The Chris Cuomo Project - Minnesota Is the Pattern, Not the Exception

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Chris Cuomo breaks down why what’s unfolding in Minnesota isn’t an isolated failure, but a repeatable pattern driven by escalation, provocation, and political convenience. He walks through how federal immigration enforcement tactics collided with protest, rhetoric, and poor leadership decisions — producing outcomes that were foreseeable long before they became deadly.Cuomo argues this moment forces adjustments on both sides ahead of the midterms. He explains why dehumanization, overreach, and “us vs. them” politics keep producing the same results, why blaming pawns won’t fix the underlying problem, and why most Americans are actually aligned on enforcing the law the right way. Minnesota, he says, shows what happens when power is exercised without restraint — and why pretending it’s an exception only guarantees repetition. Join The Chris Cuomo Project on YouTube for ad-free episodes, early releases, exclusive access to Chris, and more: https://www.youtube.com/@chriscuomo/join Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Rho Nutrition https://rhonutrition.com/discount/CUOMO for 20% sitewide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more at Adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. Minnesota is a moment. I told you F-A-F-O was going to be the epitaph for the Trump administration, for MAGA, if they didn't check themselves before they wrecked themselves. And here we are. The president is big backpedal mode because he is out of step with the majority. And now he's got to figure out some to blame. And the question is, what adjustments will be made by those who want to win seats in the midterms?

because this is the moment. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. As you can see, I've got my free agent hat on, and if you can't see, then stream the video. Why? Because I want you to wear your independence. I want you to go to the store.

I want you to see that we wear our independence, free agent, critical thinker, that you are different, okay? You're not some pack animal party first loser. And that's how we have to start seeing partisans as losers, we've got to be about right and wrong, not right and left, because it allows you to avoid so much of the BS manufactured division that's going on that makes everybody money on social media because it's costing us so much, so much. And we see that in Minneapolis. Minneapolis,

Minnesota is absolutely all about competing agendas, all. all about provocation, all about might makes right. It literally is MAGA at its best and worst. Why? Well, let's look at how we got here. And then we're going to look at the developments that are going to shape where it goes next. And that's what's really important. Really important for Democrats. Bad early sign. Bad early sign. This could have actually been the first line of the podcast, which is this. Democrats don't get off. on mocking Trump. Don't get off on saying Trump surrendered.

Yeah, yay. Do you really want military on the streets? Some of you do. Some of you want that fight. I know you do. But that's not the majority. And that's not how anything's going to get better. It's just going to get worse if we go that way.

So that mocking of Trump thing, that ain't getting you where you want to be. I know it feels good in the moment. I know it gets you your clicks. You know, oh, Bovino's gone. Bevino. like a cow. He's gone. Christy Noam is in trouble. We're going to talk about why and what adjustments will be made because remember, remember who never takes the blame. You know that expression? The buck

stops here. Harry S. Truman, the buck stops here, set it on his desk. Why? Because the man at the top has to take ultimate responsibility and accountability, not in Trump's mind. That's not how he works. Someone else is going to take the blame. My guess, Christy Noem is going to take the blame. And I'll discuss why. But you got to remember how you got here. You got here because immigration helped get Trump elected. Why? Because it made the case that the left is crazy and that they are permissive in a way that makes you unsafe. So what I characterize as the brown menace, which to me is my figurative interpretation of what Trump has done with predominantly brown immigrants, is made them the boogeyman, made them the proxy for all our problems.

problems problems with the economy affordability oh that's all the illegals uh they're all here uh problems with housing cost to housing oh so's illegals taking all the cheap housing taken all of it living in there 90 to 90 to a house they pack them in like rats like sardines uh your wages well you know all the good paying jobs all the illegals are taking them all the illegal the fentanyl all the illegals are bringing it all those illegals are bringing it over human trafficking oh yeah no those illegals They traffic all the time. They're all trafficked. Savages.

Crime? Oh, that's the illegals. They're killing you. A handful of ugly cases makes a trend, right? So they've been using this as the proxy for all the things that they want to campaign on as a problem, but now fix as an empowered administration. Why? It's easier to blame. It's easier to have a scapegoat.

It's easier to have a boogeyman. So how did we get here in Minnesota? Well, the but-for analysis is Trump's decision. to go in strong and wrong, in my opinion. But there are other ways to look at it. How? Well, Biden's mishandling of the southern border and waves of people getting into the country illegally

created an opportunity to be law and order. And that's what Trump is riding. Now, the sanctuary cities add to this. Why? Because it adds to the permissiveness of blue states. So what happened? So here's what happened. Ice and pre-ice, they were understaffed and often incompetent. And they would have municipalities basically doing their job for them. Locals having to hold people, round people up. It was pissing off communities. It was getting them sued and they were losing.

So they started saying, look, man, we're not going to do this. We got to have a relationship with our community. And now that one cuts both ways, right? Because what do you mean in a relationship with your community? With your criminals? Now, look, you may not want to accept this, but the idea that coming into the country illegally is the same as robbing a house is just not how we've ever seen it.

Culturally, we've never enforced it that way as a matter of administration of justice. So this, we hate immigrants, we fear immigrants. This is new. Now, it's coming waves. I mean, man, we put the Japanese in internment camps, right? So we've definitely done the wrong thing in America before. May the rest in peace, my grandparents, who came the right way, right, which is getting

deloused on a boat from Italy, they talk about how they were dealt with at Ellis Island, how people talk to them, how they changed their names, how they disrespected them, how they treated them like they were savages. So it's not new. But it is new again in terms of it being kind of like a throwback vibe of nativism, of xenophobia. But it worked politically. And the Democrats kind of walked right into it. So this is one of Trump's strongest signature issues of the, I can fix this.

And he did. So the southern border is not nearly as porous as it was. Okay. So now we get to the next level, which is a classic Trump issue of overreaching. okay overreaching is i'm going to get rid of everyone who's illegal okay and that's his cell and again i look i think we call them undocumented instead of illegal for a reason all right every criminal is doing something illegal not just illegal aliens so why don't we call them all illegals why do we call just these people illegals because it's a stigma because we want it this way

so trump overreached and he said i'm going to get rid of all of them now i don't really believe that that's what people were voting for, of getting rid of all of us, you know, of all of us, all of the illegal entrance, okay? I'm not, I'm a citizen, don't come for me. I was born here. I'm a real one, although only two generations, right?

And now people keep qualifying that. Well, you know, you've only been here a couple of generations. Oh, oh, what is there a new test? Anyway, the point is that nobody expected you. And that's why he keeps exaggerating the number, 10 million, 15 million, 20 million, 25 million. How do we know the number of people that came in illegally and weren't captured? How would you know that?

You know what I mean? It's got to be a guesstimate. But they keep popping it up. Why? Because it make it look like more of a problem, right? And the overreach was in thinking that he could combine agendas. How do I play to the immigration? use it as a hedge on affordability and prove that the Democrats suck all at once.

I'm going to a blue state and this Somalian fraud is a great opportunity. Check so many boxes. Fraud on the left, on their watch in a state that I keep losing, which pisses me off. And I got that boogeyman, got the brown furrow. folk involved, and they're the real ones. Got the accent, look weird, characterized in a movie, as being pirates. This is perfect. Checks every box.

They send that Nick Shirley out there. I got to tell you something. Perpetrating the fraud. Now, not Nick specifically, right? Because he just went out with his camera and did what he did. Did he oversell it? Yes. 100%.

Why? Knocking on the door, they won't let you in when they have kids inside. It's not a flex. Okay? They don't let you in because they have, kids inside. It's not because they're hiding something from you. They're protecting something from you. So that's different. Well, yeah, but all the places he had, they had been fraud. Yeah, you know how he was able to find that out? Because they had open cases. They had inspections.

They had investigations. You can argue walls dealt with it too leniently, too little, too slowly, et cetera, et cetera. You want to investigate him as if he had something to do with it? Okay. That's fine. I think it's an investigation in search of proof as opposed to proof that leads you to have to investigate, but that's a political question and a legal question, but mostly political, given who's involved in how. But it's not new. He didn't unearth anything. And more importantly, to me, which kind of bothers me about this and how we got here, you think that the fraud that's taking place in Minnesota is legendary. It doesn't take place other places?

it doesn't involve other immigrants, other minorities, other kinds of groups. You think it's just like this is it. This is the you hit the mother load? Bullshit. Look up fraud in Texas. Look up fraud in Florida involving immigrants, involving immigration. This is daycare. Okay, fine.

Search it under daycare. Why am I so glib about it? Why am I so confident? Because we did it. There's fraud all over the country. They're cherry picket. this why? Politics. It's a democratic place. It's brown people. It checks the boxes for MAGA. And remember, we are driven by our fringes. Support comes from Roe Nutrition. Now, you've probably been hearing a lot

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All right? So you've got to support your NAD plus level. And this is how to do it with Roe Nutrition. If you want to check out Rose Liposomal NAD Plus or any of their formulas, go to RHO Nutrition.com and use the code Cuomo for 20% off. So then why is this a moment? It seems like it's just the most frustrating in the long line. Nope, it's different. Why?

Because the administration had to change course. because people were dying. Okay? Oh, it's only two. Oh, hold on. Hold on, Lake and Riley. You find one case, it winds up being the underpinning

of an entire feeling about every immigrant, right? You changed your narrative on the basis of one case to say that, hey, if you're worried about crime, we've got to get rid of these people. You can't find a statistical support basis for that. everything that we do to study what the impact of undocumented people here is, is that if anything, they're hiding and they underperform in terms of being malefactors. Why? Because they're hiding.

Or their desperation is for the works and money home, make some money, and stay off the radar. I don't love that incentive structure. Why? Because they're living in fear all the time, and I don't think that's what the promise of America is. And yeah, I get it. Coming here the wrong way is a crime. I've never said otherwise. But it's a misdemeanor, okay? And so is excessive speed on the highway.

So is 85 and a 65, 86 and a 65. Oh, no, but this is worse what they do. Oh, really? Why? Oh, because they wind up abusing all these services and stuff. Really? Because the studies that I've seen show that most people who are here illegally pay taxes through their employer and actually wound up putting in more money than they take out to this economy.

But look, that's not to say that we shouldn't have the laws enforced, but how you do it matters, and that's how we got to Minnesota. Trump thought he was going to do the ultimate flex, come in there, round them all up, blow the sanctuary city out of the way, show the locals whose boss, and the people wouldn't allow it. So now what they're doing is the pivot point, the main adjustment here is one, Trump is finding someone else to take the blame. And boy, did Christy Gnome walk right into it? that one of ours, all of yours, bullshit on her podium. Now, it may turn out that somebody gave her

that idea to put that on there, but it was one of the most recklessly, foolishly divisive things I've ever seen in federal government. Who's yours? They're all yours. You're talking about other Americans. You're not talking about the Taliban. This isn't the jihadis that were up against here. This is us. One of ours, all of yours. You're talking about taking down other. You're talking about taking down other Americans, the fuck is wrong with you? So she walked right into it. Bevino, too, a little bit with the coat for some, but that's, that doesn't work for me.

What works for me is Bovino acknowledging no wrong and saying, yeah, we took a five-year-old, but he wasn't separated from his family. Yeah, he was. He was separated from his mom and his sibling, and he was kept with his dad in the detention center, okay? Some thousand miles from where he lives. And you said,

yeah, you know, who's really separated? This woman who was killed by one of these illegals. Bad messaging. Admitting no faults. Forgetting who you serve. Forgetting what you serve. Okay? You're not some Jack Boot, Trump soldier.

You work for the America, baby. The America. Not the MAGA. You work for the America. Okay? You work for Americans. Okay? You work for the law.

You work for the Constitution. All right, this us and them shit's got to die. Right and left has to die. Right and wrong must replace it. And when you look at what's happening through the lens of right and wrong, you know what you start to see? The polling. The polling matches what your gut tells you about right and wrong.

That's what it does. The majority says, if you are a violent felon who commits crimes here and is not supposed to be in the country, you are the priority to get you the fuck out. The majority agrees. Oh, no, not Democrats. They don't want to... That's not true.

That's not true. And by the way, you're saying this at the same time that you just bragged about a study in 35 cities where 31 of them saw dramatic decreases in violent crime. And you're taking credit for it saying it was the FBI.

Here are some facts about these recent. findings about crime. One, less crime more better. Less crime more better. I'm here for it. Great. Love to hear it. Praise to all. But let's be honest about it. Let's be accurate about it. Okay. This is the, this is from the same report that you're bragging about. Okay. This is a continuing trend since the pandemic. It's not just now. Yeah, but this year there was more. Yeah, okay, but it's the continuation of a trend. Okay? They give almost no credit to FBI

because FBI does very little local crime intervention, very little policing. Policing is a state issue. That's why you have the sanctuary city issue, right? The 10th Amendment. So you are going to say that the Democratic cities which lead the list of 31 municipalities where the crime is down.

So they are pro-crime, pro-illegals, as you like to say, which is how we got to the violence, by the way. Not the only reason, but definitely a reason. You keep taunting people, you tell, I'll call them whatever I want. You keep dehumanizing. You keep being obnoxious and rude and escalating your rhetoric and playing with extreme ideas of exclusion and fear and prejudice. You're going to lead to somebody wanting to punch you in the face, literally, figuratively.

judge it as you like, but that's what ugliness and aggression brings us. And sure enough, Minnesota. Okay? Now, I think there are a lot of people involved who wanted this. They want the fight. And I think they have to be rooted out and removed. Those are the real threats to us, are the people who are seeing advantage in this bullshit.

So, you can't have it both ways on my watch. It can't be that the Democrats suck in a pro-crime, but they're in charge of most of the cities that have the biggest decreases in crime. it doesn't make sense. So what this is about is them opposing how you are rounding people up, which, by the way, again, takes you to right and wrong and takes you to the majority. And that's why this is such a big moment. Trump has been exposed as being against the majority.

Because most of us want the bad guys out, but we don't want to see it like this, where you're just going after everybody and you're getting the wrong people and treating them the wrong way more than we've ever seen, I guess, since the 50s and 60s, wasn't on my watch. But at scale, law enforcement, abusing citizens, abusing even people who they have color of authority over. Why? Bad training, bad mandate, bad policy. So all of it.

It checks every box. They're training these guys too little. I think the crop that they're picking from or maybe not all the right people you want doing this kind of job. Maybe they don't have time or maybe they're not looking the right way. I think the people in leadership, Nome sucks. I think Bovino sucks. I think Tom Holman has a tough job. I think that he has dealt with it in a way that's too deferential to the president

and not enough to the laws. But I think the president made a smart move sending him in, which also tells you how high the temperature is if Holman is seen as a de-escalator. But it's all about the adjustments now. So Trump's main adjustment is, who to blame. I think Christy Noam's going to take the fall. But the mistake for the Democrats is rubbing it in his face. And I'll tell you why, you want this change. You want him to work with you here. You want to cooperate. Now, look, I don't think it is true that Minnesota doesn't allow

the feds any access to any bad guys who are in custody of the state of Minnesota. What I looked at in the numbers to assess the legitimacy of that claim. Now, I'm not going to dismiss it completely. Certainly Minnesota doesn't cooperate completely, and they've restricted cooperation on the basis of the raids. So it's definitely true that there's resistance. The question is why and what is it reflective of. They absolutely have worked with ICE on bad hombres, let's call them, and giving them access to them. The numbers of people that they have taken, the overwhelming majority, of the ones that ICE has put in custody, who they say are the bad hombres that they got in Minnesota,

a small percentage of them committed crimes in Minnesota or have a record in Minnesota. You understand what I'm saying? So the idea that Minnesota has been hiding them is not really true. Most of them don't have records there. So then why would they say that? Because it's about the division.

That's why. And now it's about the adjustment because Trump realizes he's on the wrong side of the majority. Not that rounding up people who are violent and not here illegally is against the majority. It's not true. The majority wants you to do that. But how you do it matters. And we do not like seeing people abused under color of authority, let alone killed. And I told you when Renee Good happened, there's going to be more.

Why? Because you're not controlling what led to you. it. And I'm not saying that they tell their people you should rough up and or kill citizens. I don't believe that. But I think that the combination of who you're picking, how you're training them, what they're told to do, what they're encouraged to do, how they're dealing with people, what's being said to them, what's being said about them, how that makes them feel, the resistance that they're meeting, all of it is just a perfect storm for bad outcomes. And that's out. Alex Preddy.

And the absurdity and the need for adjustment is seen in the response. One, well, you saw how he came at them, right? Bullshit. Bullshit. He can come at anybody. Well, you saw that he brandished the weapon, though. No, he didn't. What, Brett?

What are you talking about? Well, you saw that, you know, they couldn't really get control of him. You had seven guys, eight guys sitting on top of them. Why would you even spin that kind of bullshit narrative? Why? Now they have to make the adjustment. So the first adjustment is totally awkward, right? Nome does what she does best, false narrative.

Then what do they say? Why do he have a gun? Wow, that's when I knew it was over. That's when I knew that we were living a moment and that the narrative was going to have to change. That could have been the first line of the podcast. Why did he have the gun? When the right is asking why you had the weapon,

you know that they've lost the plot, right? You know that you're in the twilight zone. You know you're in the whatever we can say to negate any responsibility, we'll say. Now, is it equally cuckoo that the left said, well, he has every right to have the weapon under Minnesota state law? He's allowed to bring it there. Who are you to infringe on his right? Yeah, I would chalk it up to irony and a little bit of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why are they doing that? because they're pissed off and because the hypocrisy of the right on this is disgusting. Well, isn't the left being hypocritical too because they're saying that he does have the right? Well, he does have the right. So they're on the right side of the argument, even if they're usually arguing that people shouldn't have the right as much as they do. But you're the ones. You don't get to flop like that. Oh, but they're flopping too.

Do they not? They're playing a convenience. There's a difference. Well, so are you, really. But you're doing it in a way that makes you a hypocrite. They're just exposing your hypocrisy. The left has its own problems. Gun policy and being on the wrong side of it in terms of what makes Americans safer is not one of their problems.

That's your problem on the right. But the adjustments are going to be everything. For Trump, that's going to be blaming someone, right? And then trying to make this about the left. How did they do that? They're going to start talking about the protests and saying they're artificial and saying they're paid for by these lefty, deep state, types. And that is going to be a little bit true and that will be more than enough for MAGA. So what is the adjustment on the left? Well, one, just keep calling out that things should be done the right way.

And get away from this issue. Get away from this issue. And I'll tell you why. The majority is in the right place that you got to have laws enforced and you got to enforce them in keeping with the Constitution, which I, is not doing and you have to remove the bad guys and you shouldn't be keeping them from doing that. But ultimately, this is not why we have an affordability problem. It is not a really a national security issue on the level of the real national security issues. So I don't think you stay stuck in this place just because you think it's bad for Trump. The midterms are going to be about cost of living. If Trump continues on the road of trying to blame undocumented migrants for the cost of living problems, he's going to get destroyed in the midterms. So you can't count on that.

And you, on the left, have to make the adjustment of getting to that issue, getting to that issue of health care costs. You want to go after a boogeyman. Go after the health care companies. Go after big pharma. Go after the big banks. That's who you go after. You don't go after illegal immigrants.

They're a symptom. Why aren't you going after their employers? That's what I'd do if I were the left. That's the big adjustment they should make. It's saying, hey, you want to stop illegal immigration. Go after the people who entice them to come here or organize them, who help subsidize it, and who hire them for substandard wages and often hide their taxes.

Go after those people. That's what I'd do if I were on the left. I think that that's a real boss move. That's a flex. Go after the people who are making money on this. exploiting these people. The president has made his choice. He wants to demonize the little guy. Why don't you go after the big guy? That seems to be where the country is anyway, right? With the oligarchy and the plutocracy and the elites and all that other shit, why don't you lean into that? But this is a moment. This is a moment. And I hate it. I hate how we got here. I hate what it says about us. I hate what we're saying to one another. But the obstacle is the way. The challenge that we are dealt with holds opportunity for us to get to a better place, to reinforce the constitutionality of how we enforce the law, of how we do things, of what's right and what's wrong.

And how you do things is a big indicator of that. And coming out of this moment, the key for the right is going to be to get back on message of doing things the right way and not demonizing these people. you're not going to grow anything that way. And they are not the root of the affordability problem. And for the left, it's also tacking away from this because this is just, it's not your issue and it's not a good place. It just, it leaves us stuck in this reductive, this battle to the bottom of which side is worse.

And the only thing that we know for sure is that the fact that we have sides is the worst feature of our democracy. And I can't believe how many people in the persuasion business are like, look, man, this is our system. We got two parties. You just got to work with it. Why? Why do we have to keep working within a system that's broken that doesn't work for us?

We make adjustments to everything else that doesn't work for us. Even in governance, we're changing things all the time. Changing rules, changing court precedents, changing all kinds of things. But this has to stay how it is. The parties aren't in the Constitution. The parties aren't animals of law. They're just tradition. That's not my language.

That's the Supreme Court in like 1976 or something like that. Why? Why can't it change? So cynical. So short-sighted. But what is it really? Opportunistic. You don't want it to change.

This works for you. It's easier. It's easier than being measured by what you get done. So much easier. And yet here we are in yet another moment. And this is a big one. And for Trump, it's going to be about blaming someone else. Bovino is going to be gone.

Gnome's going to be gone. And that won't really change the state of play. We're going to see more of this, more aggression in dealing with immigrants. There's a desperation that can't wait for the next homicide that involves someone who's not here legally. It's going to be all over the place. Why don't you care about this? Why don't you care about this? The next officer who's hurt by some jackass rioter.

Why don't you care about this? Why don't you care about this? because they're going to be desperate to even the playing field. And I think that's a mistake on their part. I think the person who runs fastest to cost a living and makes people believe that they really want to do something about it, wins the midterms. Wins the midterms.

And I do believe that if the president gets beat up in the midterms, it makes it much less likely that his party, to the extent that it stays his party once he's gone, wins the presidency because remember my my prediction is that maga's dead after trump for two reasons one they don't have another one look at how vance sucked on this issue in minnesota i told you trump would have met with these guys right i told you that right why didn't trump make vance do it i don't know maybe he set him up to look like shit so that he could come in and just make a phone call or take a phone call, right, and just lower the temperature.

Look how easy this was. Makes you wonder why they didn't do it sooner, because they didn't want de-escalation sooner. Think about that. How scary that is. After Renee Good, really, you want it more? Yup, and they got more. But, you know, F-A-F-O, F-A-F-O, right?

I told you that might be the epitaph for the Trump administration. You fuck around with the profound sense of right-and-report. wrong among the American people you fuck around with the fact that you really think that we're as divided as you want us to be and you're going to find out and I think you are finding out and every once in a while you get lucky you find a trans sports issue or something like that that has us hate each other for about five 10 minutes but that's not as easy as we made a look that one time and I think that this is a major moment where adjustments are going to be made and the result of those adjustments is going to play out significantly in the midterms.

But this was a major moment, and the president misplayed it profoundly. And now he's trying to get out of it. And the left is trying to rub his face in it. But what they need to do is take the high ground on this and say where the majority is and how it has to be done regarding the Constitution. They showed you their hand.

They showed you how weak they are, trying to say, well, why do you have a gun? You know what you show? should have done right then. You know what the adjustment was that was missed in that moment, but they should still do now? Hey, why don't we pass some legislation so that you can't bring weapons to protests? Why don't we do that? Good adjustment, right? Because then, you know what the right would say, right? No. So you want to blame Alex Prattie for not having a weapon, but you don't want to pass a rule that people can't have one. You see what I'm saying? That's how

you lock in this moment and show the hypocrisy, show what it's really about. And keep crowdsourcing people's sense of conscience. Cognitive dissonance. You know, we use that word wrong. I use it wrong. I used cognitive dissonance to mean hypocrisy. That you know that what you're supporting isn't what you say you're about, but you're doing it anyway just out of political expedience.

That's cognitive dissonance. You know it's wrong and you're doing it anyway. That is not cognitive distance. That's hypocrisy. That's justification. that's different kinds of coping biases. Cognitive dissonance is actually a good thing. Cognitive dissonance is that feeling of upset,

sicken your stomach. What we used to call your gut, follow your gut, that you are doing something that's inconsistent with your values. We actually need that feeling. We need more cognitive dissonance. It sounds like I'm calling for mass delusion. I'm not. It's the opposite.

It's tapping into your instinctual understanding of your being out of sorts with your values, incongruence, dissonance, as opposed to consonants. And we need that. We need people to tap into their right and wrong and not right and left and be like, this is just fucked up. And you don't have to enforce the law this way. That's where most of us are and that's where we should be. So we are living a moment.

And it's going to be all about the adjustments. and there are opportunities in this. If you're a lefty, get vocal. Why aren't you calling? Hey, they don't want guys to have weapons of protests. Great. Let's pass a law. It's pass a law.

No loaded weapons. That's what Pachash Patel backed up to because he didn't want to just say, oh, shouldn't have said that? Oh, so you can bring an unloaded weapon because that's a lot of good. It's so stupid. It's so stupid. But expose the stupidity and then do something. smart. Say, hey, yeah, let's pass a law. No, no weapons at protests. Okay, let's do that on the

federal level and then fight it out in the courts. Why isn't the left calling for that? Instead of going nigh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's how petty our politics is. That even when you win, you don't act like a winner. Even when something happens, that's good for you, you don't take it for what it is. You just take it like it's points on the board. Because we can't get out of this right and left and get back to right and wrong. That's what we need. We need that cognitive dissonance. We need that, Why am I supporting these people? This is such bullshit. You should be a cafeteria type.

You ever hear of cafeteria Catholic, people who pick and choose from the buffet? Why aren't they called buffet Catholics? Because it's not alliterative. So that's what you should be with your politics. And then you figure out what matters most, and then you vote on the basis of that. But yeah, I kind of like Greg.

I like that he's about this. But the guy he's running against, like Chris, I like him about that. So who are you going to vote for? Well, it depends which one of them matters more to me. No team, no fealty. You know what I mean? You're voting your interests as a citizen.

And that's all we need to be. And that's what this moment is reminding us of. That we can't just be about the sides because this is where it gets us. This is where it gets us to blood in the streets. And of a guy who they didn't lie about in policy positions that they don't even believe, they're just grasping out of convenience. but at the same time, don't have the arrogance of rubbing their face in it, use it to show that you can do things better than that.

That's what this moment is about. That's what you've got to lock in on it. And look, every indicia of this situation is going bad for Trump. Okay? The judges are going after ICE. Hey, we keep telling you to release these people to do things the right way to answer and you're just ignoring ruling after ruling. Why?

Because he doesn't give a shit. about being checked by the courts. That's why. He wants everything to be part of the problem that gets in his way, right? Everything is about what's wrong, and only he can fix it. The courts corrupt elections, rigged, right? The economic data, fake news, his fix is the best. Tariffs doing amazing.

It's just all narrative all the time. But now you're in a moment where there's a guy who's dead, and your narrative was fake and exposed as such, and the people have had enough. So what did he do? He backed off. He didn't surrender. This isn't taco.

Trump always chickens out. He's doing the right thing. He's realizing that his policy and his enforcement was too much and too harsh. And he's adjusting. So now how will the people who want to take seats in the midterms adjust? How will they use this moment? What will it be? You can't just play to the opportunism of being a provocatory.

tour. That's the, you surrender, yeah, yeah, yeah. That worked for a podcaster. That works for an independent journalist, which is really just a bullshit term. Why? Look, some of them, Matt Taibi, Schellenberger, Heridge, you know, there are other people out there that are real, you know, cost, a real journalist. And, you know, you may like some, you may not like some, but they're trying to do the job and they have resources to do it. Other people are just calling themselves journalists, but they're just taking advantage of that freedom to just get clicks and rage bait and do all this other stuff. And we're going to have to make adjustments over time.

We are living a moment. This moment is going to matter in what happens in the midterms. So be watchful, be aware, be a critical thinker, and be an independent. I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for subscribing here. Thank you for going to the store and buying the free agent hat that I have on my head. If you want to buy this one, make me an offer. Still got the label.

All of the critical thinker, I am different. All of the Valentine's. specials that rose put together, not left and right, love. Valentine's isn't about left and right. It's about love. It's about love, not about sides. Our politics is supposed to be about love, not about sides. It's about love of country and love of our potential and how we reach it and debating and fighting over those things. Often love brings conflict. Of course it does. Why? Because you both care. And I'll see you at News Nation, 8 p and midnight every weekday night. I'll see you on Sirius XM-124 the morning, 7 to 9 Eastern every morning.

And let's just keep talking. And let's stick to our independence. And let's recommit to our interdependence. That's really the next step. A declaration of interdependence. Not independence from one another. Interdependence. We need each other.

You've got to find so many of us. The majority wants the same things in the same way. We've been divided for their convenience. Let's come together for our own.