denmark this weekend. A couple items on it. One was a Pudgeball report. Apparently this was a source from Tom Tillis, who was one of the Republicans that went. Tillis is saying to them that the issue is so intensely animating among the Danes that multiple

people approached Tillis on the streets of Copenhagen and referenced his Senate floor speech, like they're watching American Senate floor speeches to get up to speed on this. They said the lawmakers witness a level of anti-Americanism that stunned and depressed to them. I'm not sure why it would have been stunning, given the fact that we are saber-rattling our European foes and charging a tariff on them for no reason. but they were stunned by this. Just before we get to your reaction, I just want to mention everybody kept leaning,

all the mainstream news outlets kept leaning in on how this is a bipartisan group that went. Here are the Republicans a lot. Collins Murkowski, Tillis, Bacon. Tillis and Bacon are both resigning because they're not welcome in the Republican Party anymore. So two of them are like, in the literal sense, rhinos. The Republicans at Namo, like they could not win elections in the party anymore.

and so they're retiring, quitting. Then you have Collins and Murkowski, who I continue to be the two, whatever, moderates holding on in the Senate that are way outliers from the rest of the conference. And it's fake. What they're doing is fake. They're creating a fake bipartisan sheen on this when, you know, we did this last week,

and I had a couple of serious journalists message me and be like, you and Bill with the fantasy politics. And I'm like, why are Collins and Murkowski and Tillis in the Republic. Why are they Republicans? Like, why are they part of this right now? Like, they don't have to be. Angus King is an independent. For some reason, Angus King feels like the Democratic Party label isn't good enough for him. And so he is an independent. Why could not Collins Murkowski and Tillis be the same? That would take us to a 50-50 Senate. That would really change a lot of things. And instead, they're like the Republican representatives groveling in Denmark,

while Donald Trump, like, plans, like, the stupidest type of imperialism imaginable. Any thoughts on that, I guess? Reaction to that. I have an agreement with you. I mean, they could either go 53 of them could de facto be independent caucus separately and think about, you know, reorganizing the Senate, or they can get one more person, McConnell, I suppose. And to say, look, we're not voting for any Republican resolution to fund the government

two weeks or now, which is required for good chunks of the government, unless the following things are attached. War powers resolution preventing Trump from, you know, using force in Greenland, blocking at least some, if not all of these insane tariffs. You could do some other stuff, too. Obviously, there are other issues. Ukraine, demassing ice, whatever.

Ukraine, ice. I mean, I'd like to see a whole bunch of stuff, but I'm just like, for these guys who are focused on this particular issue, it just takes four of them. That's all they have to do. Just vote with the Democrats against, against a Republican resolution to keep the government open or threatened to, and suddenly everything comes grinding to a halt,

and there's a serious chance to make some difference. And maybe some of the other Republicans then think, well, okay, if there's actually going to be a vote anyway on this, that has a chance of having an effect. Maybe I'll do the right thing. That's probably too much hope for. It is unbelievable. The guy's gotten so much worse,

both crazier and self-indulgent and the vanity, but also, of course, the danger and the authoritarianism. And there have been no republic, basically no further. Republican defactions on the Hill. Am I write about this? There were the four on Epstein, who are now undefecting, it seems like, a couple of them. Yeah, we're going to get to that in a sec. But none, right?

I mean, it's unbelievable, right? There are 53 Republican senators. Maybe a few of them should be a little bit upset by what's going on. Like, if you read this statement about how Donald Trump is sad that he's not getting the Nobel Peace Prize and he blames Norway. And so he's going to punish Norway and possibly invading. Greenland unless they give it away. Like, you'd read that to Republican senators last year and said, okay, like, if this happens,

25th Amendment, right? I mean, like, you would think, I mean, they wouldn't have answered that question because I would have been like, you have TDS. This would never happen. Like, Donald Trump is never going to threaten Denmark and Norway, you know, until he gets total control of Greenland. It's like, yeah, he is. That's what he's doing.

Like, we're, you know, driving Europe into China's arms. We're breaking up NATO, basically. were, you know, thugs on the world stage, like menacing other democracies. And the rationale for it is like Looney Tunes, dementia style stuff. And this is either written by an 88-year-old who's losing control of his mental faculties or a seven-year-old whining that he didn't get the prize. Right? Like, this is not an adult way to communicate. And forget 25th Amendment.

Like, none of them are even wrapping them on the knuckles. And John Thune could pass that legislation, right? like John Thune could act. John Thune, I presume, is not for a Greenland invasion. He's been a free marketer his whole life. I presume he's not for these tariffs. Just to put a fine to put in the humiliation, we do have a statement in response from the Prime Minister of Norway

to the menacing texts that our president sent him. As regards to the Nobel Peace Prize, this is how the statement ends. As regards to the Nobel Peace Prize, I've clearly explained, including to President Trump, what is well known. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee, the Norwegian government.

Like, what? It's like, I've told you before. I can't give you this trophy. And he just got the trophy. Like, Ria Machano gave him the stupid and the whole thing is so embarrassing. Anyway. Should we move on?

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It's a great time to upgrade to security that actually helps stop crime before it starts. Go to Simplysafe.com slash the bulwark. That's Simplysafe.com slash the bulwark. There's no safe like Simpllysafe. Putin and Ukraine. We're in the stay in Europe a little bit. This is related. Just a few things are happening. Trump's back to blaming Zelensky. He's asked about why there isn't peace yet. He's back to blame Zelensky, not Putin. Meanwhile, Ukraine's had some success in the warfront. I've been reading my military journalists that follow this stuff. And like they're doing the drones and et cetera are continuing.

But even still, their retail power supplier, Yazdow, they said that their new outages scheduled, some regions and Ukraine are going to face blackouts lasting more than 16 hours a day. It gets cold as fuck in Ukraine. Having like no power for 16 hours a day is a real crisis. Like people are going to die and freeze. And we're not doing anything anymore. Like Trump's totally checked out of that while he pretends like he cares about Putin taking over Greenland. Meanwhile, Trump invited Putin to join the Gaza Board of Peace.

he's selling spots on the Gaza Board of Peace apparently for a billion dollars and he invited Putin to join it he wants the person that is invading and raping Ukraine and stealing their children to be on the Gaza Board of Peace

I don't know if you have any thoughts and all that I mean in the same world he would be removed from office by a vote of 350 of 100 in the House and 85 to 15 in the Senate now it's a problem in advance would become president, so maybe they need to think about how to remove them both or something since Vance has gone along with this, but, but I mean, it is, it's beyond humiliating, humiliating.

Lunacy. Lunacy. Lunacy and humiliating. Big shout out, I guess, to the, you know, the crowd that couldn't tell the difference between Kamala and Trump on, on Israel issue. A big shout out to them, you know, that were actively campaigning for Trump, actually, a lot of them, the kind of lefty tankies who were so unhappy with Biden. They're like, well, maybe Trump, the, who was the, the, who was the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

group of Michigan, the Palestinians for Trump group in Michigan. Great work for you guys. Putin's going to be on the Gaza Board of Peace now. We'll see how that goes. Epstein, as you mentioned at the top, I feel like this is kind of a manic Martin Luther King Day podcast. It's not a fucking other thing.

One thing after another. One month after the congressionally mandated deadline to release all files on Jeffrey Epstein, the Justice Department has made only a fraction of the files public. They haven't released anything in weeks. And they remain silent on their plans to comply further. And basically all the Republicans on the Hill except Thomas Massey have shut up

about this. And like they all voted for it eventually under pressure. They all voted for the release of these files. But none of them care. Even Lauren Bobert was was asked about this over the weekend. She said she didn't care anymore. It's other people's problem. I mean, the cover up is going to continue, I guess. But I do think this is an area where we've seen already that pressure on Republicans on the Hill did work once. And so probably it's worthwhile to continue that. Yeah, and the survivors really are, the victims are really pretty well organized

and extremely unhappy that have been totally lied to and portrayed at this point. And I think they'll keep the pressure up and I think they, you know, can do so, I hope, effectively. Again, it would be nice if Congress, having voted over I believe that these documents be released did something to ensure they're being released in terms of legislation or riders on appropriations,

bills and the like. But as you say, they seem to have other important things to do. I'm not sure what they are. But they're off this week. The Senate's off this week going unimportant, you know, codels and, you know, doing, not doing town halls. I don't believe the Republicans. So I don't know what they're doing exactly.

They're doing nothing. And they've got a budget. They'll come back at a week and have three days to try to resolve the budget before the government shut down. I imagine they won't be able to do. So maybe there'll be another shutdown. And then, I don't know. Congress is utterly irresponsible.

which is to say the Republicans in Congress, Democrats could do a little more too, honestly. They're also off, they didn't exactly balk at going off of vacation this week, to my knowledge, in the Senate. The other thing that shouldn't just be left flown is there are supposedly some people in the Trump administration somewhere who are more responsible, who are doing the right thing down in the trenches. And look, if they're doing important things,

ultimately are for our national security, I guess they should stay there and do them. Maybe someone could resign. I mean, is no one there embarrassed to be part of this administration? Is there not a single person on the National Security Council, a single person in the senior ranks at state or defense who just thinks I can't be part of this. I don't know. It feels to me like maybe a resignation might be in order. I guess all those people signed up to join after Donald Trump attempted to end the world's

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Trump, around the same time that he decided to tear off our European allies over his desire for Greenland. He also announced that he's sicking his own Department of Justice on the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frye, on this podcast a little bit ago, and Tim Wals. Unlike some of this other stuff, this has been like clownish and clownish. I don't know. I don't know if I'm quite ready to call it foundish and dangerous because it's been totally humiliating to them how unsuccessful all of their. I mean, like he's had success in the pardons because the thing he controls.

He's pardoned a lot of criminals that are supporters of his. So that's accomplishing something in his revenge tour. But when it comes to like prosecuting foes, it's just been like a yakovie sex disaster for these guys. And so I don't know that Tim Walls and Jacob Friar shaking in their boots over this, but again, like, this is just totally unapologetic abuse of the Department of Justice to after political foes. We did see some resignations in this case. I guess we should say six prosecutors in Minneapolis. They were, and I think four in the Justice Department sort of unrelated matters last week here in D.C. Again, not that I haven't seen the huge

number of statements from people at prominent law firms praising these. prosecutors, there are people helping them out as they are, but they're all part of the resistance. Yeah. So again, the degree to which the elites just are willing to go along with everything terrible, the elites in general, Republicans in Congress in particular, and the Democrats in Congress, as I say, not exactly being as quite as militant as they might be in stopping all this from happening. It's pretty horrible. To have it happening at the same time in foreign policy, domestic policy, too, as if I put it that way, is particularly bad, don't you think? I mean, it's sort of, of the authoritarianism is just fully accelerating at home and abroad.

Yeah. We did see some pushback from the judiciary on this. And I just do want to shout out, Judge Catherine Menendez, to buy the appointee. She barred ICE agents from arresting or pepper spraying people for simply observing or criticizing the federal government's actions and listed a pretty long and detailed list, a list documenting the examples that they've seen. And a lot of the stuff is echoing what Chris Ostruska told me over the weekend, what he's seeing on the ground, just like ICE officials going after protesters who aren't

do anything, targeting individual protesters, going after citizens, detaining them, roughing them up, you know, shooting the smoke bombs out into the protests when there was nothing threatening happening. So on the one hand, that's good. On the other hand, it is, I think it's pretty important, actually, that they've kind of laid out like some from a nonpartisan source like a meticulous documentation of the kind of abuses that we've seen from ICE. Yeah, let's see if ICE now changes its ways. I'm sort of skeptical. They'll just lie as they have been and say they're not doing it and they're undoubtedly going to appeal and try

to get a stay from appellate court or I guess ultimately Supreme Court. So I respect the judge and I'm very pleased that this is at least on the record and people should rally to support that But again, God forbid, any Republican governor could say, you know what? I've got my issues with Governor Walts and I didn't support him in 2024 where he's VP candidate. But he's doing the right thing here. This shouldn't happen in one of our states, you know? Right. Or a former Republican governor.

I don't know, maybe Tim Pawlenty from Minnesota. Have we seen anything from him? No, actually. I googled that this weekend. I was like, where's Teapaw then? For people who kind of just checked into politics with Trump in 2016, he was Republican candidate for president. and on the short list for VP for Romney in 12. Not only has he not said anything in defense of Tim Walls,

actually he was on News Nation, I saw talking about how ICE should escalate in Minnesota. Really? Oh, my God. I want to play a clip. CNN did this. Luckily, CNN hasn't been bought by the Allison yet, so there's still some reporting going on over there. I'll air this little reporting bit from the ground of Minneapolis from CNN,

because there's one part of it that everybody was focused on for obvious reasons that you'll hear. But I want to focus on a second element that I think's getting missed a little bit. But let's listen. Why are you asking for my paperwork? Because of your accent. I still, you have an accent to. Where were you born, sir? Where were you born at?

Put your hands behind your back. Ramon Manero was detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents outside his home in a Minneapolis suburb, after an agent questioned whether he was a citizen because of his accent. I'm from this country. You know what, sir, now talking to you, seeing, hearing that you have an accent? I have reason to believe that you are not born of this country. So you're just raised an accent? What country are you from?

According to Manera, agents took a photo of him and searched a system that indicated he's been a U.S. citizen since 2019. So obviously the absurdity of these like goons who are immigrants themselves because we're a country of immigrants. It's fucking America. Lots of people have different accents in this country. It's like the absurdity of an accented guy. telling another guy with an accent that he needs to be handcuffed and detained because of his accent. This is preposterous, of course.

It was that last thing, though, that people are not focusing on as much for me. And I think potentially is part of the reason why that Jonathan Ross was videoing before he shot Rene Good. And you see in the videos of the little Nazi guy, the little SS guy, Avino, you see him always putting a camera up in people's face. they're using facial recognition technology. I assume Palantir is facilitating this to look at their database to see if the person they're talking to is a citizen.

But I assume probably they're looking at it to see if they're like within the process, right? Like if this is somebody that maybe is asking for asylum and has been going for me but hasn't had a final decision yet. And that is just so dystopian, right, that we have masked police right now. They aren't showing their faces, going around using facial recognition technology to try to decide if somebody should be detained and nabbed and maybe deported. It's really like robocop futuristic evil stuff that they're doing. And this used to be kind of a talking point, a correct one about China.

And sort of this is what it means to be a free society that we don't do this. And also we don't ask people for their papers la Nazi Germany and other regimes. East Germany. Soviet. Yeah, the Soviets, big papers guys. You know, and big, big, you don't have any rights. And again, God forbid Congress, should, including Republicans, should do anything to sort of tell ICE, no, you can't do that. So one federal district court judge, to a credit, is trying to stop this.

But it would be a lot easier if Congress said, no, that's not part of what ICE can do. It is contrary to what a free society should be like. And again, it's one thing if you're advocating some freedoms, but there's a huge emergency, I don't know, riots, out of control. Cities burning. Maybe you do for 24 hours have to be a little, you know, break some norms and some rules to get things under control. Totally nothing here, nothing. Minneapolis was so far as one knows, totally quiet. There's a little bit of fraud going on, which they were trying to deal with it, which the federal government was sent in some more people to investigate and prosecute fraud. That's fine. But there was no immigration, migrant crisis in Minneapolis at all,

no crime crisis, to my knowledge, or nothing that was going down. Anyway, It's not even worth signifying this with an exponent with a kind of defense because it's so appalling. I hope this isn't, God forbid, this is the new norm. Three years of this? I mean, I don't know. Mesas has my libertarian neurons firing, by the way, because we have this big kind of conversation down here, New Orleans, about how there were cameras, like in the French quarter that

we're doing facial recognition and what they say. You know, you can only trust what they say. What they say was they were just like there were certain. like people that had been violent criminals or whatever. And so, you know, if that they came up on the camera would flag for the cop and the beat down there to like, whatever, keep an eye out or something, you know, essentially. And, you know, crimes down here. Like, it's down a lot of other places. And I was kind of torn about that.

Like, I have my libertarian instincts, but also you do want to make policing easier for, you know, particularly for targeting violent criminals. You want people to be safe. want tourists to be safe. But I don't know, there's something about it that kept nagging at me that made me feel like I'm on the other side of this. Like I would rather risk a little bit of safety versus the potential, you know, kind of perniciousness with which this could be used. Like that video just has me like totally in Radley-Balco like reason magazine mode.

I was like just like no. Like no. Like you cannot do this. You cannot put on a mask and put up your camera and take a picture of me and search your history when I don't know who you are and I've not done anything where you would presume guilt besides having an accent. I mean, these days when you check in with TSA, you go through the TSA line, at least I think here at National most of the place, most of the time recently, I've been on flights.

They just do the photo of you. And I also have a little, little creepy, but it does make it a little faster. And I believe they say there, this photo is just, you know. We don't save it. Yeah, we don't save it, we don't share it. They have it in the system. They make sure you're who you say you are on the ticket. And then it's sort of, I don't quite know what it means, not to save us.

And secondly, they do sort of save it because next time you show up, they match you up with something. Anyway, but let's assume it's not sort of being distributed widely to ice or something, what hopes. At least that shows a kind of recognition that, okay, we're using this technology, but we're using it in an appropriate way, not in the way ICE is to. But ICE is totally shameless. And again, no one seems to have any control of this. I mean, there's no, I don't know,

or their court cases. I suppose maybe they tried to challenge it in court. It'll take a while to get that to trial and so forth. But again, Congress is perfectly happy, I guess, for ICE to be doing this. We should just say, like, there are varying different Democratic bills out there around this now. Fair enough.

Obviously, you need Mike Johnson or John Thune to be on board with any of that and they're not. But when Wright was on Friday's pod, I don't have the exact quote in front of me. He said something on the lines of like, you know, all mobs are bad. We were talking about the 1962 mob at the football game that, you know, basically kind of turned the governor of Mississippi's view on whether the schools should be desegregated. Then he kind of made an aside point about how even righteous mobs are bad, like we just have learned over history that, you know, mob mentality leads to bad things.

So in that spirit, I just want to say that the righteous mobs in Minnesota should stay out of the churches. I don't know if you saw this Minnesota protesters, like going into a Southern Baptist church and like jaccusing the, you know, with them of working with ice or whatever. in the middle of a service. I just, let's just not do that, friends. Let's keep an eye out for your fellow resistance protesters out there. If anybody gets a little bit too caught up in the mob element of this.

I want to talk about, I received a piece of feedback. I've had this a couple times, actually, that people have said, because you and I have both been very adamant about how Democrats should be extremely aggressive on this. and how that people can be won over on this and arguing and pearl clutching over using the phrase abolish ISIS stupid and, you know, Democrat should be instead focused on pressing the political gas on this and putting as much pressure on it as possible and abolish ICE is perfectly fine or however you want to talk about it is fine,

like just focus on the enemy, focus on Bovino and Miller and Trump and Vance and the people that are menacing folks in our communities. And some of our, you know, more progressive listeners have been like, well, wasn't it you guys that were finger-wagging us for saying defund the police was bad last time? And that was a political liability and what's the difference here? And I think that that's a fair piece of feedback. I have an explanation for why I think it's different.

But since you've been tweeting abolish ICE a lot recently, I'd like for you to give your explanation of why it's different first. I mean, I assume if ICE were abolished, something would be reconstituted to reduce some of the legitimate functions of ICE. but I do think ICE seems to be so corrupt now as an institution, as an institution, an organization that it should be sort of reformed for the ground up if that makes people feel better than abolish. No, and also, the police are a positive contrast to ICE. Defund the police was stupid because most police departments have improved quite a bit in the last 20, 30 years.

And in any case, you need to have a police department. And in any case, I think even in maybe not the worst cases, but in 95% of the cases, most of what was most police departments were doing was fine and necessary. So defund the police sounded silly and stupid. Whereas ICE is really, as I say, corrupted in a way that I don't know that any police departments were. And so I do think it's a pretty big difference. And again, you can use the police as a positive contrast to ICE. The police departments cannot do what ICE is doing.

The police departments can't randomly stop people because they don't like their accent. I mean, that is something that actually is a – and they can't barge into people's homes, it's the Fourth Amendment. But somehow ICE and the Border Patrol, for reasons I really don't fully understand. except that they're called immigration or border patrol can do all kinds of things that know the Minnesota Police Department, the D.C. Police Department, the New York Police Department cannot do. Maybe the very worst of the worst police departments are corrupted in this way. The Oakland Police Department was pretty bad for a while, but it took your point. I just would add to this. Just talking about this straight politically speaking, like without the merits aside, I agree with everything you said about

the merits. Like people, regular people have a good feeling about the police for the most part. and like decent relationships and have seen positive police work. Like if they get in trouble, they call the police. I've lived in a couple of like very diverse, low-income communities. And obviously there's a fraught relationship there with the police because there are times the police have been hassling people and acted inappropriately, but also those are high crime areas. And they need cops and they know people that are victims of crime.

And they've known people that have needed protection from criminals. And so, like, people's relationships, relationship with the police, even if they have some concerns about it or complaints or whatever, like, they understand the function that is served and it is needed for something in their life. Most people have no positive association with ICE at all or no relationship with ICE at all. Again, maybe this is different if you're running for Congress in Southern Arizona or Texas, right? And I am open to the fact that Democrats in different parts of the country should talk differently about this, right? But, like, in most parts of the country, people don't have any association with ICE at all. They've never been menaced by an immigrant. They've never, like, needed to call ICE to come save them.

If anything, they've been annoyed by customs enforcement when they've gone to their beach vacation. This is not a direct comparison from a political standpoint about, like, going after an institution that people understand the purpose of and that need and have, you know, whatever, varying, but relatively positive feelings about versus something that just like popped up 20 years ago that like that they've never known anything about at all until all of a sudden they're looking at their phones and they're seeing these mass thugs, menace people.

It's a different situation. It's such a key contrast. I mean, for all of your lifetime, for all of my lifetime, for all of 200 years, well, 100, I think 200 years about. There have been police forces in the United States in every city, in every city in the world, including democratic and liberal nations.

And that's why defund the police just sounds, silly and at best silly and a little bit menacing, you might say, really? I mean, this is something that everyone agrees we need to have police forces, you know? That guy Bovino, that has not been the case in the U.S. We have not had to ICE agents randomly stopping people or doing searches of neighborhoods with people's accents, with people whose accents they don't like in the U.S. We've had it a little bit, you know, in some fraud situations and near the border and stuff. We have not had that in Minneapolis, Minnesota or in many, many other cities in U.S. So being highly critical of ICE and being accepting and even laudatory of our police force as well,

insisting on some improvements and reforms, it's totally consistent. It's funny that's how on the left never quite understood why defund the police sounded so crazy. It's sort of like, I don't know, defund the water suppliers. I mean, you need to have a police force. Right. Again, I get back to like, when people are in trouble, they call the police to help them, right? Nobody's been like, oh, man, I'm really scared right now. can you find me an immigration official?

You know, from that suck. It's just, anyway, maybe it should not be thus, but it is us. And so abolish ICE, we must continue to press forward on. She gives a democratic strategy around all this. I did just want to shout out briefly. Abigail Spanberger, your governor in Virginia. She was sworn in this past week. She signed a couple of executive orders that I just wanted to mention

because in some ways it's an interesting way to think about how a future, God-willing president in 2029 might think about some of these challenging questions we're talking about, about how to deal with these corrupted structures. There's two things, but one is she immediately sent an EO revoking Glenn Youngkin's executive order, the deputy state police to work with ICE. So basically said, our police are not working with ICE anymore. And the Yonkin situation, it was like basically ICE could come in and whatever, say to the Richmond police, like, we've got a lead on a guy over here. And like, let's work together. And no, we're not not doing. that anymore. And I think that's obviously appropriate. She also did a total overhaul of the university boards in Virginia. They had been magified. There had been these huge controversies at the University of Virginia. The president got pushed out. They put a bunch of hacks, you know, anti-D-EI, anti-woke ideologues on these boards. And they were corrupting the universities. And rather than doing the, okay, well, we're going to protect our norms and that person is on a

five-year term. And so then when they get out in, you know, 2031, we'll replace them with something else. Like, no, she forced the resignations of the people that had come on that had been causing the trouble. You know, usually a governor gets four or five appointments to these boards. She did 10, completely reconstituted them. And small thing, but I just, I do think it is an example of the type of way that you can, can be a supporter of norms and institutions. You can be a, you know, a non-radical Democrats. But you can be a, you can. and also kind of recognize the situation that we're in and the time that we're at and the need for making aggressive executive decisions to kind of unravel all the problems

we've had. So anyway, I don't know if you've any thoughts on that. It's your state, but I like Spanberger. I supported her. I'm glad she's our governor. But I hadn't really focused on this side of it. I don't think she'll be a good governor, which is the, I guess, will be the only governor to have taken over from a Republican predecessor in this second term of Trump.

Now, maybe they'll be war on 20, at the end of this year. here November 2026. So it is actually important what you say. I hadn't, as I say, really thought about this much ahead of time. She becomes an example of what you do if you take executive authority. Now, Youngton, it's not Trump. So it's a little bit, the degree of corruption of the state government is much, much, much less than of the federal governor of Trump. But I agree, it makes the Spanberger governorship of Virginia even more interesting, actually, and important, perhaps than one might have expected. All right. Final thing, it's Martin Luther King Day. You wrote about this this morning. You've got to pay to go to the parks today, apparently, because of a Trump

executive order. You wrote about some lessons from past MLK speeches. This one to have you leave the audience with a little bit on that. So the executive order, which I get a little attention in late November when it was issued by the Interior Department, was it takes MLK Day off the list. They tend to, they've had a practice of letting people in free on federal holidays, basically, and key holidays and what its weather special days that are special for the park servers. And they took MLK Day and Juneteenth off the list. I don't, what do they have in common? I can't imagine why those two got targeted.

And put on the list June 14th, and they literally say this in the Department of Interior, you know, statement, press release. It's Flag Day slash President Trump's birthday. And so we're having the National Parks are celebrating President Trump and not celebrating, not honoring, not respecting, or Luther King, who Congress did vote to create a national. holiday and memory of his life and legacy and honor near his birthday, the third one day, I guess, in January. So, yeah, so that's the Trump administration. And I believe I looked this morning about a couple hours ago, maybe it's something we'll change today. There was no Trump statement of any noticing that this is Martin Luther King Day or not able to perform a statement of tribute

to King. Nothing surprising there, I suppose, but just a reminder of where we are. I don't know, it's funny. As we've had this discussion, I've been thinking about King, I wrote a little about him urging people to read or listen to a watch some of King's speeches, which really pretty fantastic, I've got to say, in this case from the 60s from the last decade of his life or so. King got assassinated at age 39. King gave the March on Washington speech. Oh, really? Yeah. King gave the March of the speech at the March on Washington in August 63 when he was 33 or 4, I guess, I've got my math right. I mean, he was a pretty amazing person in any case.

But yeah, I was thinking as we were talking here, I mean, the one of the King was upbeat basically and, you know, thought justice will ultimately prevail against the forces he was fighting. Those forces were pretty brutal and killed people and pretty terrible and pretty deeply embedded in America. It's not like

segregation was just something that, okay, you know, we're just going to kind of overcome this quickly. Having said that, I think he thought for all of his life that he was on the side that was ultimately going to win. And he lost, and it did. I guess what's thinking about our conversation today, I don't know. I feel like we are a little less confident than maybe even King could be,

even though he was dealing with such deeply embedded, such deeply embedded bigotries and injustices. But I think we need a little bit, we need to remind ourselves that it could have looked pretty grim for King. And certainly was when he started off in this in the 50s. And it certainly was, you know, when they were at Selma and when he was in jail in Birmingham and so forth. And he was assassinated by a white racist. at age 39, in Memphis trying to help speaking for the sanitation workers who got on strike against horrible conditions there. Yeah, King should give us some hope.

Yeah. But I've got to say this is, yeah, we need the hope because when you look at the current circumstances, I mean, Trump's a little more popular and that's good and maybe the good elections of November, but the degree to which he is doing damage to the world order and to our liberal order at home, it's really, it can get one demoralized. I agree with you. I think after I read your newsletter this morning, I went and watched his full Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which was extremely gracious, obviously, and thoughtful and considering all the other people and, you know, was very focused on making sure other folks who are working towards nonviolent resistance in the U.S. and abroad were recognized, you know, certainly the direct opposite of what we've seen from Donald Trump over the past week. And I was also struck with the same thing. and just his optimism. And, you know, was that all maintained in every private dark moment?

Like, we know, no. But it's important to kind of project that optimism in order to try to make the world what you want it to be. Nobody got anything by being so demoralized that they, you know, gave up. And so maybe it can steal us a little bit today. And I appreciate that you reference that. Thank you so much, Bill Crystal. We'll see you back here next Monday. Great.

Everybody else, we'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. Peace.