Transcription
Donald Trump continues to face an ever-increasing Republican mutiny regarding ICE in his immigration policies, following the second brutal murder of an American citizen at the hands of federal agents. And it's gotten so bad that one of the most prominent Republican senators is calling it out on Donald Trump's very favorite TV network. And we have to talk about it.
But before we do, if you end up liking this video and you want to support the channel, please be sure to hit the like, subscribe, and alert bells before you go.
All right, folks. Um, it's very rare. It's becoming increasingly common, but it's still relatively rare to see Republican lawmakers publicly criticize Trump or the Trump administration, given that it's an authoritarian cult of personality and Trump is very punitive. So, seeing a Republican senator call out Trump and ICE on Fox News is a rare sight indeed. So, let's dive in.
>> It's President Trump seeming to defend uh Christine yesterday. Your thoughts.
>> You know, I think one of the best things President Trump has done, and really people from across the aisle support, is removing violent people from our cities. So, I think that's been a good thing largely, but it can't be done with no rules. And so, when people watch that video and the government tells them, "Well, he was assaulting the police officers." Nobody with any objectivity watches that video and believes that's what's happening. As the man retreats, with each altercation, he retreats, and then the woman is thrown violently to the ground. He's thrown to the ground. No American believes that he was assaulting the officers. In fact, the opposite appears to be true. So, we have to get some rules of the game, and we can't have the government justifying this type of behavior because the vast majority of Americans think this was unfair. What happened? The also the um the intimation, or actually the uh explicit uh call to say you don't have a Second Amendment right to carry arms in a protest, really flies in the face of most of our Second Amendment community. I can tell you, I've been to dozens and dozens of rallies and/or protests where people are visibly armed or have concealed carry. So the people are saying this, we need to get this straight so we can have some kind of awareness that people go to a protest, that they know what the rules of the game are. If videoing somebody is an assault, which most people don't believe it is, but that is assault, then people need to know that if you video someone, you could be shot. And so we need a clarification on all of this. And I'm going to reserve judgment on the secretary for now, but we need to hear from all of the people involved with this.
And we... So, there's been some updates. There have been some updates about Christine Gnome, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and Steven Miller, Donald Trump's uh immigration policy architect, the deputy White House chief of staff and de facto prime minister of the country. We'll talk about that in a separate video, but I just want to unpack what Rand Paul, again, a prominent, not just a random Republican senator, but he's a chairman on the Senate Committee for Homeland Security. So he is the the most important Republican senator on the committee of jurisdiction regarding the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. So what he says is extremely important, particularly in a divided Congress. I shouldn't say divided because there's unified control. What I mean to say is that the margins in the Senate are relatively slim. It's 53 to 47. Uh, a lot of Republicans facing some tough reelection uh, you know, bids this year, and Donald Trump is unpopular. So what Rand Paul says carries significant weight, and I appreciate that he is unequivocal in his language, which is that it was the police assaulting Alex Prey, not Alex Prey assaulting the police, that he retreated, that he never went for his gun, and that the Trump administration is flagrantly trying to rewrite the rules of the First and Second Amendment in ways that will spectacularly backfire on the Republican party and conservatives if Democrats ever get back in power and use these rules against them. So these people better be [ __ ] careful about what they say with respect to the Second Amendment, because imagine a Democratic administration comes in and goes, "Oh, you're an armed Second Amendment conservative standing at a protest protesting a Democratic administration. I guess that's a death sentence." Imagine, right? The logic that that would entail. Rand Paul recognizes that's an incredibly dangerous precedent to set, in addition to being wildly unprincipled. So kudos to him for having the foresight in saying it on Fox News.
Here's another clip.
>> over this. And we need to know going forward that there will be some rules. Um, there needs to be an independent investigation. For goodness sakes, there has to be an investigation. If this happened on a police force, the officers, whether or not they committed anything wrong, would immediately be put on administrative leave, and there would be an an investigation. But I don't know who trusts an investigation to be done by DHS when they're the ones calling this person an assassin, a would-be assassin, a domestic terrorist, saying he was assaulting the police. How can they be in charge of an independent investigation? Something's got to happen here.
>> So, okay. So, who else could conduct the investigation then? If it's not DHS?
>> I think that's a good question. Uh, within police bodies, you know, most police are not elected. Uh, some sheriffs are elected. A lot of sheriffs are, but there are independent police organizations that review these things. And look, I'm not one saying the officers are guilty of anything criminal. They, in all likelihood, were trying to do their job, but in all likelihood, this is going to be a tragedy. I mean, it is a tragedy. I mean, I think the guns were prematurely drawn and prematurely fired after a gun had already left the scene. I think someone was shouting gun, and they were worried that maybe the perpetrator had it when indeed their one of their own agents had it. So it was a mistake. But if we don't say it was a mistake, if we show this is this is just jolly well and good, he was a terrorist, people aren't going to accept that. You want Minnesota to calm down, we have to show that there's a just and independent investigation here.
>> Exactly. And one that at least carries the possibility that these officers will be punished and prosecuted. If that is a foregone conclusion that there's no way in hell we're not going to take them off active duty, they're not at risk of losing their job, they're not at risk of prosecution, then it's a foregone conclusion that the investigation is biased, because that should be given the circumstances, especially what we see on camera, that should be on the table. And the Trump administration has made it clear that it's not. So, the only way I think you could have an impartial investigation at this point is if state and local authorities join the federal investigation, that it's a joint uh investigation of jurisdiction, because of course conservatives won't trust state and local authorities. Liberals won't trust, and most of the country, I think at this point, will not trust the federal investigation. So, the best way you do it is that you have people on both sides looking at each other and covering each other's work, right? Double-checking their homework. It's probably the only plausible way out of the situation.
But again, Rand Paul is shrewd enough to recognize that even the principle aside, this is going to be, it already is, a PR disaster. Donald Trump has objectively lost. He did not hold his own. He is not struggling. He got his ass kicked in the court of public opinion. He was effortlessly annihilated in the court of public opinion on this issue. Christy Gnome, Steven Miller, the Republican party at large alongside them heading into an in a midterm election year. And the polling so far has been brutal. I think subsequent polls are going to be even worse, and Rand Paul recognizes it.
One last clip.
>> I acknowledge there need to be some money, but we've thrown so much money at this problem that, you know, they're just piles of it sitting around that I think people ought to think this through before it's not all or none. I don't want to defund ICE, but I'm not sure I want to give them billions and billions more without any kind of signs of there are going to be some rules of the game and there will be an independent investigation.
Well, we know there's a test vote tomorrow uh on the floor, so we'll see where that goes. Senator.
>> And right now the Democrats have the numbers to block DHS funding if the funding um is um is attached to uh ICE funding or is attached to the appropriations funding. Now, again, in the event of a partial government shutdown, ICE operations will not cease. I want to be clear about that. Democrats cannot snap their fingers and stop ICE from doing what they're doing, but they can exercise some leverage to put pressure on the Trump administration to get the Trump administration and Senate Republicans to try to um, you know, rein ICE in. But again, we have to calibrate our expectations appropriately. Anyone expecting or believing that Democrats have the votes to simply shut off the tap for ICE, it's just not true. Most of ICE's funding is mandatory funding, and that came from the one big beautiful bill. Okay, so this is extremely important. We stay clear-eyed about this, but we'll see what happens as far as the ultimate vote. But right now, Democrats are bullish that they can at least try to extract some sort of meaningful concession from uh the Republican party.
Now, the other thing I want to note, you know, dovetailing or uh piggybacking on what Senator Paul had to say is that, as Time is reporting, Time magazine, support for abolishing ICE is surging among Republicans. Just to give you an example, in the wake of the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Prey by federal agents amid the Trump administration's crackdown in Minneapolis, voter support for abolishing ICE is spiking, including among Trump's own party. A new Yugov poll taken on Saturday, the day of Prey's fatal shooting, showed 19% of Republicans and 48% of American adults across the spectrum voicing support for abolishing ICE. That marks a notable shift from when Yugov pollsters asked the same question last June, as Trump was ramping up his immigration crackdown. At the time, only 9% of Republicans and 27% of Americans overall backed abolishing ICE. So again, that's a startling increase. Support for shuttering the agency has also surged among independents, with 47% backing its elimination in the Saturday poll compared to 25% in June. And in many polls, um, it enjoys a plurality advantage. More Americans than not supporting abolishing ICE in the aggregate. So that's disastrous for Donald Trump and ICE.
And the last thing I'll say is, again, according to Fox News, Trump's immigration crackdown in the spotlight ahead of midterms as fatal Minneapolis shootings, Minnesota shootings ignite backlash. Minnesota Republicans lose political advantage as ICE shootings overshadow fraud scandal that forced Governor Walls to drop re-election bid, according to strategists. So, for example, um Trump's immigration crackdown turned the heat up on Republican incumbents and candidates on the ballot in this year's midterm elections, forcing them to walk a tightrope as they defend the Trump administration's increasingly unpopular illegal immigration enforcement efforts. And again, that's Fox News acknowledging that it is increasingly unpopular. Quote, "I think it's going to make things more difficult," says Amy Ko, a Minnesota-based Republican strategist and former state senator, told Fox News. But the images, images and the energy behind the ICE out movement will definitely play against Republicans, against Republicans. So this has been an absolute fiasco for Donald Trump and ICE. Rand Paul recognizes it, and it sounds like there is increasing Republican support in the legislature uh because they're heading into midterms and they don't want the public to turn against them in ways which compromise Republican control of Congress. So we'll see how it plays out. But in the meantime, let me know what you think in the comments.