← Front Burner
Front Burner
U.S. Politics! Pentagon scandals, ICE targets Somalis
00:27:36
<p>Today, we bring you a wrap on U.S. politics. We begin with two scandals plaguing U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth, from allegations of war crimes to a scathing report accusing him of mishandling classified military intelligence.</p><p><br></p><p>And we cover the fallout from President Donald Trump’s tirade against Somali immigrants, including a surge of ICE raids in Minneapolis. Plus, the politics behind Trump’s win of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize.</p><p><br></p><p>Our guest is Alex Shephard, senior editor of The New Republic.</p><p><br></p><p>For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts</a></p>
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- [00:00]
Darina
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- [00:57]
Alex Shepard
This is a CBC podcast.
- [01:12]
Jamie Poisson
Hey, everybody, it's Jamie. And we have a U.S. politics wrap for you today. We'll deal with two scandals thugging U.S. defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from allegations of war crimes to a scathing report accusing him of mishandling classified military intelligence. And the fallout from President Trump's tirade against Somali immigrants, including a surge of ICE raids in Minneapolis. Plus the politics behind Trump's win of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. Here today is Alex Shepard, senior editor of the New Republic. He's back to cover all of this with me, and there is a lot to talk about, so. So let's get straight to it.
- [01:53]
Alex, it's great to have you. Thanks for doing this.
- [01:56]
Alex Shepard
It's great to be back.
- [01:57]
Jamie Poisson
So let's start with Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth, or as he likes to call himself, the Secretary of War. He has been under fire this past week on a couple of different fronts. First, there was reporting in the Washington Post that Hagseth authorized a second strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boat, the that killed two surviving crew members clinging to the wreckage in the water. There's been a lot of back and forth this past week about what exactly happened and whether he did that. And can you just walk us through what's actually happened?
- [02:31]
Alex Shepard
Yeah. So what we're starting to see is some actual oversight over the sort of targeted killings that the military has been doing on boats allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. The Trump administration launched its 22nd strike on an alleged drug boat Thursday. The Pentagon says four people were killed in the attack. The announcement came as part of that. There's been very clear reporting and there's been video that members of Congress and their staff have seen showing.
- [03:00]
Second strikes on boats. In one case, I believe it was the first case of these sort of targeted strikes that one of the boats had been hit by a missile of some kind and had capsized. It had flipped over. And aerial footage showed two survivors sort of gesturing upwards. And there's a question, obviously, of if they were surrendering. What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I've seen in my time in public service. Democrat Congressman Jim Himes describing that second strike as an attack on shipwrecked sailors, something that would violate the laws of war. You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion with a destroyed vessel who are killed by the United States. The US Military contended that they were signaling to someone else, and then they hit them again. And I think that, you know, what we're seeing is a real question about the legality of these strikes and the use of military force. The Pentagon claims, the Trump administration claims that the US Is at war with Venezuelan cartels. So you didn't see any survivors, to.
- [04:09]
Jamie Poisson
Be clear, after that first strike, I.
- [04:11]
Alex Shepard
Did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire.
- [04:15]
Trump Supporter
It was exploded in fire smoke. You can't see anything.
- [04:18]
Alex Shepard
You got digital. This is called the fog of war. Congress has not authorized any military force here. So I think what we're seeing is some oversight. But I think that the kind of other subtext here, which I think is really interesting, is also the larger sense here that the Trump administration's kind of period of doing whatever the heck it wanted, which was true for most of this year, is coming to an end and that even Republicans in Congress now are signaling that they want to rein in this administration and that it looks as though the Secretary of Defense, or as he likes to call himself, as you said, the Secretary of War, is someone who is going to be in the firing line.
- [04:56]
Jamie Poisson
Tell me a little bit more about what we're hearing from some Republicans. Not all of them. Right. Because I certainly saw some of them come out of that committee hearing defending the administration. But the Republican chairman of the Senate.
- [05:09]
Alex Shepard
Intelligence Committee, Tom Cotton, says he saw something very different. I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States back over so they could stay in the fight. Cotten calling the strikes righteous and entirely lawful. I didn't see anything disturbing about it.
- [05:30]
Jamie Poisson
Tell me about some who are raising questions.
- [05:32]
Alex Shepard
Yeah, I mean, you're seeing certainly there are some Republicans, like Don Bacon. Right. Who is sort of more. More moderate or at least Republican, who's more willing to criticize the administration and the president who is bas basically calling for Hegseth's resignation or his firing. But in general, I think what we're also seeing is sort of larger shift among kind of rank and file. So even people like Senator Wicker from Mississippi is a good example. Now there are people like Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican senator, who basically just said Hegseth not only did nothing wrong, that he should do it more. And that's going to be one of the dividing lines here. But you know, I think in general, what we're seeing is the larger sense that like, you know, if you go back to the Signalgate report came out last week as well, that that is the sort of earliest hexat scandal involving this kind of text threat that involved a reporter.
- [06:27]
Jamie Poisson
He shared details of the March 15.
- [06:29]
Alex Shepard
US attacks on Yemen's Iran aligned Houthi fighters in a signal group that included President Donald Trump's top national security officials and accidentally included the editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg. Those screenshots show Hegseth discussing plans to.
- [06:44]
Jamie Poisson
Kill a Houthi leader just two hours before the operation.
- [06:48]
Alex Shepard
And the sense that I'm getting from Republicans is the feeling that Hegseth is an embarrassment to this administration and that he's incompetent and he's reckless and that they're signaling, I think, that he's somebody that if there was going to be accountability, that it should fall on him.
- [07:16]
Jamie Poisson
Tell me a little bit more about the signal gate report and what it found. So this was obviously people might remember, Hegseth was part of this chat group essentially, and he was giving all this information in the chat group about American attacks on Houthis. Right. And then what did this investigation conclude?
- [07:36]
Alex Shepard
Yeah, so the investigation was basically the big problem with this was not just that this discussion was happening over the encrypted app signal. It was also that they had accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic on the thread. And Hagseth claimed that the report had, quote, totally exonerated him. And it doesn't at all. I mean, what the report showed was that the entire conception of this chat and the discussion of classified material and of Milton airstrikes both sort of broke protocol, but also endangered American troops because of the general recklessness of its execution. So again, here too, you just have an example of the Secretary of Defense being at best shown to be incompetent and I think at worst just shown to be completely reckless.
- [08:31]
Jamie Poisson
Yeah, just on the signal gate stuff I still, every time I hear this story, like, the messages are so specific that at one point he actually texted, this is definitely when the first bombs will drop. It's still so unbelievable.
- [08:46]
Alex Shepard
There's, like, a Saturday Night Live quality to this administration that everything in it just seems like the first 10 minutes in. Also, it's like bumbling idiocy a lot of the time, and that it makes it hard to talk about it as if it's a real thing.
- [09:01]
Jamie Poisson
I don't know if you copied. I think Colin Jost played Hegseth. I only caught a little bit of it so far, but it was pretty good.
- [09:07]
Alex Shepard
Now you got questions for me? Fine. Pretend I'm a random fishing boat and fire away.
- [09:13]
Jamie Poisson
On Saturday, Hegseth gave this speech at the Reagan Presidential Library, and he really is doubling down on this entire thing. He, among other things, said, if you're.
- [09:24]
Alex Shepard
Working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it. President Trump can and will take decisive.
- [09:38]
Trump Supporter
Military action as he sees fit to.
- [09:40]
Alex Shepard
Defend our nation's interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.
- [09:45]
Jamie Poisson
What's your rate on that?
- [09:47]
Alex Shepard
Well, I mean, I think that that is the way that this administration conceives of itself, and it certainly is how Donald Trump conceives of his foreign policy. Like, you know, it's funny that that speech was given a day after Trump claimed the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize at the.
- [10:02]
Draw at the Kennedy center, but I think that the. The tension between this administration is always between Trump's claim that he is the greatest deal maker who's ever existed and who is bringing peace to the world in. In a way that no one ever has before, and the strategy in which it. The administration enacts most of its foreign policy goals, which is by seeing America's military, its strategic advantage there as a way to deter. To get what it wants from other countries. And I. Hegseth, is trying to enact some version of this now. I mean, the. The thing that I think is ridiculous about the. The strikes themselves are that no one I've spoken to has been able to describe the actual national security imperative that they. They enact. And then I think also they pursue other foreign policy goals, which I think are not the foreign policy goals of the president. They're the foreign policy goals of the Secretary of state and. And the Secretary of defense, in that case, destabilizing and the Venezuelan regime, and I think ultimately toppling it. But I think what we're seeing here, too, is just the way that the second Trump term, even more than the first, is playing out, are that.
- [11:17]
The individual power brokers have an enormous amount of latitude to pursue their own interpretations of what they think that the President wants. So I think it's worth underlining here, too, that the President has kind of distanced himself from these strikes in some ways, too. So to be clear, you support the decision to kill survivors after the.
- [11:36]
Trump Supporter
No, I support the decision to knock out the boats. And whoever is piloting those boats, most of them are gone. But whoever piloting those boats, they're guilty of trying to kill people in our country.
- [12:03]
Jamie Poisson
Do you think that Hagseth's job is actually in danger here? Because Trump does seem to like him?
- [12:11]
Alex Shepard
I. It's a very difficult question to answer. I think the. The short answer, I think, is that, so Trump is. Is the Apprentice guy, right? Like, his literal catchphrase is you're fired. But he hates firing people. And I think the way that the second term in particular is working is that. That they have a kind of no scalps rule. They see, like, firing people as evidence of, you know, the administration being in disarray or of it failing. And resignations would be that way as well, I think. So, you know, they're trying to, you know, for all of the talk of this administration's kind of despotism or authoritarianism, so much of it is built on its. The projection of its strength and power more than the actual reality.
- [12:54]
Darina
Should Secretary Hegseth, Admiral Bradley, or others be punished.
- [12:58]
Trump Supporter
I think you're going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions. Actually, if you look over a few years, I think you're going to find that there's a very receptive ear to doing exactly what they're doing, taking out those boats. And very soon, we're going to start doing it on land, too, because we know every route, we know every house. We know where they manufacture this crap.
- [13:22]
Alex Shepard
And I think that they see any kind of accountability here, whether it be in the form of resignation or firing, as, like, as damaging that. So I think it's highly unlikely.
- [13:34]
Jamie Poisson
Meanwhile, this is all happening as the New York Times is suing the Department of Defense over the Pentagon's new restrictions on press access. And according to the Times spokesperson, the policy is an attempt to exert control over reporting the government dislikes and in violation of a free press's right to seek information under their first and Fifth Amendment rights protected by the Constitution. And what exactly are the restrictions that led to many Pentagon beat reporters handing in their credentials instead of agreeing to them.
- [14:08]
Alex Shepard
Yeah, so I mean, basically what the Pentagon tried to do or sort of successfully tried to do is, is ban reporting on the Pentagon. They said that, you know, two, to have credentials, you know, you basically could not use any unidentified sources, for instance, that basically everything that you would, you would produce had to be vetted by the Pentagon in some ways. And these were restrictions that were so onerous and so, you know, so oppositional to the very concept of journalists that, you know, even, even Fox News did not comply with them. I would also like to take a moment today to welcome all of you here to the Pentagon briefing room as official new members of the Pentagon press corps. We're glad to have you. Legacy media chose to self deport from this building and if you look at the numbers and you know, there we've seen the new, the new Pentagon news outlet. It's basically all of these kind of like tiny outlets and streamers and they're all just, you know, cheerleaders for the administration. There's a lot of talk online about us and our level of professionalism. I'm interested in to hear what the level of professionalism was like before. I've heard stories about ambushing people outside their offices, making a hostile work environment for everyone who works in the D O W. What was that like?
- [15:20]
Jamie Poisson
Oh, it was absolutely crazy.
- [15:21]
Alex Shepard
My first weeks here, they just. I think that that kind of gets to where I actually think Hegseth is really in danger with the President. It's just that it's embarrassing. Right. Like what they're doing. Not just the lawsuit from, from the Times, but the sort of new, you know, Instagram influencer friendly press pool. It just makes the administration look bad. And it's not really actually that restrictive in terms of reporting itself. Now it does mean that, you know, we don't have, for instance, you know, reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, cnn, et cetera, kind of wandering around the Pentagon and talking to people. But you know, they still have phones, they're still talking to sources and doing reporting and doing a job very well, as we've seen on reporting over these strikes. And so, you know, I think that. But with Trump, what he cares more about is perception. And in this instance, I think I'm sure he's happy to shoot another arrow into the New York Times. What we're also seeing too is just kind of Hegseth being.
- [16:24]
Just embarrassing.
- [16:37]
Darina
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- [16:59]
Jamie Poisson
Switching gears a little bit here. Trump has, of course, gone after specific ethnicities and nationalities before. He's called Mexicans rapists and murderers. He perpetuated those ridiculous myths about Haitians eating pets. But now he's going after Somalis as part of his ICE crackdown on Minneapolis. And what brought on this sudden focus on the Somali community?
- [17:26]
Alex Shepard
Yeah, so there's, I think, two. Two ways to answer that. One is just that there's been this kind of sweeping fraud case in Minnesota. Minnesota is reeling from a fraud scandal involving $1 billion siphoned from multiple federal programs during the COVID pandemic. In the past three years, 87 people have been charged, 61 convicted, most of Somali descent. According to investigators, the schemes involved bogus receipts and invoices for meal programs, housing assistance, and behavioral health services, charging the state millions. The other is that, you know, Trump has been feuding with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for most of the year, who was Kamal Harris's running mate, and he's sort of been established as one of the more frequent sparring partners of Trump.
- [18:15]
Trump Supporter
I think there's something wrong with him. Anybody that would do what he did, anybody that would allow those people into a state and pay billions of dollars out to Somalia.
- [18:25]
Alex Shepard
And then, of course, there's also Ilhan Omar, who is a Somali American who is a member of Congress and is also one of Trump's top targets.
- [18:33]
Trump Supporter
Ilhan Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren't people that work. These aren't people that say, let's go. Come on, let's make this place great. These are people that do nothing but complain.
- [18:46]
Alex Shepard
But I think in general, the administration has seized on this fraud case because it's trying to attack birthright citizenship and just the idea of multiculturalism in America, sort of arguing that immigration is antithetical to the idea of America, which is obviously ridiculous. This is a nation founded by immigrants. But, you know, they sort of are targeting the Somali community because they see it as being symbolic of the larger fight against multiculturalism. But I think it's also just, you know, you saw this, that awful clip of Trump talking about Somalis in the White House.
- [19:20]
Trump Supporter
I wouldn't be proud to have the largest Somalian look at their nation. Look how bad their nation is. It's not even a nation. It's just people walking around, killing each other. She's always talking about the Constitution provides me with.
- [19:35]
Go back to your own country and figure out your Constitution. All she does is complain about this country. Without this country, she would not be in very good shape. She probably wouldn't be alive right now. So Somalia is considered by many to be the worst country on earth.
- [19:50]
Alex Shepard
I don't know. For all of, I think the talk of Trump's, you know, occasional savviness with this issue and with immigration, you know, he seized on it because it was an issue that Republicans cared about first and foremost. And you saw this here, that he was someone who I think, is disgusted by black and immigrant communities. And that really, I think, shines through. And with the administration, too, I think, you know, there was the message they sent at Thanksgiving where he called Tim Walls sort of a slur. But that, too, I think, reflected the administration's, I think, really increasingly virulent racism and bigotry and its willingness, I think, to seize on kind of far right narratives and tropes that are, that have taken hold in places like England and the Netherlands and to try to apply them to the United States.
- [20:45]
Jamie Poisson
Yeah. And just there are 80,000 members of that diaspora that live in Minnesota. Most of them are American citizens.
- [20:53]
Alex Shepard
Good afternoon. My name is Jacob Fry. I'm the mayor of Minneapolis. To our Somali community, we love you and we stand with you. That commitment is rock solid. Minneapolis is proud to be home to the largest Somali community in the entire country. I think it's been very moving in a lot of ways is that there's been, I think, a real, like, outcry, you know, both in, in Minnesota from a lot of people about how these are neighbor, they're their neighbors. They're not only American citizens, they're members of the community. They are members of the state legislature, they're members of Congress. And, and there's been also, I think, a lot of mockery of this, too, that I think it's Somalia's basically making a joke about Minnesota being their promised land. And I think in some ways it's the best way to respond to this administration is by just mocking the vitriol that comes from it. But I think you're seeing people rally behind this community in a way that you're seeing people rally behind other immigrant communities that have been targeted by ice, especially as the administration has sort of spread its crackdown, most recently to New Orleans.
- [22:23]
Jamie Poisson
Put all of this in the wider context. For me, of these recent restrictions that we've seen after the two National Guard soldiers were shot in D.C. one of the most sweeping is the decision to halt the processing of all immigration and citizenship applications from 19 countries. Kristi Noem, the Homeland Secretary of Homeland Security, announced over the weekend that this list would expand to 30 countries. And, like, what's been the impact of these restrictions? How are they being felt?
- [22:55]
Alex Shepard
I mean, I think that there's a lot of outrage and especially there's a lot of anxiety. I mean, I think that there was a sense, I think especially a few months ago that we had sort of. Not that we had seen the worst of what this administration was going to do in terms of immigration, but that we had a general sense of what the contours of it would look like and that they had kind of done the damage that they could. But I think what we're seeing is that, you know, given any opportunity, they will restrict immigration even further. I think the other thing that I found interesting talking to people about this last week was that this administration is also starting to have to do a real kind of dance with the World cup approaching. And that what we're seeing is that, you know, there has been some kind of flexibility here in that, you know, the administration did kind of create a special visa, the kind of which we saw in Qatar and Russia, that will allow a lot of people, not from nations affected nations like Haiti, for instance, but from places that were facing really long wait times that they could kind of find a way in. But as we're seeing that kind of more flexible approach to the World cup itself, the administration is growing even more restrictive in its larger immigration approach. And I think that as World cup draws near the sort of tension between those two demands of, you know, of running a. The what, second largest, maybe the largest global sporting competition and the administration's larger effort to, you know, to basically just change the very face of American immigration, to say, not that this is a country built by immigrants to, you know, to bring us here, what, tired, hungry and weak, but that this is, you know, a nation that belongs to the people who are here right now and that no one else is welcome. I think that we're. We're starting to see that really, really, really come to the forefront since we're.
- [24:52]
Jamie Poisson
On the topic of the World cup and FIFA. Last week, I'm sure you saw our Prime Minister, Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum were in Washington for the FIFA draw that determined events and games for The World cup were hosting with the US a pretty uneventful time. No public breakthrough for us in our current trade talks that have been suspended, for example. That's what we were all watching for. But also, Trump was awarded this FIFA Peace Prize, which you mentioned before, and they played YMCA for him while everyone watched him dance. And just. Any parting thoughts on that event?
- [25:30]
Alex Shepard
I think that leading into that, talking to a lot of people, I think the general consensus was that this would be kind of humiliating for Trump, that, you know, Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, had kind of very carefully choreographed this, you know, real authoritarian show, frankly, that you just kind of say, oh, the President likes all this stuff. You know, the President wants a Nobel Peace Prize, but he's not going to get them because his administration is literally murdering people in the Caribbean. We'll give him one.
- [25:59]
Trump Supporter
This is truly one of the great honors of my life and beyond awards. Johnny and I were discussing this. We saved millions and millions of lives. The United States, one year ago was not doing too well. And now I have to say we're the hottest country anywhere in the world, that we're going to keep it that way. Thank you all. Thank you. Have a great time. And Johnny, a tremendous honor. Thank you. Thank you.
- [26:21]
Alex Shepard
And watching it, I was like, oh, actually, like, like Infantino is the person that's being humiliated here, that Trump is. Trump is getting exactly what he wants. Right. What he wants is to sort of bend reality to him. And he's perfectly happy with that. It doesn't matter to him that the Village People look ridiculous, it's fun to stay at the ymca, or that the Peace Prize itself is fake. Right. What matters to him is any.
- [26:54]
Jamie Poisson
I didn't know there was a Peace Prize that FIFA gave out until last week.
- [26:58]
Alex Shepard
Yeah, no, no. This is the inaugural one. No one has gotten it before, and it seems highly likely that no one will get it again. And I think that that's going to be one of the questions heading into this World Cup. I thought that Mark Carney and Claudia Scheinbaum acquitted themselves very well in this, but that, you know, the World cup is go. Is Trump's and that he wants it. He's going to be front and center in a way that we have not seen a head of state be front of center at the World cup at any time recently. I can't think of any time ever. But I think that that is, I think, more alarming than a lot of people are taking into account right now. I think in large part because of the question of immigration that it's not just that Trump wants to be front and center at the World cup because he likes attention. That is I think a huge part of it. But there are a lot of people in his administration, most notably Stephen Miller, But Vice President J.D. vance as well who see this World cup as an opportunity to broadcast their vision of America. This sort of restrictive anti immigrant nativist blood and soil populist thing. And I think that what we saw on Friday was ridiculous and kind of stupid. But it points I think to what's going to be, you know, I think a really troubling tournament come June.
- [28:21]
Jamie Poisson
That's a good place for us to end. Alex, thanks so much. It's always good to have you on.
- [28:26]
Alex Shepard
Thank you so much.
- [28:36]
Jamie Poisson
All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you all tomorrow.
- [28:51]
Alex Shepard
For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.