The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Andrew Coyne: Trump wants to de-escalate ICE crackdown and Canada is at the centre of a geopolitical crisis

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

For 72-hour advanced access to the full-length editions of Munk Dialogues with Andrew Coyne consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $50 annually, or $1.00 per episode. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Rudyard and Andrew react to the explosion of anger in the U.S. over the killings in Minnesota by ICE agents. Is this the first time the U.S. President has had to respond to a public outcry and recalibrate his position? Andrew believes that the point of these ICE exercises has nothing to do with immigration reform. They are looking to provoke fear, anger, and terror in the population. Ultimately the responsibility rests with Trump: this is his policy, these are his people. In the back half of the show Rudyard and Andrew break down some of the big domestic developments from last week, specifically Mark Carney's Davos speech. Carney recognizes that Canada is at the centre of a geopolitical crisis. And while this has given him a boost in his personal approval ratings, he hasn't been able to convert that into support for the Liberal Party. Does Carney's Davos speech give us insight into how he will approach CUSMA negotiations?  Andrew believes we should not invest too heavily in the success of these talks, and it's time to develop policies to reduce the cost of walking away from trade with the U.S. Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Trump doctrine. This is Trump's policy. These are Trump's people. He has backed them to the hilt. It may be useful for him and his supporters now to try to back away temporarily, perhaps, and blame everything on his staff. But I don't think the policy has really gone away, and certainly neither has the president. Welcome to the Monk Dialogues with Andrew Coyne. I'm Roger Griffiths, chair of the Monk debates, joined every week. at least we try to get into Andrew's busy schedule. He's off in Winnipeg right now and comes to us remotely. Andrew's so great to be in conversation again. Good to be with you.

Let's begin in the United States, Andrew. We've seen an explosion of anger regarding the latest kind of killing in Minnesota by ICE officers, a kind of brutal execution of an ICU nurse and a veterans hospital. of all things, more and more evidence pointing towards illegality on the part of border agents who were involved in the shooting and attempts by the Trump administration to smear the victim as a domestic terrorist. It does seem to be blowing back, Andrew. This maybe feels to me, I want your reaction to be the first time that the president has had to actively recalibrate his administration's initial response and, frankly, respond to this public outpouring.

Well, I saw a pollster online saying the shootings were polling badly. So shooting people in cold blood, execution style, basically, seems to be a line that more Americans are willing to draw. I mean, the hideous things that this administration have done throughout, you would have thought people would have drawn a line on. But this killing on top of the previous killing, I mean, when we talk now about the latest killing by ICE or by the Border Patrol, that's the World War in, is a demonstration of how thoroughly out of control they are, or maybe out of control isn't the right word. They've been encouraged in this. They've been told they have absolute immunity, quote unquote, which is not legally a consequence. but it's the message they've received.

When Renee Nicole Good was killed in only slightly more ambiguous circumstances, they raced to her to the defense of her killer, exonerated him in advance of any investigation, poured abuse on her as having been responsible for her own death. Then you have the killing of out. the killing of Alex Pretti where it's even less possible to have any justification for it. People have watched these videos from six different directions. It's clear that he poses no threat to anybody, and yet he gets 10 shots in the back.

It is so hideous. It is so shocking that it has roused, I think, more than a few people who might otherwise have been complacent about this, including some Republicans. Now, part of that is the good people have been. Minnesota have banded together in quite a courageous way to oppose and to blow the whistle literally and figuratively on what is being done in their city, which is nothing to do with immigration enforcement. This is nothing to do with deporting illegal aliens or the worst of the worst or any of

the lines that have been used. As many have mentioned, the Obama and Biden administration deported millions of illegal aliens, but they did so in ways that didn't rip up families, terrorized communities, etc. The point of these exercises is to spread terror. There's no other conclusion you can draw if you watch any of these videos. These are not poorly trained individuals reacting under stress. These are people who are going out looking to provoke as much fear and anger and terror as they possibly can. They are swarming people, basically. And that's what happened to the this poor fellow Alex Pretty was, he stopped to help a woman who they had for no particular

reason had shoved to the ground. He got pepper sprayed for his troubles, and then he got just basically descended upon by this roaming group of marauders. So anybody looking at that can tell what happened. And yet, in the first days after it, you had the Trump administration officials, you had Christy Knoem, you had Stephen Miller, you had Gregor Bovino, the head of the ice contingent, saying he had shown up there with a massacre on his mind because he had a gun in his waistband. The gun that he never drew out, nobody even knew he had until basically after he was dead, but basically claiming without any evidence, whatever, that he attacked officers, was looking to attack more. What we've learned from the Trump people is they don't tell lies

necessarily with the goal of being believed. They tell lies to as a dominance move. They tell lies to say, even as you're watching this video that absolutely clearly shows that we're not telling the truth, we're going to continue with the same lies. And we're going to make you tell the same lies, you are supporters, if you want to stay on board with us. Well, this may have been the lie that went too far. Some of the more opportunistic, I may say, I don't want to attribute a lot of principles to the Republicans who've been with them this far. But I'll come back to the first point.

It's not polling well. And so people who are trying to save their skin, first of all, in the outer Republican penumbra of Congress people and officials have been protesting to the president or to the media. But now we've had the entertaining sight of the people around Trump turning on each other. So using the press or some members of the press as their vehicle. So Christy Nome, the Homeland Security Secretary let it be known that she'd only said what she'd said because Stephen Miller told her to say it. Oh. And Stephen Miller saying, well, I told these guys, you know, a very different strategy, and they didn't follow my orders.

Nobody saw fit to say, I'm sorry, I'm horrified of what happened. Yeah. This must change. This must be fixed. It's all just people trying to save their own skin. And partly what you're also seeing is people who are still trying to salvage and support the Trump administration, blaming it on his subordinates, on Nome, on Miller, whatever, when responsibility for this absolutely rests with Trump.

This is Trump doctrine. This is Trump's policy. These are Trump's people. He has backed them to the hilt. It may be useful for him and his supporters now to try to back away temporarily, perhaps, and blame everything on his staff. But I don't think the policy has really gone away

and certainly neither has the president. Yeah. Andrew, does the public reaction to this, which has been versiferous. It has, maybe for the first time in a while, had some bipartisan characteristics, both inside Congress, but also outside the Beltway.

Does this make you a little bit more hopeful about the possibility that the midterm elections will happen, that they will be less of what we were talking, about maybe last fall, which was a kind of a crisis of American democracy predicated or triggered by those midterm elections. I guess if I want to be hopeful at all about this horrible situation, it is the extent to which the administration, I think for the first time on a big domestic issue is backpedaling, realizes that it's on the wrong side of public opinion. And the very issue,

that they're reversing themselves on is one that either directly or indirectly was kind of linked to a lot of the election denying. It has its antecedents in the Jan 6th attack on Congress. I guess what I'm getting at is this is a piece of real estate, this kind of militarization of American streets and cities, which the Trump administration has pursued for a year now. and that many of us thought might be headed towards a kind of authoritarian moment. Well, I'd be careful about getting our hopes up too much. It is a moment in which you actually saw Stephen Miller conceding in the smallest degree that there might have been errors of protocol, which he, that is to say, blamed on the agents rather than himself. But admitting any kind of error is a violation.

of the Roy Cohn's three rules that Trump follows religiously, you know, attack, attack, attack, never back down, never explained, never apologize, these kinds of things. So it's a crack in the armor to some extent. You certainly, it's, as I say, pleasing to see them turn on each other. But and there is this broader thing that a section of the public that might have been inclined to support mass deportations in principle as an idea, horrifying as it is, in my opinion, may be having second thoughts when they realize that they should have from the start what was really involved, what you're doing when you're uprooting people. You're not turning away people at the border.

You're uprooting people who've spent years and decades living here. In many cases, they've been descending on citizens. And not just the overt shootings, the deaths, but the beatings, the maraudings, the smashed-in car windows, the family separated, the people being dragged down to Texas who turned out to be not even remotely the target of any sensible operation or then left to find their own way back to Minneapolis. I mean, the whole thing is so chaotic and so malevolent that a section of the American public who should have known. better or at least come into their senses to that degree. But I would remain skeptical that we're going to see any kind of major U-turn on the policy itself because it is central to Trump's brand. It's central to what his supporters want.

So I'm not sure that we'll see much backtracking. It may be more of a tactical retreat. You move a few people around. You change the tone for a little while. But I'd be skeptical that it makes a huge difference. There's no doubt for this and for a lot of reasons, he's in a lot of trouble in the Republican parties and a lot of trouble politically, electorally. So if the midterms were held tomorrow and if they were free and fair, you would think they would

lose both the Senate and the House. But, you know, the midterms are in fact 10 months away. Yeah. And I think I would remain very skeptical. sure what probability I would attach to it, but I, you know, I'm almost certain they will happen, even though Trump has begun musing about canceling them in that Trump way he does, where he starts off just by joking, quote, unquote, about it, and then it becomes more and more real. Remember, he used to talk about being a dictator as a joke. I don't think anybody thinks it's a joke anymore.

But I think they'll happen, but it's very clear that they are working in six different ways to try to make sure that they're not fair. I mean, the tidal loop on this whole thing, there was this incredible letter from Pam Bondi, the Attorney General to the Minnesota government, saying, we'll take the ICE agents out if you'd agree to hand over our voting rules, your voter rolls, and let us control,

the federal government control what are usually state the voter rules. So it's clear they are trying to fiddle with the voter rolls. They've got people in place at the state government level who are prepared to exercise some version of the January 6th. plot if need be. They're going to have may well have troops in the streets intimidating people in Democratic cities to prevent them from turning out to vote. We're a long way from any assurance that that election will be free and fair or that Trump will accept the results if it doesn't go

the way he likes. That's that's the work. Is an eternity in politics. Well, we've got a matter of a Fraser and crazier between now and then. Yeah. Well, we've got a few days here in Canada until Pierre Pahliav has to submit himself to a confidence vote effect on his leadership in Calgary. We're going to take a short break in our program, be back on the other side with our monk donors

to have Andrew break down some of the big domestic political developments of the last week. Thank you for listening to the first half of our monk dialogue with Andrew Coyne to get access to the full episode right now, consider becoming a monk donor. For just $50 a year, less than a dollar a week, you will get 72-hour advanced access to all of our premium podcasts,

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