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- [00:00]
Andrew Rager
Hi. Welcome to the Bulwark. I'm Andrew Rager, joined here by our congressional reporter, Joe Perdicone, to talk a little bit about the Trump administration's latest iteration of its favorite hobby these days, which is sort of threatening, sort of vaguely, to have people that they don't like, critics, people in the way obstacles criminally investigated and, or imprisoned. And the latest instance of this has been happening the last few days with the Trump administration's quote, unquote, border czar, Tom Homan, the guy who, the guy who the President has brought in to sort of supervise his mass deportation plans, his plans to reshape the federal immigration, illegal immigration enforcement system in general. He has been sparring in recent days with Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York. AOC has been a fly in the ointment, maybe you could say, of the mass deportation plans, because she has been spending a lot of her time doing things like posting educational resources for people who come in contact with ice. Basically know your rights type stuff. You know, just kind of educating people on what you do if ICE comes to your door, what you, what you are obligated by the law to do, what you aren't obligated by the law to do. They need a warrant, for instance, to enter your home, have them slide the warrant under the door, that kind of thing. Tom Homan has been pretty unhappy about all of this. He, he's been going on Fox News a few times over the last couple weeks, and a couple times just yesterday, essentially to say, you know, we don't love that. She's, she's, you know, trying to frustrate our efforts to round up illegal immigrants. And we think, you know, at what point, at what point he's kind of just asking questions. At what point does that tip over the line into essentially, you know, criminal interference with, with our, with our work? And he's essentially said that he has asked the Department of Justice to look into this question, just to basically say, well, you look, I mean, maybe, maybe she's breaking the law. We're trying to get to the bottom of that. We're trying to figure it out. She might be in a little bit of trouble, is something he said.
- [01:55]
Joe Perdicone
She wants to go out and say she's teaching people the constitutional rights. Yeah, you can call it that. We all know what she's up to. I'm sure a free speech argument could be made. Okay. She has every right to say anything she wants. When does it cross a line into aiding and abetting, law breaking? Would it have to have direct involvement by her in helping people to evade ice. That's exactly the question I posed to the deputy Attorney General. I asked him to look into it. I said, I know through my career, someone steps in front of you between you and the person you're arresting or repeating, yeah, that's a violation. But at what point do you cross the line on saying you're educating people versus you're teaching them how to evade ICE Wrestle?
- [02:35]
Andrew Rager
So, Joe, let me just, let me just start. Let me just ask you. I mean, what do you make of this? I mean, like, what on, on the, on its face, what's AOC trying to do here? She's obviously how she been responding to this stuff, what's going on?
- [02:45]
Unnamed Analyst
So I think there's kind of two components to it. One, Tom Homan is a professional yapper. That's part of the reason why he was hired. He goes on Fox, he used to be a contributor at Fox, and he goes on these networks and he just says whatever comes to mind. And if that's, oh, we're going to investigate this, that's just him being tough, which is what Trump likes out of his officials. Not really their actions, but their words. The other component is that it's very much an intimidation tactic. And while people might think, oh, well, that doesn't work on aoc, and it obviously has not, I know for a fact that this kind of instruction of like, how to act, how to behave if they do show up, that's being talked about in local governments, it's being talked about in local businesses, small businesses that maybe employ some of the people who either are undocumented or might be targets of ice, even if they are documented or are citizens even. And so the intimidation aspect of it spreads far beyond AOC and far beyond any member of Congress. It's not illegal to give broadly legal advice like that. She's not acting in a lawyer capacity, but people are being briefed on these kinds of things. And if they see, you know, someone in the administration saying, well, you, you could face criminal prosecution or an investigation because just an investigation can bankrupt someone in legal fees. It. It's more of an intimidation tactic across the board to the other people who might be tuning in. So I think that's the more serious element of this in terms of how AFC is handling it. She's handling it like normal people should, by not backing down in any way, by saying, actually, I could say whatever I want because I'm an American. And B, you know, it's not illegal to know what your Rights are, know what the laws are. Even if you're not a US Citizen, you still have rights. And being informed of that or informing others of that is not a crime. But it's apparently enough to warrant this intimidation effort.
- [04:53]
Andrew Rager
Yeah, that's the thing that's been, been so striking to me and especially just because, you know, I sort of remember a time when, when there was this sort of broad like, quote unquote conservatarian alliance inside of like Republican politics where there was like a real, a real, you know, there's always like a very strong like, respect the police back the blue, you know, sort of respect for authority thing within conservatism, but also like this very kind of strong libertarian streak of like, know your rights, don't let the cops push you around. You know, just because, just because they're, you know, you're have, you're in a, in a, you know, just because you are in an interaction with law enforcement doesn't mean that you, you know, need to, you know, listen to every single thing they say. Like, like, like you have rights in that situation as well. And educating people on knowing what those are, knowing how to behave and things like that was like kind of broadly speaking a thing that you could see in sort of right coded circles. And that's sort of the astonishing thing to me about all this as well is that that's just so absent at this point. I mean, you have Homan basically out there saying like, well, you know, look, she says she's just educating people, but we're just going after criminals. And you know, she's making our work and going after criminals harder. And like, isn't that kind of illegal maybe and criminal maybe? Well, no, I mean, like, that's every, every law enforcement agency in the world conceptualizes themselves as going after criminals. And that doesn't mean you have to, you know, make that perfectly easy for them in every single way according to the law. So that's, that's, that's a striking thing to me. I mean, I found it very interesting every time Tom Homan, you know, goes on Fox and bad mouths her and suggests that the law might be coming for her and she reposts the clip. Yesterday she wrote go ahead, essentially saying, daring him essentially to get the DOJ to investigate her on this. Let the people see you for what you are. That really stood out to me because we are always having these conversations about what should Democrats be doing, what should elected Democrats be doing to kind of respond to this moment because their wings are so clipped, they've been thrown out of power everywhere. They don't control the, the House or the Senate or the presidency or the supreme court in Washington, D.C. if you're an elected Democrat, you kind of are a messenger. A messenger. And that's kind of all that you can do except gum things up procedurally, essentially, and plan for the future. But this interaction was so striking to me because it really does seem like one thing that elected Democrats can do, which is one, stand their ground in the face of the bullies. But also, she's not just standing her ground. I mean, she's kind of poking Homan in the eye, right? I mean, she's basically saying, like, hit me with your best shot. And at a time when these guys, from Trump on down, their main mission seems to be anytime anybody gets mad at them, swinging at them with the full force of government, I mean, she really is kind of putting a target on her own back. Right. I mean, she's kind of setting herself up as a person to potentially get kind of smacked down in an aggressive, over the line way by this administration in a way that then she can kind of take the case to the people and say, look, look at what's going on. You know, I'm just trying to educate people on their rights and the government is, is, you know, coming down on me with full force. And I mean, like, that's, that's a kind of a striking thing and not something that we're seeing necessarily from a lot of, a lot of congressional leaders and kind of a scary thing to do as well.
- [08:13]
Unnamed Analyst
Yeah, she's setting an example. So when I've looked at members of Congress and the way they've reacted to everything that's happened in the first several weeks of this administration, if you look at the leadership side of things, they're doing things like they'll introduce a bill saying this has to be prohibited. And that sort of comes across as ineffective because it's tacitly admitting, oh, well, this is already okay and we need to make it illegal. With aoc, she's more setting an example, saying, this isn't okay, this isn't legal, come pick on me, what are you going to do about it? And I think that's a lot more effective, especially in these areas where it's not as politically advantageous, like talking about egg prices. But when they're talking about, like, weaponized government, it's very effective to set the example for everyone else as opposed to just being like, we're gonna, you know, deliver so many floor speeches to stop this. She's taking it right away. She's doing it in real time on social media. And that's something that's really lacked from Democrats so far in this. And, you know, hats off to her for actually doing it.
- [09:29]
Andrew Rager
Yeah, yeah. And it's striking kind of from a, from a just messaging point of view as well. Right. Because, I mean, one of the kind of, through lines of a lot of these early kind of really disruptive actions that the Trump administration has been taking is that they are really kind of coming down very hard on a lot of kind of behind the scenes, sort of faceless people who have been just kind of quietly doing work on behalf of the country for their entire careers, people who do foreign aid abroad, people who work kind of thankless, quiet jobs in the bureaucracy to just kind of keep things running smoothly. And these are the people whose lives are being upended. And it's insane and it's cruel and it's illegal and wrong. But it's also, from a messaging point of view, kind of hard to make that case sometimes to people who are only sort of halfway paying attention, quarter paying attention, who are, who are not like, predisposed to be, like, sympathetic to just government bureaucrats. Right. I mean, where that. Where they basically see Elon Musk slashing and burning and it's kind of in the corner of their eye and they're like, oh, he's over there, you know, cleaning up the bureaucracy a little bit. And I think that from, from a messaging point of view, somebody like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez stepping forward, somebody who does have this kind of gigantic independent platform who's very notorious, who, who is, you know, she's, she's super well known on the left and the right kind of can't help paying attention to her either, because they just all hate her so much. And I just think, like, you know, if the question is, can you kind of like, shake America out of this lethargy that a lot, a lot of people are in at this moment, these are the kind of battles that, in theory, you could see making a difference. So I think it's. I think it's really striking that she's doing it. And like you said, I think it takes a lot of courage and is kind of a laudable thing. So. So we'll leave it there. Thanks, Joe, for coming on to chat about it a little bit. Thank you all for watching, and we'll see you next time.