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It'S Tim Miller from the Bulwark. I was on MSNBC with Chris Jansing this afternoon. We got into a bunch of stuff, including some changes in projections for the House of Representatives. It's good for the Democrats and also some internal MAGA infighting over Planned Parenthood funding and other abortion issues. I did that little bit with our new Bulwark friend Sarah Matthews, who I was excited to have the opportunity to be on the tube with. But before we get to that and a few other issues I wanted to pop off on. So much is happening in the news and for the pod today kind of took a deep literary dive on civil rights issues and how that's resonating today. So if you don't mind, I've got some thoughts about Trump's fake Nobel Peace Prize trophy and some of the latest craziness out of our Department of Homeland Security. Let's start with Maria Corinne Machado's visit to the White House. Gotta say, it feels like this is a little too little too late for Maria Machado. I mean, I don't Donald Trump likes trophies, but things are already moving down the tracks as far as him garnishing, confiscating, stealing the oil from Venezuela and putting it in a bank account and Qatar and letting the communist Chavista still run the country. So Donald Trump doesn't really seem to care a lot about, you know, freedom and the other things that Machado was talking about. I think maybe she was hoping that he would care about the trophy so much. But I think Donald Trump's kind of the person that says, hey, great, thank you. I appreciate the trophy. I'm going to keep it. I'm going to put it in my trophy room and then not do anything for you. That's, that'd be kind of my assessment of Donald Trump's character. I do have to mention that she gave him the medal in this kind of framed. It sort of looked like somebody ran to Michaels like an hour before the, the event and had the medal framed next to, you know, some parchment paper with the President, Donald Trump and the people of the United States. It's, it's pretty janky. You know, it kind of looks like, you know, the type of thing that you get that you give out to, you know, kids for their awards at the end of, the end of a soccer season. I just, if you're going to try to go the whole way here and make a big deal out of giving the medal, I might have done some better framing. You know, I use uptown frames here in New Orleans. They would have taken care of, they would have taken care of Maria Machado a lot better on that. It would have looked a plus. The other thing that's worth noting on this is the Norwegian Nobel Committee says Trump can have the trophy, but once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared or transferred to others. The decision is final and stands for all time. A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate cannot. So a little cheeky tweet from the Nobel Committee yesterday, like, it's, you know, it feels like we're pretty cooked here for in this situation, like, this is the kind of diplomacy that we're doing. And, you know, as I mentioned, like, this all comes in the context of, like, Donald Trump's warmongering and saber rattling of our own allies in Greenland. But also JVL wrote in his newsletter yesterday, you guys should go check that out. Like, about what about this, this cutter bank account that I'm mentioning. Trump is continuing to look for ways to create other funding sources inside the executive branch so it doesn't have to go through Congress. It's pretty ominous, particularly as we get to this next topic as you look ahead to how he might behave after the midterms, presuming the Democrats take control of Congress, and I would assume, if the Democrats had any balls, stop funding Donald Trump's various reigns of terror. Over in Minnesota, behavior of the ice And CBP agents continued, and the courage of the protesters there continued. We talked about that a lot yesterday, and it's been really kind of inspiring seeing how many people are getting out in the streets of that frigid Minnesota winter to speak out against this. And I think they should be warned by one thing, that there's evidence now, even internally among President Trump's team, that they recognize that this is hurting them from a popularity standpoint. This is out of Axios. Our old friend Mark Caputo is reporting on this. Private Trump polling showed support for his immigration policies falling. Those results reflected what we've seen in the public polling. But it's interesting to see that they're confirming that with what they're seeing on the internals. One of these Trump advisers told Caputo, I wouldn't say he's concerned about the policy. Duh. He wants deportations. He wants mass deportations. What he doesn't want is what people are seeing. He doesn't like the way it looks. It looks bad. So he's expressed some discomfort at that. Here's the thing. Trump doesn't. We all went through this in the first term. This was the whole Jvanka stuff, right? There's always like, Trump would do something. The images on the cable news would be bad. Jivanka would go into him and say, this looks bad for you, and then kind of leak to the New York Times that they objected to the unpopular thing. Then people would say, thank goodness we have Jared and Ivanka in there. This is kind of a version of that. We haven't seen a lot of that in this term, but that's kind of what's happening. And Trump does. One of the only things that has saved us from even a worse catastrophe than the living catastrophe we are experiencing is that Trump, he's a TV person, he's a tabloid person. He doesn't like the bad images. He never really has. I think there are other. I think Steven Miller likes him. You can imagine a different type of despot that wants this, wants to see liberals crying on tv. I think Trump likes that a little bit up to a point. And then he gets he tacos, you know, he gets a little weak need. And it'll be interesting to kind of see how that plays out here. He doesn't have a lot of options, though, you know, besides like admitting that he's wrong. And this is a big David from point on the tariffs. It's also true about this. Like, you know, Trump might not like the images, but what he doesn't like worse what he doesn't like more is admitting that he's wrong. And, and, and, you know, that you can't really change. Like, this is what mass deportations look like. Right? There's no way to do it in a softer, gentler way. And, you know, toothpaste already out of the tube on all that. And so, and it's hard to imagine him, you know, on his own accord, being like, we're gonna unmask these people and we're gonna get rid of little, little Hitler, Greg Bevino and all this sort of stuff. Like, it's kind of hard to imagine him doing that. And so I'm not sure what he can do to fix really, the policy change. And I know something that the Democrats can do is push on the gas on this. And anybody who listens to this knows I'm wrong. It was just yesterday, two days ago, talking about how wrong I was about Havana Syndrome, happy to admit when I'm wrong. The one thing I've been on since day one of this administration is that this, these immigration tactics are not popular and we should fight on that turf. And a lot of Democrats have been hesitant to do so. And increasingly we're seeing more and more who aren't. I was at a function with some elected Democrats and candidates last night, and I was pretty encouraged on this point. I was chewing people's ear off on it, as you might imagine. And so increasingly, I think they're coming out of their shell on this. There have been some really great examples of Democrats who are pushing on this. But it does seem like there's still some hesitancy in various places, particularly in the funding fight coming up. You know, we haven't. And, you know, Bill Kristol was, was out yesterday, basically saying, like, where is Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, Senators from Minnesota, you know, making this a cornerstone of the fight around the upcoming budget conversations in the Senate. So we'll see how that goes. But I just think that, look, once if the White House is admitting, and basically how these stories come to pass, is that there's somebody in the White House that sees the polls, sees it's a disaster, and is leaking about it so that people talk about it. So hopefully Trump backs off. Like, that's why this story is out. Like, it's not, you know, it's not like, you know, the polls got left on the printer or something at the White House, and Marco Pudo found them. Like, somebody in the White House is unhappy and is trying to get them to back off. And so the Fact that that is happening from inside the House, so to speak, is telling. And the Democrats shouldn't let up on it. One last thing. I do kind of want to laugh. Can we laugh at these fucking little authoritarian thugs? Was it Susan Glass? We were talking about this. And throughout the story is the same, you know, throughout the 1930s, just about how hackish and embarrassing and clownish the authoritarians were. I kind of feel like we need sort of a segment on that. I don't know, maybe put in the comments if you have some suggestions on what, like a, what a brand for. That could be like maybe like an award, like a weekly award for the most clownish attempt at authoritarianism. For this week, I want to shout out Trisha McLaughlin. Trisha is the spokesperson for the DHS, who has just been, I just kind of unimaginably machine, like in her willingness to defend the worst of the worst actions of this administration, you know, and she's putting herself out there and not caveating it, not even like really spinning it. Carolyn Levitt, you can tell that she, when things get ugly, she at least tries to spin it or backtrack or push it off to other people. Like, Trisha is just leaning in and just advancing absurd lies about ice's actions, defending the most heinous actions of the ICE officers. And she's been out a lot on Fox over the past week. And this was a clip that caught my eye where yesterday in Hannity, she was talking about the protesters and the danger that was coming from the protesters and how the administration plans to crack down on them. And, and I got to tell you, you're going to be shocked when you hear what these protesters were doing that is going to demand the full force of the federal government. What other acts of violence have they been committing against these agents?
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Sean, your viewers can see that that car was driving, pouring hot, cold water.
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On the ground so that it would freeze the ground in front of our.
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Federal law enforcement vehicles so that they.
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Would potentially slide, crash, and potentially kill them.
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That is a federal crime that your.
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Viewers are seeing there. That is a federal crime. That is a federal crime in Minnesota. Pouring cold water on the ground. That's what the party of freedom wants to tell the citizens this week, that if they pour cold water on the ground around an ICE agent, they might get bullied, all right? They might get pushed around, thrown to the ice, you know, have their necks, knee, have. Have. Have the knee of the agents affixed to their neck. They might be detained even if they're a US Citizen. That's what, that's what these guys have planned. So you know, because they can't. And we've seen the videos. I mean there's some pretty funny videos if you haven't seen them of the ice agents walking around Minnesota and just eating shit on the ice left and right. Just like full yard sale like style face planting on the ice. I've seen several of those. You know, these guys aren't trained at all. They certainly might not be trained for winter conditions. A little preview of how the Greenland invasion would look like. And, and so because we're not going to actually do the work to train them and make sure they act responsibly when they eat shit on the ice, the administration has to find a boogie ban and they're going to say that it's I guess the antifa domestic terrorists pouring cold water on the ground that it's causing them to slip and fall and who knows, maybe kill themselves. Maybe kill themselves thanks to the cold water spilling. So that's Tricia. I encourage the people out there in Minnesota to be peaceful and you know, but nothing wrong with grabbing yourself a Subway sandwich and you know, getting the full value meal and kind of dumping that ice on the ground when you're done with your iced tea. It's just you might want to have a, have a hoagie in hand just in case.
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Tim Miller, host of the Bulwark Podcast and an Ms. Now political analyst so look, we have some elections, you know, Cook Political Report put out today that they're moving a lot of elections that look like they could go Republican to Democratic, including in a few red states. It looks better for the Democrats than it did just a few weeks ago. Do these anti abortion groups have the potential to make what seems to be even closer elections, even closer than that?
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I think that they probably want to think that they do. But here's the thing, you know, Trump, Trump has a lot of leverage to call their bluff, you know, because Marjorie Danzel, I know her, you know, I know these activists. Trump was, Ted Cruz was the pro life candidate in 2016. You know, Trump on various times. This isn't the first time we've been through this rodeo and kind of Pro Life Inc. Has come around to Trump every time. And so I think he sees this as an empty threat. Now there are risks on both sides of this issue in a general, in a midterm, right? Like on the one hand there is you want to make sure you're turning out your voters. And on the other hand, you know, with swing voters as you mentioned, in these polls, the midterms are looking worse and worse. You know, I think the Republicans are looking at this and Trump's looking at this and being like, where are some things that we can moderate? He's done that before in the past on various issues. Trump's bet is that I can kind of be a little wiggly on this in the hopes that it helps my political standing and these guys are going to vote for me anyway. It's a risky bet. But also, you know, if past his prologue, my guess is that he'll give them a fig leaf and the pro life groups will be back on board.
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So according to findings from the Public Religion Research institute, Tim, in 2024, around one in 10 residents in most states said abortion should be illegal. One in 10. There are only seven states where fewer than half of the residents support abortion rights. So we're talking right. About a relatively small number of people. But when it comes to congressional districts in red states, and I'm talking micro here, not macro, understanding your argument, could it make a difference?
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Well, I think it could make a difference in some of these particularly red districts. You know, if you get in a wave election, I think back to 2018, right. Where Trump, or excuse me, where the Democrats end up taking seats in like Oklahoma City and Charleston, places they never had before. And so those are places where you do need to juice your red, the base turnout. The only caveat to that is if you look at the Senate map, like where the Democrats need to expand Alaska, even a place like Kansas, they voted on the pro choice side of that, of the abortion amendment in that state. And so, you know, there are very few districts at this point where, you know, I think that these pro life groups have the juice that they used to have.
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Even Trump supporting conservatives are acknowledging the tough situation that Republicans are in. Right. Listen to what Ben Shapiro had to say on Gavin Newsom's podcast.
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Republicans have no chance in this midterm. Right. I think that they are in for a world of hurt right now in the midterms. I mean, they're the, they're the incumbent party. They have a bare majority. Yeah. That alone would put them behind the eight ball. There are not a lot of swing districts that are, that are kind of left because of all the redistricting, but the swing districts that are left seem to be trending more blue. President Trump isn't on the ballot, so he doesn't really have coattails among the low propensity electorate. So, yeah, I think that Republicans are going to, are going to have a rough ride.
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So what did the Democrats do to make that happen?
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Well, look, I think the question for the Democrats is more about expanding the map. Right. And you know, I was at an event last night here in town with some of these Democrats who are running in districts that like, you know, Republicans won by maybe 13 last time. Right. Like that wouldn't have been a traditional swing district. Like to Ben's point, because of all the redistricting, we don't have a lot of those coin flip districts like we used to have. But in a wave election year, you know, if Republicans voter turnout is depressed, if Democrats really excited to turn out, if you have the type of candidate that can appeal across party lines, it has to be kind of a heterodox type candidate. You know, I think that's possible. And to me, that's where the Democrats should be focused on kind of looking into that next tier of more stretched districts. Like I mentioned earlier, the Oklahoma cities, the Charlestons. I was talking to a guy last night from North Tampa. Right. Like those kinds of places where, you know, maybe Louisiana. I don't know about my home state. That might be a stretch. Okay, let's win Tampa first and then we'll look at Louisiana.