1/21/26: Trump Demands Greenland At Davos, Canada Breaks With US, Market Tank, MN Cops Vs ICE

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode: 1/21/26: Trump Demands Greenland At Davos, Canada Breaks With US, Market Tank, MN Cops Vs ICE
Date: January 21, 2026
Podcast Host: iHeartPodcasts

---

Episode Overview

This episode of Breaking Points dives into the extraordinary chaos of January 2026, a year into Donald Trump’s second term. The main themes center on Trump’s controversial push to acquire Greenland, seismic shifts in the international order as signaled by Canada’s break with US policy at Davos, historic shocks in global financial markets, and a heated domestic battle over aggressive ICE enforcement tactics—especially as local law enforcement in Minneapolis openly revolts against federal immigration authorities. Throughout, Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti, and guests deliver their signature anti-establishment commentary, dissecting how the machinations of world leaders, economists, and bureaucrats directly affect the lives of ordinary people.

---

Key Topics & Insights

1. Trump at Davos: The Greenland Gambit

Theme: Trump's speech at the World Economic Forum is focused on US global dominance, calls for outright ownership of Greenland, and open criticism of NATO and long-time allies.

• Trump pushes for "right, title and ownership" of Greenland, arguing leases are inadequate for defense. He frames the US presence as vital for Greenland’s security and global order.

  • Quote:

    "All we're asking for is to get Greenland, including right title and ownership, because you need the ownership to defend it. You can't defend it on a lease... Psychologically, who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease?"
    — Donald Trump (07:45)

• Trump paints European allies as ungrateful and free-riding, referencing WWII, NATO spending, and the idea that without US intervention, “you'd all be speaking German and a little Japanese perhaps.”

• Krystal and Saagar highlight the almost satirical yet serious tone, suggesting Trump’s approach is less a joke and more a sign of deeply disruptive new policy.

  • Saagar: “It’s just so thoroughly embarrassing…as an American, as a person on this planet, it’s humiliating.” (11:29)

• When pressed on how far he’d go to acquire Greenland:

  • Trump: "You'll find out." (11:01)

• Underlying Question: Is this “Mafioso American leadership” (Krystal’s term) just open honesty about traditional US power politics, or something more dangerous?

---

2. Canada’s Break with the US: Mark Carney’s "Rupture" Speech

Theme: Mark Carney, former central banker turned Canadian Prime Minister, signals a major turn away from US-led hegemony, defining the present as an irreversible rupture from the old world order.

• Carney’s speech underscores fading “rules-based order” and the futility of maintaining the myth of fair global integration.

  • Quote:

    “This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition… great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited…”
    — Mark Carney (19:08-21:44)

• Carney admits that the international order was always hypocritical—a “partial lie”—but suggests there was value to the pretense because it enabled some restraint and stability.

  • Saagar: “He’s saying it was always a lie, but there was value in the lie.” (24:45)

• Carney’s solution is for middle power nations to “hedge” against the US, forming networks to guard against America’s unpredictability, rather than go it alone and become economically isolated.

• Krystal points out the irony that both Trump and Carney fundamentally agree on the end of the old system, though from opposite perspectives—Trump brags about the rupture, while Carney laments it.

---

3. Markets in Chaos: The Economic Fallout

Theme: Trump’s aggressive tariffs and unpredictability have triggered simultaneous collapse in both stock and bond markets and spiking mortgage rates, directly harming middle-class Americans.

• Unique “everything-selloff” occurs:

  “Yesterday, the world was just selling everything American.”
  — Saagar (04:54)

• Trump tried to stimulate the housing market by flooding it with government purchases of mortgage-backed securities, briefly lowering rates.

• The attempt backfires as Trump’s threats against Greenland and public feud with Fed Chair Powell scare off global investors and tank US markets.

  • Krystal: “The only difference is now we've spent God only knows how many billions... And now the taxpayer owns all of these mortgage backed securities...” (24:57-29:52)

• Denmark’s biggest pension fund dumps US Treasuries, further spiking interest rates.

• Billionaires and market elites appear flippant—Scott Besant says, “Denmark’s investment in US treasury bonds, like Denmark itself is irrelevant...” (29:52)

• Brook Rollins, Cabinet member, stirs outrage by claiming ordinary Americans can live on $15/day for food:

  • Brooke Rollins: “A full day... is about $15.64. Three meals and a snack.” (32:44)
  • Krystal: “She just cut a bunch of food stamps…” (33:14)

---

4. The Breakdown of Monetary Order: Dalio’s Perspective

Theme: Famed hedge fund manager Ray Dalio warns of a capital war and collapse of global faith in the dollar.

• Dalio draws attention to capital flight and gold’s surge as evidence:

  • Quote:

    “The monetary order is breaking down... There are capital and capital wars... Maybe there’s not the same inclination to buy US debt…”
    — Ray Dalio (35:00)

• The hosts agree: while Trump positions himself as an opponent of the old “globalization” regime, his erratic decisions are leading America into frightening, uncharted territory for which it is unprepared.

  • Saagar: “I am quite skeptical that we are prepared for it.” (37:15)

---

5. Trump’s First Year: Accomplishments, Polls, and Public Mood

Theme: Marking the one-year anniversary of Trump’s return, the White House touts a list of “365 accomplishments in 365 days,” but polling reveals mounting discontent, especially on economic and immigration issues.

• Trump’s marathon “longing” (not briefing) reflects his need to dominate attention and spin his record (05:23-05:56).
  • Krystal: “He was reading off a list of 365 accomplishments... for what, like two hours?”
• Asked how the Nobel Peace Prize would help Americans:
  • Trump: “It wouldn’t improve the lives of any…What improved the lives of people are people that are living. I saved probably tens of millions of lives in the wars…” (43:32)
• Recent polls show Trump’s economic approval sitting in the 30s to low 40s, with similar slippage on immigration and foreign policy.
  • Krystal: “It seems like the Journal poll might be the outlier… That’s a pretty big gap.” (44:02)
• The disconnect: while the base rallies to displays of “strength” abroad, ordinary Americans are struggling with rising prices, interest rates, and a sense of insecurity at home.

---

6. ICE Crackdown: Revolt in Minneapolis

Theme: Federal ICE officers conduct sweeping raids and street stops, sparking condemnation not only from immigrant advocates but local police chiefs in Minnesota.

• Minnesota police chiefs’ joint press conference (59:21):

  • Minnesota Police Chief:

    “If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.” (61:15)

• The chiefs relate that even off-duty police officers of color are being stopped and harassed by ICE, guns drawn, paperwork demanded.

• ICE’s enforcement is described as far beyond what even Trump’s supporters may have expected.

  • Saagar: “Just to see these thugs roaming American streets behaving the way they are is just shocking to the American conscience.” (49:18)

• Polling shows a majority of Americans now disapprove of ICE’s enforcement tactics, even as they retain some support for “border security” in the abstract.

  • Krystal: “Polling from Quinnipiac found 57% of registered voters disapproved of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws broadly.” (50:56)

• Krystal and Saagar debate whether this moment parallels the backlash to “kids in cages” during Trump’s first term, warning that more radical enforcement could lead to further loss of public consent.

---

7. ICE Abuse Allegations: Medical Neglect and Violent Incidents

Theme: Reports surface of ICE denying medical care to detainees, with whistleblowers, journalists, and lawmakers sounding alarm.

• Alleged Cover-up:
  Detainees report witnessing guards choke a fellow detainee to death; preliminary autopsy confirms asphyxiation and homicide, contradicting DHS statements of “suicide.”

  • Krystal: “A preliminary autopsy… said he died by strangulation…That is a pretty devastating [finding] for the ICE narrative.” (67:14)

• ICE budget is enormous, yet the agency is reportedly not paying for detainee medical care, leading to denied services.

  • Saagar: “This is not about not having the money… This is about immiserating and in some cases, killing the people that are in your custody.” (69:58)

---

8. Activist Resistance: The Will Stancil Effect

Theme: Local activists—led by colorful personalities like Will Stancil—are now physically taunting and tailing ICE, documenting abuses and trying to prevent disappearances.

• Will Stancil:
  • “If you don't get their name…they're just gone. Like they are just into the system. And wherever they were going, the people are like, where’s Steve? Steve said he’d be here by five. He’s not here.” (76:17)
• The hosts marvel at how the breakdown in trust for federal authorities is so extreme that local police and former critics are now allying with left activists out of mutual concern.

---

9. Other Notable Moments and Topics

• Cubans Deportations:

  • Even Cubans, historically singled out for favored treatment, are now being deported in record numbers. (78:47)

• DHS and Border Patrol Shootings:

  • High-profile cases of women shot by immigration agents highlight the increasing volatility and loss of faith in federal agencies. (83:09–88:22)

• Consent of the Governed Crisis:

  • Saagar:

    “ICE has lost the people. It’s not the people’s fault. The people were here first. ICE is a government agency that is coming into these neighborhoods. They need to win over the community.” (89:51)

---

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 07:45 | Donald Trump | “All we're asking for is to get Greenland, including right title and ownership, because you need the ownership to defend it... And number two, psychologically, who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease?” | | 11:01 | Donald Trump | “You'll find out.” (On how far he’ll go to acquire Greenland.) | | 19:08 | Mark Carney | “This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition…” | | 24:45 | Saagar Enjeti | “He’s saying it was always a lie, but there was value in the lie.” (On Carney’s speech and the rules-based order.) | | 32:44 | Brooke Rollins | “A full day… is about $15.64. Three meals and a snack. And a snack and a snack.” | | 35:00 | Ray Dalio | “The monetary order is breaking down… There are capital and capital wars… Maybe there’s not the same inclination to buy US debt…” | | 61:15 | Minnesota Police Chief| “If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.” | | 76:17 | Will Stancil (paraphrased) | “If you don't get their name…they're just gone. Like they are just into the system. And wherever they were going, the people are like, where’s Steve?... There’s no calling ICE and finding out.” | | 89:51 | Saagar Enjeti | “ICE has lost the people. It’s not the people’s fault. The people were here first. ICE is a government agency that is coming into these neighborhoods. They need to win over the community.” |

---

Segment Timestamps

• [03:05] Military tensions in the Gulf: US carriers moving toward Iran.
• [04:02] Trump at Davos, international reactions, Mark Carney’s speech.
• [07:45] Trump’s full remarks on Greenland.
• [13:48] Analysis of Trump’s foreign policy as “Mafioso leadership.”
• [14:33] Trump’s dig at Canada.
• [19:08] Mark Carney’s Davos speech—rupture of international order.
• [24:57] Economic analysis: mortgage rates, market turmoil.
• [35:00] Ray Dalio on collapse of monetary order.
• [42:23] One year Trump anniversary: polling and White House messaging.
• [49:18] ICE crackdowns and public polling.
• [59:21] Minnesota police chiefs press conference against ICE methods.
• [63:39] Community-policing vs. ICE; discussions on what “common ground” would entail.
• [66:18] Washington Post report—ICE detainee death, cover-up allegations.
• [76:17] Will Stancil activism, direct resistance against ICE.
• [78:47] New York Times report—Cuban deportations.
• [83:09] Border Patrol agent shooting—video evidence contradicts DHS.
• [89:51] “Consent of the governed”—ICE and legitimacy crisis.

---

Tone and Language

Throughout the episode, the tone is bracing, acerbic, frequently sarcastic, and always combative toward elites. The hosts’ language is plain, direct, and often laced with humor and exasperation—whether discussing Trump’s tantrums, the Davos “chattering class,” or bureaucratic abuses. Memorable moments abound as the panelists react in real time to quotes, reporting, and activist footage, giving listeners the feeling of a raw, unfiltered debrief.

---

Ideal For

This summary is aimed at listeners who want an in-depth, clear, and candid account of recent political developments—from US foreign policy maneuvers to economic anxieties and the lived experience of federal law enforcement in American communities. All without the need to filter out lengthy advertisements or small talk.

---

For further coverage, listen to the full conversation for individual perspectives, extended guest commentary, and ongoing updates as these major stories develop.

Transcript

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Public Ad Read]

Guaranteed Human support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It's IT screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures hey.

[Krystal Ball]

This is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is pro proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You learn more at pennymac.com pennymac loan services llc/housing lender nmls id 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.

[Orangetheory Fitness Ad Read]

Ready to change your Life for just $2 a day, Orangetheory Fitness delivers one hour workouts that combine strength and cardio to help you burn fat, build muscle and feel unstoppable. Right now, get a full month of unlimited classes for just $62. Don't wait. This offer ends soon. Visit orangetheory.com or your local studio and start your transformation today. Offer ends January 31, 2026. New members only. Premier Membership Performance Monitor and monthly billing required. Discount applies to first month only. Other terms apply.

[Krystal Ball]

C Studio for details hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive.

[Orangetheory Fitness Ad Read]

Role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for.

[Krystal Ball]

The future of this show.

[Public Ad Read]

This is the only place where you.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Can find honest perspectives from the left.

[Public Ad Read]

And that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Orangetheory Fitness Ad Read]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited ad free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Public Ad Read]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.

[Saagar Enjeti]

All right. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, how are you doing?

[Krystal Ball]

Doing great. Ryan biked here. Everyone should know that. I checked the temperature, 17 degrees. So this is a real climate, Warri.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But it feels like 45 when you're on the bike.

[Krystal Ball]

On the bike, it feels like 45. The temperature goes up.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It does, yeah. Because you get your blood flowing.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We've got the Abraham Lincoln, which, by the way, it's such an indignity to the great man that this aircraft carrier that is on its way to Iran to launch strikes on it is named after our greatest president. Going to be deployed for malicious purposes, it seems like.

[Krystal Ball]

Isn't the Roosevelt also over there, which is a much better. That one is a little on the nose.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

In any event, first it was Kermit.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The attack on Iran, which was postponed apparently because too much of our carrier groups, you know, we're busy doing regime change elsewhere. Are, you know, we're now, you know, full steam ahead towards Iran.

[Krystal Ball]

Schedule is back on track.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. I think a lot of people felt like, oh, okay, we're not going to get an Iran strike, a second round of war with Iran because there's no reason to do it. Like, there's like, they're not attacking us, so we're not going to attack them. But no, I think, you know, we're still going to do it.

[Krystal Ball]

We'll say Trump is in Davos right now. So literally as we're speaking, we're going to break down his big speech at Davos. We're going to take you through some of the reactions at Davos to what's happened over the, you know, last several days in regard to Greenland and Canada. Mark Carney, Canadian prime minister, obviously gave a banger of a speech, so it's bouncing around everywhere right now. It definitely caught the attention of the entire chattering class and for some interesting reasons, because I think Grant, it's fair to say a pretty significant moment, an.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Obituary for American hegemony is what he was trying to write.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, yeah. So we're going to break it down and we also have the markets opening in A bit. We're going to get to that as well, because yesterday, boy, that was rough.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. Because normally if the stocks sell off, you'll see the bond market rally, or if the bond market crashes, you see the stock market rally. Because it's all in the American sandbox. Yesterday, the world was just selling everything American.

[Krystal Ball]

It was good timing for the Carney speech, we'll put it that way.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. Trump knows how to play it well.

[Krystal Ball]

Speaking of Trump, I was at the White House yesterday and his briefing, he had at the last.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Not a briefing.

[Krystal Ball]

There's nothing brief about it. It was a longing. Yes, it was. I don't even. There are no words. He ran down a list of the 365 accomplishes for 300 accomplishments for 365 days. It was like two hours long.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Like, wait, you're going to do how many accomplishments?

[Krystal Ball]

365.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I got stuff to do, man.

[Krystal Ball]

Of course, it was announced at the last minute, but people thought he would just be going through the highlights. No, he was like going bullet by bullet through. Through the list. So he answered questions from reporters towards the end of it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This is after he was up till 2am yeah. Because he was at the college football championship.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, we know we have, like, timestamps from Truth, social and pool reports like, this man just doesn't sleep. Actually, a hiccup on the way to Davos last night, late last night, Air Force One had to turn around because of, quote, a minor electrical issue. The lights flashed in the press cabin.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He left his MAGA hat at home. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Might have been it. You can't.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You can't speak to Davos without your mega hat.

[Krystal Ball]

We'll see. We'll see how he shows up. But anyway, we have a breakdown of all of that. New updates from Minneapolis. Zora Mamdani went on the View yesterday. And Ryan, we're going to talk a little bit about updates out of Israel and Sudan. The boys are fighting in Davos. Donald Trump just finished his remarks and the atmosphere was reportedly nervous. That's what Politico said before he got there on an overnight flight. And it seemed kind of low energy, like Trump has been the last couple of weeks, last 48 hours. But he ended up, I think, improvising in particular some moments that. It's just the scene at Davos has been. Mark Carney. We're gonna get to this in a moment. But he used the word rupture to describe what's happened. Geopolitically, it feels like Davos is the embodiment of this geopolitical Western like rupture. So Trump obviously addressed Greenland, he addressed Canada, he addressed all kinds of. The White House is now. He even addressed Ilhan Omar for one reason or another. The White House is now tweeting about Gavin Newsom watching from the cuck chair because Gavin Newsom went to Davos to undercut Trump and was standing in the corner of the room. So just a great morning all around. Let's roll. Donald Trump first here on Greenland. A1.

[Donald Trump]

I have tremendous respect for both the people of Greenland and the people of Denmark. Tremendous respect. But every NATO ally has an obligation to be able to defend their own territory. And the fact is, no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States. We're a great power, much greater than people even understand. I think they found that out two weeks ago in Venezuela. We saw this in World War II when Denmark fell to Germany after just six hours of fighting and was totally unable to defend either itself or Greenland. So the United States was then compelled. We did it. We felt an obligation to do it, to send our own forces to hold the Greenland territory. And hold it we did, at great cost and expense. They didn't have a chance of getting on it, and they tried. Denmark knows that. And then after the war, which we won, we won it big. Without us right now, you'd all be speaking German and a little Japanese. Perhaps. After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? But we did it. But we gave it back. But how ungrateful are they now? So now our country and the world face much greater risks than it did ever before because of missiles, because of nuclear, because of weapons of warfare that I can't even talk about. Two weeks ago, they saw weapons that nobody ever heard of. They weren't able to fire one shot at us. They said, what happened? Everything was discombobulated. They said, we've got them in our sights. Press the trigger. And nothing happened. Then for so many years, we've never gotten anything except we pay for NATO. And we paid for many years until I came along. We paid for, in my opinion, 100% of NATO because they weren't paying their bills. And all we're asking for is to get Greenland, including right title and ownership, because you need the ownership to defend it. You can't defend it on a lease. Number one, legally, it's not defensible that way, totally. And number two, psychologically, who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease? I don't know that they'd be there for us. They're not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland's already cost us a lot of money.

[Krystal Ball]

Now. Asked how far he would go to acquire Greenland yesterday before he took off for this flight. I want to roll. This was the long briefing, like two hours where Trump was going through all of the accomplishments of the first 365 days. He got asked how far he would go. This is a two.

[Saagar Enjeti]

How far are you willing to go to acquire Greenwood?

[Donald Trump]

You'll find out.

[Krystal Ball]

President Trump. Okay, Ryan. So the last 24 hours have been. Well, I mean, it feels like this every day, but the last 24 hours have been a whirlwind, to say the least. Trump lands in Davos for the World Economic Forum's annual confab in front of European leaders and says this. We have more clips, by the way, lest you think that was it. We have more but quick reactions to what we saw.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's just so thoroughly embarrassing. Like, as an American, as a person on this planet, it's humiliating. But let's suffer through a little bit more of this humiliation. Trump had more to say than just that.

[Donald Trump]

The consequences of such destructive policies have been stark, including lower economic growth, lower standards of living, lower birth rates, more socially disruptive migration, more vulnerability to hostile foreign adversaries, and much, much smaller militaries. The United States cares greatly about the people of Europe. We really do. I mean, look, I am derived from Europe, Scotland, and Germany. Hundred percent Scotland. My mother, 100% German, my father. And we believe deeply in the bonds we share with Europe as a civilization. I want to see it do great. That's why issues like energy, trade, immigration, and economic growth must be central concerns to anyone who wants to see a strong and united west. Because Europe and those countries have to do their thing. They have to get out of the culture that they've created over the last 10 years. It's horrible what they're doing to themselves. They're destroying themselves. Beautiful, beautiful places. We want strong allies, not seriously weakened ones. We want Europe to be strong.

[Krystal Ball]

I am derived from Europe.

[Saagar Enjeti]

There you go. He is derived from Europe. Yeah. So it'd be one thing if this was just this weird joke that he was telling, but, like, this went from a joke at the end of his first term to, oh, wait, this guy's actually serious. And disrupting the entire global order and economy, which we'll talk about in a second. In order to Just switch from a lease to an ownership role in Greenland.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And there's an interesting. I mean, as people are listening to each of these moments, he's doing something where he says, like, we love Canada, we love Europe, we love NATO so much that we have to do this. We love Greenland so much that we have to do this. And so he's trying to. Like you said, on the one hand it's this flattery, and on the other hand it's.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But, hey, should we do the Canada one and then we can roll into some of the reactions?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, well, and I think the big theme here is that. And this is. I actually think this is a fair assessment, and it's one that people on the right would say, or people in MAGA circles is probably a better way to put it, would own up to this description of the broader theme being Mafioso American leadership. And the reason why people in MAGA world would say that's good is that it's a more honest way of the business that the United States was going about doing anyway. And at least you're being honest about it and getting something out of it and projecting strength. That would be the sort of MAGA version of it. On the other hand, it's a total shakedown, essentially. So let's go ahead and roll Canada.

[Donald Trump]

For national and international security and to keep our very energetic and dangerous potential enemies at bay, is this land on which we're going to build the greatest golden dome ever built. We're building a golden dome that's going to, just by its very nature, going to be defending Canada. Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also, but they're not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful, but they should be grateful to us. Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, Ryan. It's always fun to watch Trump clips with Ryan, like, longer ones, because he just cracks up in the background.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This one is like just. It's all. It's in.

[Mark Carney]

It's.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's a typical classic, like Trump. It's. But. But it. There's an extra layer of fury that it brings about because of what it's doing to regular people in the country as a result of this and. And around the world, which, Which I want to get to pretty, pretty quickly. You know, the show's running late because we wanted to wait for Trump's. Why we waited for that. Like we knew exactly. Kind of.

[Krystal Ball]

I was gonna say, I don't think.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We knew exactly the, you know, the thrust of it. He didn't know even know exactly what he was gonna say the thrust of it. So he talked about Mark Carney.

[Public Ad Read]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member finra SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures hey.

[Krystal Ball]

This is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services, LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.

[Orangetheory Fitness Ad Read]

Ready to change your Life? For just $2 a day, Orangetheory Fitness delivers one hour workouts that combine strength and cardio to help you burn fat, build muscle and feel unstoppable. Right now, get a full month of unlimited classes for just $62. Don't wait. This offer ends soon. Visit orangetheory.com or your local studio and start your transformation today. Offer ends January 31, 2026. New members only. Premier membership, performance monitor and monthly billing required. Discount applies to first month only. Other terms apply. Z Studio for details.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And I think that, I think that's a good place to pivot to. Yeah, let's do it, some of the reaction and then we can go back to some of this other stuff. So, Carney, this is going to be a longer clip, but I think it's worth playing the entire thing because this is a seismic speech. This is the one where Trump is saying he wasn't that grateful, but this is a man that could not more fully embody globalization. He was a central banker in the UK and then also over in Canada. Now he's the Prime Minister of Canada, yet he's giving one of the most kind of clear eyed analyses of what the international order actually is and is becoming. So let's roll. Carney. I think this is worth listening to the entire thing.

[Mark Carney]

It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of, of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must. And this aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along, to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, it won't.

[Mark Carney]

So what are our options? For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability, and because of that, we could pursue values based foreign policies under its protection. We knew the story of the international rules based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful. And American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So we placed the sign in the window, we participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

[Saagar Enjeti]

All right, so one of the reactions has been well, that's pretty interesting that you were willing to say that the international order was kind of a partial lie, but you were on the receiving end of some of the goodies, so you were okay with all of this injustice. Setting that all aside from there, he goes on to say, okay, what do we do from here? And what he says is we're going to have to hedge our risk and the risk is the United States. Basically. We can hedge it alone and all be self sufficient kind of castles, but that's going to make us poorer and make a less stable world. He's like, let's all get together. Those of us who want to team up and hedge our risks together. Whether that's. And he talks about doing business with China and they just let in what, 60,000 of their cars or doing business with Europe and, or free. Anybody else who's interested in free trade over tariffs and not using kind of the international order as a weapon against each other team up against basically the United States. So he's like, he's arguing, let's not do just our own individual castles, let's do network of castles against this like completely unpredictable behemoth beneath us, sort of arguing that.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I mean he, this is like Ryan was saying, this is like a Bilderberg guy, UN Climate envoy guy. And I think actually Trump and Mark Carney don't disagree on something fundamental, which is that this is a rupture of the international rules based order. Trump is bragging about that, Carney is lamenting it. And I think that much. I mean, it's almost like he's late to this diagnosis, to be honest. And what's difficult for the Carneys of the world is that nobody is happy with. And I actually think, I'm curious what you make of this. There is a pretty good argument that what they decry Trump doing using international order as a cudgel, using tariffs as a tool of manipulation, all of the like using Western hegemony to be a bully. All of those things were already happening, behaving like mafiosis. Trump is being more honest about it. Mark Carney is pretending that that was never the case and that what he really want, wants from the perch of the World Economic Forum and Bilderberg is just the rules based international order. He wants the pretense. And there may be some value to the pretense just on its own, but he doesn't want the substance of it. He wants the pretense and not the substance. And what I think the rupture is, he's Correct about the rupture point. Trump is correct about the rupture point. What he thinks it is, it's the end of the pretense, ultimately.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. And he's saying his point is a little bit more nuanced in an interesting way. He's saying it was always a lie, but there was value in the lie.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, right, right, right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The value in the pretense. There was some restraining ability of the lie, like the myth, which is why I put our sign in the window. We all believed, we all pretended to believe in it in the hopes that the lie could eventually become reality. Now he's saying that's just never going to happen. What the near term. It's interesting. The US Is choosing this moment like the US Was probably on its way out of hegemony. Either way, at some point in the next, who knows when the US Is choosing this moment to do it or Trump is choosing it on behalf of the United States, but it's not totally clear. And he's doing it over Greenland. It's not entirely clear that we're ready for this. Like, we have deindustrialized ourselves fully. We have not reindustrialized. Trump thinks if we just jump and go for it that we'll land on our feet. So far, we're just falling, put up a one here. The markets shed like one and a half, one and a half points. And the bond market crashed as well, which is, which is unusual. You know, normally they don't both go at the same time. The effect on the effect for regular people and by the, you know, people's 401ks and all this other stuff, you know, that matters, but like effect on regular people is brutal. So let's look at a nine here. This is so. And you just read this. Just days after mortgage rates hit a three year low, sparking a near instant surge in applications. This is applications for mortgages. Fresh trade tensions are threatening to undo that progress. Rates on a 30 year mortgage jumped 14 basis points to an average of 6.21% on Tuesday morning, according to Mortgage News Daily. You can put up a 10, which shows just graphically, like how brutal this is. So if you're just listening to this and you're not looking at the image, on January 9, you see a collapse in mortgage rates. And that's what then gets people thinking, oh, my God, finally we can move. We can sell the house, we can buy a house. Like, maybe this real estate market is unfreezing. What happened on January 9 is that Trump ordered the Treasury Department to start. And GSEs to start buying a ton of mortgage backed securities to make up for the amount of mortgage backed securities that the Fed is kind of rolling back onto the market as it's unwinding some of its quantitative easing. So what that does. So basically a bank makes a mortgage, then they cut it up into securities and they sell it into the market. And if the federal government is coming in and buying those securities, that means that the mortgages can be sold at a lower interest rate. And so you're pumping taxpayer money into the market to push down mortgage rates to unfreeze the real estate market, which I think is actually a good idea. Like this is good, like people need, we need to unfreeze this real estate market. So Trump does that on January 9th and it starts to work. Good for you, Trump. The guy's like doing his job. Then what happens? That's a Friday. What happens on Sunday night? Jerome Powell announces that Trump is trying to prosecute him. And so immediately the markets go haywire again. And then what does he do? And you can put up, you put up a 11 here. This is about the mortgage backed security thing. Then what does he do? He says that he's going to put tariffs on everybody who does any business with Greenland or whatever until, until Greenland is just handed over to him. And then mortgage rates spike right back to where they were when Trump intervened in the market to try to make them affordable. The only difference is now we've spent God only knows how many billions of dollars in this failed effort to push down mortgage rates. And now the taxpayer owns all of, all of these mortgage backed securities, which if the economy spins out of control, it means even deeper blot on our balance sheet. At the same time, this Danish pension fund announced that it was selling off all of its Treasuries and put up a 12 here, which, which contributed to the interest rates going up this morning. Besant was asked about this at a press conference in Davos. Let me see if I can find his exact quote. It's incredible. Yes. So Besant said, quote, Denmark's investment in U.S. treasury bonds, like Denmark itself is irrelevant. That's like, okay, well maybe to you because you're like rich af.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I was gonna say you're a billionaire.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You're not trying to buy a house or sell a house. You're not struggling. You don't care what happens to the American economy.

[Krystal Ball]

He did just sell his soybean farm. So he sold off his. So he does understand he found a.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Buyer for the soybean farm.

[Krystal Ball]

Good for him. He also said, by the way, I don't know if you caught this. He was talking about Gavin Newsom. This is a quote from Scott Bessant this morning. I guess it would be afternoon in Switzerland time. But he said, quote, I think it's very, very ironic that Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken, may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris. He's here this week with his billionaire sugar daddy, Alex Soros. The White House, as I mentioned, also proceeded on its rapid response Twitter account to see say that Newsom. They posted a picture of him watching Trump's speech in the back of the room was in the cuck corner chair.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Amazing.

[Krystal Ball]

My boy Winter.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So Besant, who is telling you that Denmark's purchase of treasuries is completely relevant at a 5, he also delivered another nice little Marie Antoinette moment. Let's roll this A5 side. We are going to give guidance at.

[Mark Carney]

Some point to see what is a.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Mom and pop, that someone maybe your.

[Mark Carney]

Parents for their retirement have bought 5, 10, 12 homes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So we don't want to push the mom. It pops out.

[Mark Carney]

We just want to push everyone else out.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So even when Trump is doing something populist and cool, which is he's trying to push investors out of the home buying market like BlackRock and these others that are coming in trying to buy up all these homes, they're like, well, how are you going to define this? Besson says, well, you know, your parents might own 5, 10, 12 homes.

[Krystal Ball]

They might, they might.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You don't want to push them out of the market. That's just a mom and pop buying 12 homes for your retirement. Yeah. Also wait, now your parents are responsible for their kids retirement? It's one thing like high school, college, to some extent, retirement.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I think what they're my assumption on that is what they mean is the Gen X and millennials who are about to inherit property from boomers, that would be a retirement nest egg that you because they don't own property. And so if your retirement is tied up in a house, not necessarily great financial planning, but I assume that's what he was referring to.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So if you do own five, 10 or 12 houses, mom and pop, then you're going to be taken care of by Besant. Let's also roll a 14. Another cabinet member, Brooke Rollins, was criticized for telling people they can like totally survive just fine on a couple dollars a day. She, she went back to it, said she did a bunch of modeling and stands by it. Let's roll a 14 here.

[Krystal Ball]

We had run almost a thousand simulations and between three and four dollars is a fair number if you can have access to that food. So just about an hour ago I saw new numbers that were run. A full day, meaning three full square meals and a snack is about $15.64. $15.64, that's all. Three meals and a snack. And a snack and a snack.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I mean it's true. Like if you go to Costco and you got the massive bag of rice.

[Krystal Ball]

Totally.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Now I don't know who's going to pay the Costco membership because that's practically a dollar a day just for that. And you just ate rice for three meals a day and your snack would be the free samples in Costco. But yeah, doesn't work because you just have to pay the membership. Meanwhile, she just cut a bunch of food stamps, so making it even more difficult. So yeah, she wants to make sure that people, the administration wants to make people sure. People who own 12 houses aren't unfairly penalized by their, by their rulemaking. But as long as you have 15 bucks, then you can get three meals a day and a snack. Like what on earth kind of government is this?

[Krystal Ball]

So interesting. Midterm strategy. Let's roll.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So this works for them.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, exactly. This is. So CNBC has the markets rebounding today. I mean you can see that. But they say they connect it to Trump telling everyone at Davos that quote, he would not use force to acquire Greenland, easing a concern that has rattled markets and caused a flight from dollar based assets. Ray Dalio raised some eyebrows with these comments from Davos that we wanted to roll for everyone, obviously. Dalio of Bridgewater, this is, it's sort of similar to the Carney clip that it's an interesting. You used the word Seminole. I think that's a good word for what Carney said. Here's Ray Dalio kind of reacting to what's happened in the last week or so, maybe even just the last 48 hours. The headline is going to be that the. And this is the one that CNBC used, quote, the monetary order is breaking down. Let's roll the clip.

[Ray Dalio]

Let's step back from the sensational and be clear about what I mean. The monetary order is breaking down. Okay. What I mean by the monetary order is that fiat currencies and debt as a storehold of wealth is not being held by central banks in the same way. And that there was a change. The biggest market to move last year was the gold market far better than the tech markets and so on. And the US Markets underperformed foreign markets because of the fact you could see it in the numbers of the central banks and so on. So let's just look at the fact that on the other side of trade deficits and trade wars, there are capital and capital wars. And so as we're looking at that and you reported what the stock market and so on, but you didn't report that the gold market is also up 3.

[Krystal Ball]

We did say that earlier this morning.

[Ray Dalio]

It's up to record levels again. And silver is. You look at what is happening and why it's happening and who's buying it. So let's just take a moment on that capital war issue. Okay. We know that both the holders of US Dollar denominated debt, which is money, and those who need it, the United States are worried about each other. Right. So if you have other countries who are holding it and they're worried about each other and we're producing a lot of it, that's a big issue. Right. So you have to explain what is going on with fiat currencies, generally speaking. And now if you take the conflicts, you can't ignore the possibility that capital wars, in other words, maybe there's not the same inclination to buy US Debt and so on. We at least need to talk about those possibilities and find out who is buying and selling what that is behind these market movements.

[Krystal Ball]

Ryan, that's basically what you were saying.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, I mean, so we're entering. It's going to be. What's the Chinese proverb? May you live in interesting times. Yes, we're getting that these are going to be. These are going to be interesting times. This again, the US Chose the time of this fight and I am quite skeptical that we are prepared for it.

[Krystal Ball]

I just wanna say these people all suck. I mean, they all suck. Everyone sucks, Every part of this sucks. And it's the reason they don't have the. I'm sorry, I just don't. I can't give moral high ground to Mark Carney and Gavin Newsom on this or to a lot of Trump's critics on this. I don't think anybody has the moral high ground because the reason we know this, but the reason Donald Trump is President United States again, is that the system is not working. This is not working for average Americans. If you ask people in Canada that probably tell you the same thing. Yes. People in the uk, they'll tell you the system isn't working for average Brits. It's all broken and they fucking broke it. These people broke it and now they're the they want.

[Public Ad Read]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member finra SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosure [e-mail] Disclosures hey, this is.

[Krystal Ball]

US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services LLC, Equal Housing Lender and Amazon MLSID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.

[Orangetheory Fitness Ad Read]

Ready to change your Life for just $2 a day, Orangetheory Fitness delivers one hour workouts that combine strength and cardio to help you burn fat, build muscle and feel unstoppable. Right now, get a full month of unlimited classes for just $62. Don't wait. This offer ends soon. Visit orangetheory.com or your local studio and start your transformation today. Offer ends January 31, 2026. New members only. Premier membership performance monitor and monthly billing required. Discount applies to first month only. Other terms apply. C Studio for details.

[Krystal Ball]

Us to trust them to fix it and we don't really have any other option.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, I started in politics, fighting against globalization. Yeah in the late 1990s, early 2000s. I didn't know that Donald Trump would be the ally that would take us into the castle and deliver us this victory.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes. It tastes so sweet, doesn't it?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Sure does.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Disaster, disaster. When we, I mean, every Davos feels the same, like, it feels like the exact same thing. But this one will probably, if you're, if you're looking for turning point moments in the history of Davos, the. To the extent we'll remember this one as something on its own, it probably is. I think Carney is right and Trump would probably agree with him that this is a moment of rupture and that this is a. We've entered a new era, which we probably arguably entered it in 2016. But maybe not to your point that Trump didn't have the same power and will that he seems to have now. Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And the opponents of globalization were arguing that the chief problems with it was that it was driving down wages for people all over the world. Like the race to the bottom, when it came to breaking unions, hurt the workers in third world countries, and then it also hurt the middle class back in the United States. It was undermining democracy and sovereignty, that these globalized institutions were unaccountable to regular people. And also it was destroying the planet on which we rest. So I'm not so sure that Trump holds any of those values, whether it comes to dignity for workers, sovereignty for countries, or respect for the planet. So Trump may have defeated globalization, but what replaces it could be a much darker set of forces.

[Krystal Ball]

We'll be covering all of it in the near future.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Sure will.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's turn to Donald Trump marking his first year back in office and take a look at the polling. We mentioned this earlier, but Donald Trump gave a. Ryan was referring to it as a longing because it's not. It wasn't a briefing. It was a longing. At the White House yesterday, I was there for this. Donald Trump announced at the last minute, the White House announced at the last minute that he would be joining the press briefing that day. And let's just say it was all Donald Trump for what, like two hours? It went on forever. He was reading off a list of 365 accomplishments that the White House handed out to reporters ahead of time. A stapled kind of packet of 365 accomplishments for 365 days. Obviously, Trump was there to mark his one year anniversary back in office. It was January 20th, so it was exactly a year to the day since his second inauguration. And friend of the show, Philip Wegman from RealClearPolitics, got this question in. Let's take a listen. You promised during your second inaugural to.

[Ray Dalio]

Always put America first.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I'm curious, how would you winning the.

[Krystal Ball]

Nobel Peace Prize improve the lives of average, everyday Americans?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Why is this prize so important?

[Donald Trump]

It wouldn't improve the lives of any.

[Saagar Enjeti]

What.

[Donald Trump]

What improved the lives of people are people that are living. I saved probably tens of millions of lives in the wars. You know, if you add up the numbers, just, just, if you look at, if you look at any one of those wars, you're talking about millions of people. You multiply it times times eight. But when you look at India and Pakistan, that could have been 10, 15, 20 million people could have been more than that. So I saved millions of people. So that, to me is the big thing.

[Krystal Ball]

So that question comes amidst polling. We can put the CNBC or this NBC News tear sheet up on the screen that shows Donald Trump actually struggling on marks from voters when it comes to the economy. So just reading a little bit from this report. Quote, Trump closed out his first term in 2020 with majorities approving of how he handled the economy, even as he went on to lose that to Biden. But they continue to say during the first few months of Trump's current term, his approval rating on the economy hovered in the mid-40s, though it has since dropped several points. This piece notes an AP newc survey conducted January 8 through 11 found 37% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the economy, while a Reuters IPSO survey conducted January 12 through 13 found his economic approval rating at 34%, while 30% approved of his handling of inflation. The Wall Street Journal found those ratings slightly higher. 44% approval on the. And 41% on inflation and rising prices. I wouldn't even call that slightly higher. That's a pretty big difference between the Journal, which is saying 44% approval on the economy, and 34 from Reuters, 37 from AP. That's a pretty big gap. It seems like the Journal poll might be the outlier on that Ryan. It's where Republicans think he's most vulnerable. Where they think they're most vulnerable going into the midterm cycle. Is that again, he's out at Davos today. He's talking about Greenland, he's talking about Canada. And they are begging the White House to focus on, quote, affordability, which Trump. What does he call it now? A hoax.

[Saagar Enjeti]

A hoax.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. They're begging the. They're doing everything they can to try to get the White House's attention on the economy. And that's actually why Trump is going to Davos. He was supposed to be giving a big speech on the economy, but now it's going to be heavily dominated by Greenland. The big picture abstract question of hegemony and war.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And we're going to talk about this in the next segment. But the, the assault on Greenland is hurting the American economy. It is the thing that, combined with trying to prosecute the Fed chair that is driving the stock market sell off and driving mortgage rates up, driving interest rates up, driving uncertainty in the economy. We'll show some charts so we can get into that later. So it's not just that people are hurting and he's refusing to focus on their, the economic pain that they're feeling and trying to make it better. It's not just that. It's that the adventures that he's having around the world are making it even worse. So it had, so it, like the whole thing feeds into itself. And then all day long we're like, you know, bracing for the next human rights abuse to come out of Minneapolis or now they're in Portland and Lewiston, Maine, because that's what the whole country was demanding that we do, send ICE into Maine to start rounding people up. And so we're just expecting to see people getting dragged out of their cars, a woman shot in Minneapolis, instead of what he said he was gonna do when he was elected, which is get prices down. That's what he said he was gonna do.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, actually, on that note, let's put these immigration poll numbers up on the screen before this is to the point that Ryan was just making more from this NBC report. They say Trump's aggressive promises on immigration and border security were a centerpiece of his campaign, too. But Americans broad ratings on his handling of immigration in particular have declined since he took office. Polling last month from Fox and AP Nork still found Trump with a slim majority approval rating on border security. But he fares worse when respondents are asked about immigration as a separate issue. And Ryan, to those of us who follow this, and probably a lot of our listeners and viewers, what is happening in Minneapolis and cities around the country, The Trump administration's immigration crackdown is not exactly surprising. I mean, I'm not surprised at all by what we're seeing. But if you heard Donald Trump out on the campaign trail talking about mass deportations and just returning to some border security, and the other option is Kamala Harris, and immigration is something you care about, it might not have been obvious that immigrant, his approach, the immigration issue was going to look like this. Exactly that. It was going to be. And so I think, you know, to the extent that he's struggling on this, here's NBC News writes, quote, Trump's approval on immigration across a handful of polls conducted by CBSUgov, Fox News and Quinnipiac in the final month of 2025 came in around the mid-40s, so higher than the economy, while the Wall Street Journal poll came in at 48% higher. Again in early January, polling from CNN and AP Newark, conducted largely after a an ICE officer fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, found Trump's approval ratings on immigration at 42% and 38% respectively. But he was hanging over that 50% mark a lot of points during the year prior. And so it's a little bit of a slump right now for him. And I wonder if that's the explanation, that there's a expectation versus reality gap of people being uncomfortable with what the enforcement level looks like from the Trump administration.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, and I think this is one of those, like, shocking versus surprising things. And because I had the privilege of getting to be on this show, I was getting my news about what Trump was going to do from you and Sager and so not surprised. And, you know, watches rallies and he talks a lot about immigration. So I'm not surprised that he's doing this crackdown. The way that they're carrying out is still shocking, even if you expect it to come. Like, just to see these thugs roaming American streets behaving the way they are is just shocking to the American conscience. This papers please mentality being brought from Germany over to the United States and being foisted on lots of American citizens, it's just shocking. So it makes sense, though, when people say, well, I approve of his handling of the border because the border is secure. We're not seeing the waves of people come across like we did in the Biden administration. But immigration overall, this thing where you've got these masked ICE agents thoroughly disrespecting the Bill of Rights, the thing that the right even itself was warning about for decades, that we're going to have these armed federal agents that are going to go around asking you for your papers and disrespecting your civil liberties, that combined with the you can't buy a home, prices aren't coming down, you know, like that, I think is contributing to his, like, extraordinary unpopularity.

[Krystal Ball]

So speaking of ICE in particular, NBC notes that, quote, polling From Quinnipiac found 57% of registered voters disapproved of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws broadly. So that's a higher number than when you're asking about Trump. And CNN found that 51% of adults said ICE enforcement is making American cities less safe, while 31% said the enforcement is making cities safer.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So pretty hard to get a plus 20 on any contentious issue in the United States.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and I'll actually add, in a country that is fairly supportive both of legal immigration but also of enforcement. Right. Is supportive in the abstract at least, of, quote, mass deportations. That actually, I think is one of the things that Media folks in D.C. were surprised over the last year or two, especially during the campaign. You'll remember this to see showing up in polls, a majority of Americans saying, yeah, mass deportations. We do support mass deportations. Not surprising if you look at the numbers of the largest surge in immigration since Ellis Island. As David Leonhardt wrote at the New York Times, that you're going to get a response like that from the public. But to see when you ask about ICE in particular, this was a January poll, too. It wasn't a December poll. So January, as all of this is going on January 13th, that's a question that Republicans in purple districts, and those are the ones that are on the bubble of some of them, even if they're going to run again. But those are the Republicans that are going to get a whole lot of questions about this sort of thing. And to the point, I mean, I was watching Trump's interview with Katie Pavlich on News Nation last night. He said he wants to be remembered as a great president. That's if you have already 57% of voters saying they disapprove of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws. You're leaning into that. That's definitely legacy stuff.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. And that's without, and I've talked about this before, that's without a serious external crisis hitting him. You could know that the California fires kind of started before he was president. I wouldn't even count those. Right. We're about to get an ice storm all across the Southeast, which could be like basically the first major external crisis hitting him. He hasn't had. He hasn't really had. If you go through the history of the presidents, you get like, you know, George W. Bush, you got Katrina or 9, 11, these external shocks that kind of, you then either have, you know, you respond to them and you are heralded for your response, or you break in the face of them or, you know, it exposes some of the problems that you like that are inherent in your approach to the presidency. He hasn't had any of that. He's had stable prices. He's had an unemployment rate that was declining, coming in a fairly strong economy that by just giving body blow after body blow to it with his tariffs are on, tariffs are off. I'm prosecuting the Fed. I'm doing this like he has like single handedly rattled a decent economy, but otherwise there hasn't like the only external shock has been Trump himself. And you know, we'll see how the ice storm unfolds. Maybe that will end up being, you know, catastrophic enough to get his attention, but probably not.

[Krystal Ball]

We have actually his foreign policy numbers as well. We can put B5 up on the screen. This is more from that NBC report which just took a look at all of the recent polling. A very helpful thing to do as we hit the one year mark. Overall, quote, his approval rating on foreign policy has hovered around 40% in recent polling, a slight decline from the mid-40s at the start of his term. More broadly, a late October NBC News poll found that 53% of registered voters said his administration has fallen short of their expectations on foreign policy, while 44% said it's lived up to expectations. And a new CNN poll found that 57% of adults think that Trump's foreign policy decisions have hurt America's standing in the while 31% said they've helped. Now Ryan, I remember a lot in the first Trump term polling going one direction, media narratives going in one direction. Russia being a good example, Immigration actually being another really good example. This feels very similar to what happened when the kids in cages narrative exploded. That was like the summer of 2017, 2018 somewhere around there.

[Saagar Enjeti]

18. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

And what ends up happening or at least what ended up happening then? Obviously his term ended with COVID but his approval ratings before COVID hit the economy was pretty strong. His approval ratings were okay. And it shouldn't be taken as license by Democrats to go back. And it's interesting cuz you're seeing the whole abolish ICE and you and I disagree on this, but you're seeing Zohra Momdani, we have this later in the show, him talking about abolish ICE and it's not just about immigration. It's about issues across the board. He benefits a lot from the reaction from Democrats. It's not this polling isn't an approval rating like disapproving with Trump doesn't disapproving of Trump doesn't equate to approving of a particular Dem policy or a particular reaction.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We'll see. It might end up being different this time because in 2018, there was kids in cages, and the kids were not being. Kids were being treated terribly. And there was this child separation policy that was new. Obama had put families in cages. He hadn't had it. Didn't have a child separation policy, and we hit Obama for it. So don't get out of the. Get out of here with your.

[Krystal Ball]

The media at large, I would say, did not.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right, Exactly. Media large. That's fine.

[Krystal Ball]

Ryan Grim.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

But me, you can always count on this guy.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And, you know, Huffington Post, we were, we, like, worked with some Breitbart reporters at the time.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Because Breitbart at the time, not a fan of the way that migrants were being treated down on the border. They've kind of dropped some of that coverage since then.

[Krystal Ball]

But.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So at the time, the Abolish ICE movement was a kind of way to try to take Trump's entire immigration policy and symbolize it into the entity of ice.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And then focus your ire on ice.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Today, when they say abolish ice, they mean it quite literally that it is a rogue agency that is whose agents are doing terrible things on the streets and it needs to be broken up. And it's enforcement mechanisms distributed to agencies that are not rogue. So it's gone from symbolic to, like, literal, like people. So when. And now when you poll.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Should you abolish ice, The American people. It's very close, and it's within the margin of error, but it's gone up. There's a plurality at least that say, yes, actually, abolish ICE and Democrats.

[Krystal Ball]

It's increasing with Democrats as well. But this is sort of. Exactly. It's a majority of Democrats. Yeah, but this is exactly. Kind of what I was remembering back from Trump. One is that it's similar to mass deportation. So you say you want mass deportations, and then here's what mass deportations look like in practice from the Trump administration. And people start disapproving of his handling of immigration. And then if you're at Dems, you say, okay, we have support for. From our party. There's a plurality of Americans for Abolish ice. Here's what Abolish ICE looks like in practice. Or here's what, from the first term, we have support for ending Trump's cruel, inhumane immigration policy. And here's what it looks like in practice. It looks like the Biden administration immigration policy. That's. That's all I was saying is that the tug of war there is. It's not. And I know Dems are kind of Coping with that right now. And Third Way is out there upset about the hashtag abolishice. But the politics and the policy are obviously sometimes separate.

[Saagar Enjeti]

A key difference here. Trump and ICE have lost the cops in Minnesota. Like sit down, buckle up. Cause this is an utterly striking press conference from police chiefs in Minnesota telling ice. Well listen to him.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, let's get to this.

[Minnesota Police Chief]

Recently as the last two weeks, we as law enforcement community have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from US Citizens. What we're hearing, they're being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause and being forced to demand paperwork to determine if they are here legally. As this went on over the past two weeks, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty. Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them. In Brooklyn park, one particular officer that shared her story with me was stopped as she passed ICE going down the roadway. When they boxed her in, they demanded her paperwork, of which she's a US Citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork. When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated, she pulled out her phone in an attempt to record the incident. The phone was knocked out of her hands, prevented her from recording it. The officer had their guns drawn during this interaction and after the officer became so concerned, they were forced to identify themselves as a Brooklyn park police officer in hopes of slowing the incident and de escalating the incident down. The agents then immediately left after hearing this, making no other comments, no other apologies, just got in their vehicles and left. I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident. In fact, many of the chiefs standing behind me have similar incidents with their off duty officers. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And that last line I think is really important that police chief found empathy with the citizens and the everyday people of the area. Said he said imagine if it's happening to us, to cops. God only knows what they're doing to regular people. Well, we do know because people like Will Stancil and so many others are out there filming it and letting us know.

[Krystal Ball]

I like how you said people like Will Stancil. So to be clear, this is three law enforcement officers. You saw them on your screen. This is the chief of the Brooklyn Park Police Department, the St. Paul Police Chief and then also the Hennepin County Sheriff.

[Public Ad Read]

Support for the show comes from Public the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures hey.

[Krystal Ball]

This is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services, LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.

[Orangetheory Fitness Ad Read]

Ready to change your Life. For just $2 a day, Orangetheory Fitness delivers one hour workouts that combine strength and cardio to help you burn fat, build muscle and feel unstoppable. Right now, get a full month of unlimited classes for just $62. Don't wait. This offer ends soon. Visit orangetheory.com or your local studio and start your transformation today. Offer ends January 31, 2026. New members only. Premier Membership Performance Monitor and monthly billing required. Discount applies to first month only. Other terms apply.

[Krystal Ball]

C Studio for details that's who you saw on the screen just now and that's who you realistically those are big.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Dogs in that area.

[Krystal Ball]

This is. You know you heard this quote. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think of how many of our community members are falling victim to this. Every day it has to stop. And they go on at one point to say that they don't even necessarily want ICE gone out of the city. They just want to find. I think the quote is common ground.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, exactly. They started that press conference. We didn't play this part. They started by saying, we're all for what ICE is doing. We have had respectful, collaborative working relationships with ICE in the past, although that's.

[Krystal Ball]

Tougher if you're the Hennepin County Sheriff because they've.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. So there are sanctuary policies that prevent them from turning over nonviolent undocumented people to ice, but they are allowed to work together on, you know, with violence, criminals who are undocumented, and whatever you want to say, like, these are cops who are saying that, like, look, we have a lot of respect for ice. We're not against the idea of immigration enforcement, but there's a way to go about it and there's a way not to go about it. And you're doing the not the way to go about it. Watching ICE go around brutalizing people on an hourly basis has done more to, I think, lift the public opinion of local police forces than anything in decades. People are like, oh, wow, like, okay, I'm not gonna be out here marching for our police. But they're downright civilized.

[Krystal Ball]

It creates a contrast.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. Like, wow. Turns out it can be a lot worse.

[Krystal Ball]

So let's look at Pramila Jayapal who says posted this Washington Post article. Quote, two men in ICE detention say they saw guards kill a fellow detainee. Now the Trump administration is trying deport the witnesses. This looks a lot like a cover up. We need an independent investigation. Now that's from Representative Jaya Paul. The piece is from the Washington Post. Ryan, it's an interesting story from the Post. The allegations are that Geraldo Lunas Campos.

[Saagar Enjeti]

At this the guy we covered last week.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And what's this detention facility? East Montana Campos in El Paso, in Fort Bliss. It's not actually in Montana. Right. But that he, the quote I'm reading this was engaged in a struggle with guards before his death. Flores. So this is Santos Jesus Flores, who is one of the witnesses Jayapal is referring to in her post on X, quote, claimed he saw guards choking Lunas Campos to death. The story is interesting.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Sounds impossible because according to dhs, he was trying to commit suicide.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. That's what they.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And the DHS officers intervened to try to save his life. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful and he committed suicide. So it couldn't be that there are witnesses that are telling a Different story than dhs, because dhs, whatever you want to say about them, they are at least honest narrators of their own actions. Right.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and one interesting point here is that's sarcasm. But one interesting point is the witnesses are saying he was claiming he needed medication and says he has asthma, but his family doesn't seem to know that he has asthma or doesn't seem to believe that he has asthma. But where this gets really tough for ICE is that a preliminary autopsy came back and said that he died by strangulation. So that's where it's going to get for ice. That is a pretty devastating. So this is on to the Post. An employee of El Paso County's Office of the Medical examiner had said in a recorded phone call that the office is likely to classify Lunas Campos death, death as a homicide, subject to the results of a toxicology report. The employee said a doctor there is, quote, listing the preliminary cause of death as asphyxia due to necks, neck and chest compression, which means Luna's compost did not get enough oxygen because of pressure on his neck and chest. So if that holds, that's devastating for the ICE narrative.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And yes, and fortunately for the country, we don't have to, like, sit around and figure out how to create a system to adjudicate situations like this. We have one. We charge people with crimes. We put them in front of a jury of peers. You have witnesses who testify to what they saw. You have toxicologists, and you have other doctors testify as to what they've seen. The people charged can testify in their own defense if they wish, or they have a Fifth Amendment right not to. And because we care so much about this system, we even created a thing called a U visa, which, if you are a witness to a crime in an ongoing investigation, you are entitled to what's called a U visa. And it's straightforward. Like, if all you need is the certification from prosecutors that you're a witness to a crime and you get a temporary U visa, which means you cannot be deported until the trial plays out. How is any of this complicated? Like, you cannot deport the witness who contradicts your claim that you did not kill this person like that. That is the most basic level of our justice system and approach to these cases.

[Krystal Ball]

So we can put the next element up on the screen. This is from Popular Information. Judd Leggum. ICE has stopped paying for detainee medical treatment. October. Yeah. Legum is reporting, quote, ICE halted payments in October and the situation will persist for at least several more months. What do you make of this report, Ryan?

[Saagar Enjeti]

They have, and we've talked about this in the past, more money in their budget than, than they will ever be able to spend. They cannot hire enough people and buy enough equipment to spend the amount of money that has been appropriated to them. ICE's budget is greater than all but like five militaries in the world or something like that. Like, that's how much money they have. This is not about not having the money to pay your third party medical providers. This is about immiserating and in some cases, killing the people that are in your custody. There's no other way to see this.

[Krystal Ball]

So this is from, like him. He says ISIS failure to pay its bills for months has caused some medical providers to deny services to ICE detainees. So that's. It's not just a matter of the payments haven't been made, it's that the payments aren't being made. I mean, to Ryan's point, quote, administration source who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press told Popular Information this bit. And quote, in other cases, Legum writes, detainees have allegedly been denied essential medical care by ice. Yeah, I mean, that's a. I haven't seen this report elsewhere. You'll expect. I will expect this to get picked up and not just on, you know, substacks, but like you would expect this to be on NBC and abc.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, it could get as well sourced there. They could maybe get this and hey, if they've paid the bills, you know, post the invoice.

[Krystal Ball]

That's not to risk of substack at all, by the way, either. That's just to say that. I was trying to say that it's. The momentum builds and it becomes a point where.

[Saagar Enjeti]

No shade here.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, but in the. Actually speaking of shade, in the shade of media reports, you can kind of get away with funny business like that. So that's. I would expect that to become probably more of an issue for ice. Although when you have alleged illegal immigrants detained, then it's not a particularly sympathetic group. It's just like the entire conversation about prisoners not being entirely sympathetic. It's politically not a huge winner for Democrats to make a big deal of ICE detainees. It's, you know, obviously a human rights issue, but it's not politically going to be a big winner. So maybe it doesn't end up ever getting that momentum. They say these payments can't be processed until April. That's what it says on the website. Until April 30, 2026. Until then, like I'm Right. Medical providers are instructed to hold all claims submissions.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Insane. One man that is standing up this. And I feel no sympathy for ice because ICE knew ahead of time, they have an entire intelligence arm that Will Stancil was in Minneapolis. If there's one thing everyone on the Internet knows is that Will Stancil is in Minneapolis. And ICE decided to make their stand in Minneapolis anyway, despite the presence of.

[Public Ad Read]

Will Stancl, is what you're saying.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And look what they're getting. Somebody posted footage the other day of ICE was like, grabbing somebody. They're like, wait a minute. Is that Will Stancil right in the background there? He was right next to the cop. He's been posting some footage, too, from his Honda Fit.

[Krystal Ball]

He's on the case.

[Saagar Enjeti]

What he's doing and we can roll this, I don't know. Well, I think it's a start. Let's roll this, and then we can explain what he's doing. Here's the great Will Stan. I got six cars in Conway behind me, so who knows what's about to happen here?

[Krystal Ball]

Keep going, buddy.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's my home. Get out. I won't do that.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm following you. I have a constitutional right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I know you know where I live. I don't care. You go home. Where are you from? You arrest me for following, you may.

[Krystal Ball]

As well just do it, because I'm gonna keep doing it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I have a right to do this, or I don't. If I don't, you should arrest me right now. And if I do, stop doing this weird crap. So if you don't kind of live in the bowels of the Internet.

[Krystal Ball]

Yep.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Will Stancil is a liberal who first rose to kind of Twitter prominence, fighting with leftists like yours truly attacked me constantly. He then started going after these white nationalists and driving them as completely insane as he drove the left insane earlier. Then the right made an AI.

[Krystal Ball]

I forgot about that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

There's a series out there. I watched one or two episodes. They're fairly well done. Just as a piece of entertainment, shockingly, because it's like the first, like, AI created series with Will Stancil as, like, the, like, mock superhero character.

[Krystal Ball]

Couldn't have happened to a better guy.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He ran for State House, I think Minnesota lost, regrettably. But whatever you can say about him, he's not. You can't say. He doesn't put his money where his mouth is. He has been relentlessly tracking Ice around the city. And what he has said is that the reason it's so important to do this is not Just to make a scene, but that when ICE grabs somebody, he said, what? So he follows them all day long. So he has like a view of not just what they do when the crowds around, but when the crowds are not around. What they do is they, he says they look for people with darker skin who are by themselves. They pull over, grab them and put them in the van, like in a matter of seconds. And then they figure out from there at that point, is this person a citizen? Are they not? Did we arrest the wrong person? And so what Will said he and the other activists are doing is before they get the guy into the van, they'll shout, or the woman, what is your name? Who are you?

[Krystal Ball]

You?

[Saagar Enjeti]

And if you don't get their name, according to Will, then they're just gone. Like they are just into the system. And wherever they were going, the people are like, where's Steve? Like, Steve said he'd be here by five. He's not here. Call the hospitals, call the police, nothing. There's no calling ICE and finding out. Like it's going to take you, if you, For a lot of these people, they're deported before you even figure out where they went. And so from Will's perspective, it's so important to follow them around just to like, because if you don't catch that name, the person just disappears. And so despite all our beef in the past, critical support to Will, he's, you know, he's really, he's landed on the line. So good for him. There's nothing more American to me than exercising your rights in the most obnoxious way possible. That is truly American.

[Krystal Ball]

But the background that you gave is actually, I think, helpful to the context here, which is that Stencil rose to prominence on the online left or in the sphere of the online left, but hating the left, he was going after the left. And here you have Will Stancil himself in a car, honking, doing the ICE watch. That I think is in and of itself a statement on where the left is going towards right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And he would say that there's nothing contradictory or inconsistent about that, that he believes in a robust liberalism that is anti fascist, that stands up for all of the rights of the Constitution and that the left is sometimes not even supportive of some of those rights that are in the Constitution. And also they're an electoral liability because nobody likes them. And you can lump the Democratic Party in with the far left and it hurts them. That's his view on this. But he has hated the right and what it stands for passionately since. Ever since I've known him, he just kind of thought the left was an obstacle to him fighting the right. But, yeah, here he is, man, like, man, a man of the people. A man of the people in his Honda fit, ripping around Minneapolis. Just. He's not letting these guys get away.

[Krystal Ball]

So we can put the next element up on the screen. This is a New York Times report from Miami finding that a record number of Cubans have been deported. Cubans in Florida have been deported. Quote, to their shock, Cubans in Florida are being deported in record numbers. Now, to be fair, the repatriation under Donald Trump is like 1600 Cubans. That's according to the Cuban government in 2025. But even that 1600 number is, quote, double the number of Cubans who were repatriated in 2024. There was a big wave of Cubans going through, like, flying to Venezuela, going up through the Darien Gap, up through Mexico. I talked to a couple of them who had done this after the July protests somewhat.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Fly to just Nicaragua or.

[Krystal Ball]

Yep, yeah, yeah, after the July. What was the July 11th protest? 2021. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. So getting on flights, that costs a ton of money. A ton. Like, if I'm remembering correctly, one of the people I talked to said it was like 11 grand for the whole thing and not a, like, luxurious trip at all. It was like 11 grand to make your way through the Darien Gap and sit at the border in shelters for months, just hoping could get in. But that's where for Republicans traditionally it's been. You could just touch American soil.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And if you're, if you're Cuban. Yeah, and Venezuelan, for that matter.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, and Venezuelan. But that's different now. There was again, a big, big, big wave of Cuban and Venezuelan immigration, especially Cubans after 2021. So that's what this is in reaction to, but definitely a changed time right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Now for immigration policy. And none of this had to happen. Like, Obama normalized relations with Cuba in 2015. Like, we could have just, we could have just left it at that. Obama was like, okay, we've been doing this 50 year embargo. Like, enough. Like, what are we gonna do? We're not threatened by Cuba. They're not gonna invade us.

[Krystal Ball]

The Cuban government could have also not beaten people in the streets in 2021. Well, the.1 of the people I talked to had.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The American government could not beat people in the streets two days.

[Krystal Ball]

Like, yeah, I mean, that doesn't have anything to do with. Yes, both true. Yes, yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But right. Like, there's Also a relationship between come sanctions and embargo and liberalization.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The more pressure you put on a government, the less room they have to engage in political reforms. That doesn't justify the crackdown, but it's a factor in it.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. I don't disagree.

[Saagar Enjeti]

If you want, want. And the same is true with liberalizing and opening up markets more in Cuba, that would create some problems with people who are getting supports in the first couple of weeks, maybe even months. And so you need some political cushion in order to pull off those reforms. But if you don't have any political cushion, you're just going to keep the same sclerotic system going forever. So as soon as Trump came in, he reinstituted sanctions and embargo. Biden was awful on it. And Trump has been even worse since then. And you've had something like a third of the population leave in just like five years or so. Like, if you look at, there was, there were some protests after Maduro's ouster. If you looked at footage of the crowds, very few of you young people in the crowd, Anybody in their 20s, 30s, late teens has that can. And that's, you know, and they're allowed, you're allowed to leave. So they just leave. And so they've. And only maybe 10, 15% have come to the US like they're flooding South America, South America, Central America as well.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. To the point where there's a similar discourse on immigration in places like Chile and other South American countries.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, yeah. And Colombia is stacked with Venezuelans too. Right? Yes. And it didn't have to happen. Like, and we can talk about Iran too. Like we had the nuclear deal. Like, what are we doing? Why are we doing all this? Who are we doing this for?

[Krystal Ball]

Let's take a look here at C6. This is a 60 Minutes report speaking.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Of DHS and its accuracy.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, let's go ahead and roll this.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Ran in the after show, not the real show.

[Krystal Ball]

So this is. Yeah. So I'll just read the tweet before I roll the video. 60 Minutes posted. Chris Parente, lawyer for a Chicago woman who was shot by a Border Patrol agent in October, showed 60 Minutes new video evidence that's that he says contradicts the claim that the agents were, quote, boxed in by 10 cars. Quote, I don't see 10 people and I certainly don't see anybody in front of him. Parente said, let's rule the clause. DHS released a statement saying that their agents were boxed in by 10 cars. They couldn't move. What does the video that you obtained from our surveillance camera show there was.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Nobody in front of this agent. If he simply wanted to move forward on the street in the direction he was going, he could have continued on. It shows there's nobody to the left of his vehicle.

[Krystal Ball]

Why don't you play the video as you've got it set up and kind of walk me through what we see.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Okay, so this construction barrier that you see here, that is where eventually you're gonna see the hood of the agent's car stop.

[Krystal Ball]

You see the front of the car?

[Saagar Enjeti]

You see the front? That is the front of the agent's car. The, quote, ramming has just happened. And right now, the agent is opening his driver's side door. He's jumping out, and within two seconds, according to a stopwatch, he's shooting his gun five times. So now you'll see Miramar's car sort of come out of bend. So she's in the far left lane. She goes towards the curb, away from the agents, and then comes back.

[Mark Carney]

Nobody else.

[Krystal Ball]

There's no evidence of 10 people, a caravan anywhere.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I don't see 10 people, and I. I certainly don't see anybody in the lane in front of him. Why can he not go forward?

[Krystal Ball]

Court proceedings also uncovered text messages from agent Exum. In one exchange with fellow agents, he appeared to brag about the shooting, writing, quote, I fired five rounds and she had seven holes. Put that in your book, boys. Body camera footage discussed in court also revealed that an agent in Exum's car, while holding a weapon, said, do something, bitch. Seconds later, Agent Exum opened fire. So that is in reference to the case of Marmar Martinez. This is from October 4th and the run up to it. I'm reading again from the 60 Minutes report. She said she noticed an unusual vehicle on the road when she was driving to church. It had no plates, a light under the windshield with a lyft logo, and a driver that was wearing green camouflage. Martinez and American citizen honked her horn and shouted la migra. A Spanish word used among members of Latino community to identify immigration officers. She said she followed the car for about 20 minutes, alerting nearby residents by honking and shouting while live streaming on Facebook. And that's when things took a dramatic turn. And that's where the video picked up. Ryan. Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so then, according to DHS, I think it was Trish McLaughlin special again. 10 cars boxed in this agent and rammed the vehicle. Completely fabricated. The guy just got out. So this is of the two high profile cases of women being shot in their cars. By ICE agents. Both have been called the B word. Renee Goode was called that after shot was killed. Although she was still alive before they, you know, she had a pulse for another eight minutes, but they prevented her from getting medical treatment. This woman was called it right before he tried to kill her and then brags that he shot her five times and put, put quote seven holes in her. That's because she was probably instinctively covering, protecting herself with her. With her bare hands. So congratulations, you tough guy. You shot an unarmed woman who tried to protect herself with her bare hands and you managed to put a bullet through her arm that also then went into her body. And then she managed to live like an absolute, absolute miracle.

[Krystal Ball]

She did actually have a gun in her purse, but she wasn't able to get to it. Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. She did actually have a gun in her purse. She said she wasn't able to get to it in time, but she has it because she lives on the south side of Chicago is what she said. Said.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So one of these cops, and I want to, I'm curious how y' all are going to respond to this. One of these cops is going to get shot.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I think it's absolutely true. And it's. But that's because.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And it will be in self defense. And then, and then where's the back, the blue versus the stand your ground types? How are you going to handle that?

[Krystal Ball]

This is what's frustrating to me because one of the things that we disagree on, and I would certainly disagree with Martinez on this, is is following ICE agents with your car for 20 minutes and honking incessantly is interfering with their ability to do their job. That's the entire point of the protest, civil disobedience. If you're, you know, I don't think that necessarily crosses into breaking the law, but it's not helping the situation. Obviously the goal of it is to ensure that people don't get picked up, potentially American citizens. I get it. Whatever else, I think a lot of this comes from people who just blankly want or categorically want pathway to citizenship for people who are here. They don't want non violent criminals to be deported. And I completely disagree with that. And most of the American people completely disagree with that. So if you want to get arrested as an act of civil disobedience, own it. Say I'm getting arrested as an act of civilian.

[Saagar Enjeti]

As you acknowledge, it's not a crime.

[Krystal Ball]

No, not yet. No, no, not yet. But that's what I'm Saying it's building to something that we already saw what happened with Renee Goode. It's building to something that I think is going to get even uglier. And I think everybody senses and everybody is kind of unsettled by that. And I'm not at all just blaming the ICE watchers. I'm saying, when you're looking at, as we just saw those clips of cops, cops in Minneapolis saying they want to come back to a place of common ground with ice, it's. Yeah, I think it's a. We're seeing the beginning of something that could get even worse.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, I hope we're seeing the end of it. Think about what you learn in elementary school about what the United States is. The consent of the governed is required for the government to have legitimacy. Like, that is the basis on which we overthrew the British. That is the basis on which we built the United States. The consent of the governed, of the people, by the people, for the people. You know, who doesn't get horns honked at them and constantly harassed walking up and down the street, even though they've complained about they don't get enough respect. Local police forces, cops who drive through a neighborhood or are walking a beat are not surrounded by groups of people honking at them and telling them to go home.

[Krystal Ball]

I think they would be if they were deporting people, which is what they.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Would be if they were doing things that the governed do not consent to. So ICE has lost the people. It is not the people's fault. The people were here first. ICE is a government agency that is coming into these neighborhoods. They need to win over the community. We're here first. And also we are the. We like. We are the ones that govern ourselves in a democracy. And if you want to, you know, if you want to be a law enforcement agency in a democracy, you need the support of the people. You can't do. This is not Vietnam. We're going to go in, just mow down the villagers and burn the village in order to save it. Like, you have to actually win hearts and minds, not the fake way.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I mean, then I think activists should also police themselves. When people are throwing stuff at the ICE officers and touching the ICE officers standing in front of cars.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Don't do crimes. Don't assault them.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. Well, I just, I say that because I do genuinely worry about things getting even worse and more dangerous. I think we all worry about that. My sense is that to your point about, is this the end of a bad situation? I just think it's the opposite. I think it feels to me like something is continuing to build because, yeah, I don't know, I just have a bad feeling about it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Might be. But there's 20,000 of them. There's more than 300 million of us. So they're going to have to. If they insist on doing this by force rather than through consent, then yes, they're going to have to bring a lot more force. But I hope that they would try to go the consent route.

[Krystal Ball]

At cvs, it matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night, and we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It matters that CVS is here to.

[Krystal Ball]

Fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At cvs, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So Visit [e-mail] or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This is Julian Edelman from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jewels. Sunday mornings I've got my game day ritual. Coffee, lucky socks and now new Morning Uncrustable sandwiches.

[Ray Dalio]

It's all about that 12 gram protein boost with the new uncrustables Bright Eyed.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Berry or Up and apple flavors. Bright Eye Berries got a feisty receiver energy up an apple.

[Ray Dalio]

Your classic do it all tight end.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Soft pillowy, packed with protein and easy enough for Gronk to grab from the freezer.

[Ray Dalio]

Whether you're on the couch, driving to the tailgate or heading to the locker room, New Morning Uncrustable sandwiches are the MVP of snacks.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Your new Sunday kickoff ritual starts here. Beer with new Morning Uncrustable sandwiches packed with 12 grams of protein. Janice Torres here and I'm Austin Hankwitz. We host the podcast Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks. We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners.

[Mark Carney]

The big thing about working at tech is that it's ever evolving, ever changing.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Everyone's a robot. That's how fast the industry is changing. So what I'm really excited about is.

[Mark Carney]

To be part of that change.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Guaranteed Human.