Yeah, both. I came back with a cold. I'm not, I'm not meant for that, that climate. So it's even more inspiring that people are out there. Yeah, every day. Look, I, I kind of. Oh, I, I goofed in the way that I framed it. On the night of the first show, when I went, I went out there and said that, you know, when we had initially scheduled our trip to Minnesota, we are planning on it being there to be in support of people that were in the middle of a siege, you know, and that we wanted to be there. And we talked to Mayor Fry and one of the things he said is he wants people to come. It helps the economy, etc, and, you know, saw ourselves as like a, you know, whatever, like a support structure, giving people a night of warmth before they go back out into the streets. And, and then, you know, after Bavino left and, you know, the Trump and Homan seem seemingly back down. You know, I kind of said on Wednesday night instead, we're kind of in a, in a more of a valedictory place. And that was wrong. You know, it just was wrong. And I think that, you know, being outside of Minneapolis, that made sense because I do think it was a political victory, right? Like, you know, just as in a war there you have victories in the battlefield that don't necessarily yield victory in the war, you know, they, they had won the political battle there, right? Like, Donald Trump was forced to back down. And that's not nothing, you know, because he's not. There's been very few examples of that. We can kind of count the times that he's been forced to back down here in the second term and, and, and to have had the actual people of Minneapolis been the one that won, that was significant and worth celebrating. That said, you know, the next day as we went out into the city and you can, you know, you can only learn so much being out and about for one day. But talking to, you know, what we learned was the intense raids inside Minneapolis proper had, have dissipated, but they are just changing their tactics. The number of ice cars coming in and out of their headquarters, the Whipple Building has not really changed much. One of the women I talked to standing outside the Whipple Building who goes there every day for three hours, she lives in Wisconsin, about 40, 45 minutes away on the other side of the border. She said that she was now starting to see agents in her community, you know, or more so than, than she had before. And so, you know, it just seems like they have not retreated, but just like retrenched a little bit and changed their tactics and, and Minnesota in particular is still, you know, experiencing a lot of the stuff that they're experiencing at the very beginning of the operation.
Tim Miller (6:13)
I mean, it does. Well, mostly steam ahead. I, I mean, they want to go full steam ahead. I think that they've realized that some of the elements of their, of their tactics backfired. You know, I again, like you said, all credit to the people of Minnesota for being out there in these streets. It is enraging and maddening that like it caused it deaths of their fellow citizens to make that happen. And that was another thing we did, was to go to the good and pretty memorials which were, you know, just very like, I, I don't know about you, but for me, just because I watched the video so much, it was kind of easily easy for me to visualize like what exactly happened in these spots. But, you know, video only gives you, you know, whatever the, the width of the camera, you know, in the various angles, you know, so, so we got kind of a 360 view of both of them. But outside of that, you know, I didn't know a whole lot about like what the neighborhoods were like, you know, that they didn't kill it. I'd been to Minneapolis a couple of times, but not you know, I'm not deeply familiar with the city and, you know, just to see in Renee Good's neighborhood looks like, you know, a lot of these sort of Midwestern neighborhoods that are kind of like the inner ring of suburbs right outside the city. You know, it's like basically in the city kind of. It's not like the Culdesac type suburbs. Right. But it's the residential part of the city. And you know, in the Preddy neighborhood, you know, we went to lunch afterwards, a Jamaican restaurant. It's just. It's another part of the. The enraging part of the whole thing was like this. The premise that this was necessary because of some killer immigrants. Like, both of these were safe neighborhoods. The Freddy neighborhood, if anything, was. Was made enriched by just an artist experience. Like there's a Vietnamese place, there's a Malaysian place or Somalian place, there's a Jamaican place. Right. Like, you know, it is an immigrant neighborhood. And. And they. And that neighborhood was torn apart and somebody was killed because of like some fabricated lies about.
Tim Miller (9:36)
So, yeah, I hope the Minnesota authorities do something. You know, I guess the other thing that we can speak about is on the first night we had Tim Walls and Tina Smith there, Governor and Senator, the second night we school superintendent there. And you know, the, it is worth mentioning, like there's sometimes on this very channel some complaints about the weakness of Democratic politicians in the face of what's happening. And, and I think that you saw, at least we saw from the ones that we were talking to. Yeah. They recognize that they're thrust into this battle, you know, and I think that we've seen very strong leadership from Tim Walls. I had so many people come up to me after the Tina Smith interview and go, and she is more fired up I've ever seen her. And you know, maybe that was my wonderful interviewing, but I think probably what it was was the fact that like they see what the time it is like they recognize the moment being there. And, and I think that Governor Waltz handled this very well. I think that, you know, I could we I could even turn the notch up a little higher and some of this stuff. But they're navigating, you know, trying to serve their constituents and, you know, rallying and fighting and it's a tough, you know, tough job.
Bill Kristal (10:59)
Yeah. You know, I was on this panel Yesterday at Principals first with former Governor McCrory of North Carolina, who was mayor of Charlotte for a zillion years and then governor and lost by very close race to Roy Cooper, 2016 Republican. Then he went to no Labels. So to be fair, not pro Trump, I think one can say. I don't think he's been a leader of the anti Trump resistance. But and he, but he still has sort of and I said this to him publicly on the stage. I'm like not saying anything sort of behind his back. He still has kind of Republican ish talking points. So he deplores what's happened and all that, but he also deplores the partisanship on the other side. When he was governor and mayor, he was able to work behind the scenes with everyone, blah, blah, blah. And it's sort of unfortunate that there's been so much just fighting publicly. And it was and I really interrupted him as a little bit contrary to the civility spirit of principles first and said that's just ridiculous. Tim Walsh told us Now, I think and I think he said this publicly. So I don't think I'm saying anything that he would that he hasn't said that he was on the phone, but every day almost to the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, trying to get them to back down, explaining the situation, explaining how dangerous it was. And she was sympathetic, but she can't control what happens and she doesn't control Steve Miller and she doesn't control Donald Trump. And he told a couple of stories which were wore off the record. So I want, you know, actually just dealing with her day to day. Tim Walsh was doing his best, as he should have been as governor to defuse the situation, but he also stood up when he had to and I came away admiring him, not having known that much about him honestly until the VP nomination, admiring what he had done. But again it was striking and I get that we beat up on Pat McCrory who was to his credit sort of later in the panel came around a little bit. But the degree to which, you know, even non trumpy Republican world, I mean Corey, just to remind, in 2022 he was so he had been a reasonably popular governor, lost very, very close range. Roy Cooper runs for Senate in 2022, I guess, and he's the front runner by like 25 points because he's the former governor and all this for the Republican nomination. And he but Trump comes in for his opponents, what's his name, Bud, the guy who became Sensor Congressman, Maga, Trumpy congressman. They spent $10 million to throw it in and buy crypto types as well as Club for Growth and all these people against him and he loses by 25 points. This has radicalized Macquarie a little bit. So he's now he's against Citizens United and against dark money, which I'm sure 10 years ago he was like had the normal Republican talking points on, you know, that's good but, but despite all this, despite that he still had to sort of default in 2026. His initial comments to a kind of plague on both your houses. No labels. There's too much radicalism on both sides, a lack of civility.
Tim Miller (14:59)
This goes back to the JL newsletter. Like, it's just saying what is actually happening in Minnesota makes you feel crazy kind of. Right? You know, and we, the stories people are telling us, like the idea that, that they had to recruit doulas to secretly, you know, sneak into apartments and houses to, you know, help, you know, women through labor because they were worried that if they go into the hospital, you know, they might be nabbed by ice, their baby might be nabbed by ice. You know, the idea that there are, you know, the masked agents of the state, like grabbing people, no record of them, then. Then dumping them into the cold outside of the building, you know, and you have to have people like the Haven Watch folks that we were talking to, you know, give them, bring them coats, give them a ride, give them a meal, you know, and this is the kind of stuff that is not been happening in this country for a long time. It is a, you know, it's an unlawful federal siege on a city. And I think that if you're whatever not to pick up Pat McCrory, but if you're in somebody like that shoes, you know, there's all, there's just this wash of information that is coming all the time now. And it's kind of. It's hard to distinguish, you know, like, this is very different. Like, this is not just a typical partisan deal.
Bill Kristal (16:26)
Right. And people don't, of course, want to see that. If I could say, put it this way, how different it is because it's where they're more comfortable being in Wall Street Journal editorial page mode. And yeah, say a word about it. I mean, I guess we were all struck, I think, by two different aspects of what the citizens, residents of Minnesota had done. The kind of confrontation with ice, Courageous, cost two people their lives. The use of the phones, the kind of standing up to them on the one hand, and then the civic, humanitarian efforts to help the immigrants in so many different ways. And really. And that was done by people who are activists and have done this kind of thing a long time, but also by, frankly, middle class people my age who I don't believe had been out doing activism much for the last three or four decades, who were volunteering to do the kinds of things you're talking about bringing food to the immigrants. One woman, I did this dinner Tuesday night. She would meet immigrants. An immigrant mom would drop off her kid three or four blocks from the school. ICE was right at the school to snatch people. And then this other person, white middle class person, would walk the kid to the school because that would hopefully diminish the chance that the kid would get snatched and certainly that the immigrant mother would get snatched. So, I mean, who's ever heard of such a thing in this country really? I mean, I mean, except the civil rights movement in the 60s.
Tim Miller (17:55)
And yeah, look, I think it was made by one we keep referencing. JBL's news article. Should go read it. It's at, @thebullar.com because it was so good yesterday where he talks, where he kind of talks about all this in a way that only he can. But I want to quibble with him is he was like, all these people are doing this without impeding or confronting ICE at all. And I was like, yeah, there's some examples of impeding and, and righteous impeding, kind of, you know, I don't think we need to color what is happening there. Spin it. They were, they are confronting the ICE officials. They are trying to get in their heads. They are. I talked to some of them and said that, look, if this guy wants to, you know, a lot of times these constitutional watchers, whatever, would they confirm that a vehicle is ICE and they'd follow the car around so they could be there if they snatch somebody and record the name of the person, et cetera. And you know, one of them said the guy would like get out on the highway and then circle around town and then he'd pull up to my house and stop. And, you know, that's an intimidating thing to do on the one hand. On the other hand, you know, basically the person I was talking to said, okay, well that was an hour that he wasn't grabbing somebody. So, okay, that's better than nothing. Is that impeding? You know what I mean, we can quibble sometimes about the words on some of this, but it's certainly Confronting and I think they showed a lot of bravery there. And the other thing about the confronting is just the lack of violence. And, and to your point, we should shout out that part of the reason why I think it's a lack of violence is that the median age of the watcher is probably 58 or 62 or something. You know, it was, it's definitely an empty nester crowd that's doing a lot. Not everybody obviously, you know, it was mixed outside of Whipple. But I think it disproportionately folks that, you know, are just by nature not going to be the types of folks that are, you know, whatever breaking windows and you know, doing some of the stuff that we saw during this George Floyd summer and that said that happened when they were, they were being baited and agitated like Greg Bevino at minimum wanted violence, wanted it, tried to, you know, tried to spark it. And so, you know, like the fact that they were able to handle these situations, the two of them were killed and still they did not live up to, they did not give the administration what they wanted when it comes to the violence is really remarkable. And you know, then obviously like you said, I don't know if I have much more to add on the social side of it, but just the community members helping each other and the scale of that was really notable, the signal
Bill Kristal (20:36)
text chains and so forth. I mean, really pretty spontaneous. I mean Minnesota has a more, as the sociologists like to say, whatever civic infrastructure or social capital than many states. They just have a tradition of a lot of that. And so they were some very active church groups and long 50 years of, well more than 50 years, but I mean certainly the last few decades a ton of immigrants and a lot of therefore immigrant aid societies and you know, efforts at church churches to help. And so they were a little more set up for this than maybe an average state or community. But a lot of it was bottom up. I pushed people on this a little bit, especially this one dinner I had, you know, we were already part of a group that helped people. Was your church already organized to do this kind of thing? And you just had to morph it a little bit. Not just, but you had to morph it a little bit into now a more activist version of it. And a lot of them said no, no, they hadn't been on signal before, you know, told them here's how you get on a signal text chain and suddenly they're at a chain with, you know, 60 people from their neighborhood or their, or sometimes their church or their community. Or, or nearby. And. And they're coordinating who's going to be where at what time and who's going to bring, you know, medication that's needed to a certain person and who's going to pick it up. And I mean, really, that part was very sort of inspiring, I've got to say. Maybe wonder that all the talk about how we're depleting our social capital, we don't have the civic kind of virtues and community spirit we used to have. I don't know. I mean, this might be a. We might. I mean, there may be some truth to that maybe, but we certainly saw a kind of revival of it or just a flourishing of it almost under very difficult circumstances in Minnesota. That makes you want. Somewhat heartening about the future, I think.
Tim Miller (24:38)
People of Greenland haven't asked for a hospital ship. We have two hospital ships that have been used before in emergencies, if you might remember it. Sandy, for example, the, the hurricane in New York, where the hospitals were overflowing, brought the ships up, you know, to help people. But both of those are in maintenance right now in Alabama, according to the military experts online. So those ships aren't the ones that are going. There's another story that maybe this is related, which is there's an American soldier who sick on a nuclear submarine that was traipsing around Greenland, which is maybe a problem of its own. And, and ironically, the Dane, you know, that person was like, put onto a Danish ship. Like, the Danes helped, you know, provide assistance, even though we're menacing them to the sick American troop. Like, more details have to be to come on that. So, like, it's unclear exactly what's happening. The whole thing, though, is just I do wonder when the people, I, hopefully some of my fellow Louisianans eventually, you know, get really tired and upset of this. I mean, even if it were true, there are plenty of people in Louisiana that need medical attention. Like, this is like the most anti America first thing I could think. They're cutting services to hospitals here. They're cutting, you know, Medicaid. There's, you know, people in certain parts of the state have to drive really long distances to get, you know, various medical services. Why is the governor of Louisiana involved at all in this? Like, fake or real? Like, I think it's fake. But even if it were real, that still is kind of an affront to the whole basic principle of what These guys claim they're for with America First, Louisiana first, et cetera. So I don't know.
Bill Kristal (26:40)
Now I was. You were struck by it. You texted me. Let's talk about it for a minute. I, I think I first thought was so ridiculous that I didn't quite focus on the pernicious side of it. But it is pernicious now. It is perfect embodiment of sort of Trumpism. Trump and Trumpism. Right. It's totally fake. So far as we know, no orders have been given to deploy either of these big navy ships to, to, to Greenland. I'm not sure that if the Danes didn't want them there and the Greenland, Greenland didn't want them there, even what they would do except sit offshore. They have health care. There's a big hospital, it turns out, in Greenland, which is free because of Danish. The Danish healthcare system works and is used. So it's both totally made up. It's gaslighting because in fact the Danes being a good NATO ally, responded to a distress call from a submarine and took US sailor off that submarine and brought him to a hospital in either Denmark or Greenland. I'm not sure where he's being treated. Apparently as, as we do NATO allies do this, you know, pretty routinely for, for each other and that's good. So again, it puts the lie to the fact that we have some big problem with. That puts the light of the fact that we have some big problem with Denmark and Trump. Maybe that's embarrassing to Trump or something, I don't know. And then of course it's a way of just, you know, rest zooming the kind of aggressiveness, I suppose towards, towards Greenland and the disdain for Denver, like they need a hospital. I mean, look, these hospital ships are fantastic. A great achievement to have in times of war or times of Hurricane Sandy. But you know, they'd be the first to say for routine health care, they have hospitals. And if they don't have hospitals, we can build. You know, it's not like they're used.
Tim Miller (32:36)
I was talking to Michael Weiss about this on the Friday podcast and you know, it is amazing and I have to force myself actively to keep paying attention to it, to keep reading about it, checking a Keef post, booking guests who know more about it than me because there's just this Groundhog Day element to it, right? Where it's like this we've been through for many years now. I mean, like the, the front lines have been pretty static basically for quite a while. We go through this period where, you know, it's like Trump's real estate buddy and Jared and like they pretend like they might have a deal and Then Trump pressures Lenski to do it, and then, you know, he acts like he might be getting his peace prize, and then Putin backs down, and then Putin breaks the deal, but Trump sucks up to him anyway. And then Trump gets mad at Zelensky for some reason, you know what I mean? And then we just kind of go around and around the same cycle over and over again. Meanwhile, though they're fighting and dying, our aid for them is diminishing. And the winter has been really tough there this year. And I think it's been the worst winter of the war. And, you know, Ukraine is, is fighting back still. And it was as is doing tit for tat, going after Russian energy, you know, outposts within Russia. And so, you know, that, that, that element of it is, is nice. And it's, I think if you told people on this day four years ago that Ukraine would have only given up whatever, 18 of the country and that Zelensky would still be president and alive, and that they would still be fighting on bravely and that they would have all this innovation of drones, military, you know, material that has helped them fight back. And it's an amazing story in that, in that sense.
Bill Kristal (34:27)
It is amazing. And maybe to conclude on one of our, one of our favorite gripes, gripe isn't even the right word, but genuine, horrifying aspects of the Trump here. This is an issue that Republicans were mobilized on, were vehement, were strong supporters of Ukraine, mostly. Even by 2024, when Trump was against further aid, what half, basically the Republicans in, in the, in Congress voted for Biden's final aid package and it went through and was signed. And now that it's crickets, right? Once every, I mean, couple of people, mostly retiring ones, pop up and say we should be doing war. Lindsey Graham occasionally says it's really important to do some stuff here, then he never actually does anything. I mean, I don't know. There's so many examples of congressional Republican cowardice and disgraceful behavior, it's hard to rank them. But since this is one where they were on record the other way, and nothing has changed on the merits in terms of Putin, Ukraine, Europe is doing war actually to help. It's a particularly disgraceful, I would say, in my view, case of total and thorough abdication of responsibility and even of decency by the Congressional Republicans, can I
