Krystal Ball (4:21)

So I think as you think about strongman plots, succession becomes an underlying plot with the people surrounding the strongman. And the strongman is frail. He's showing signs of weakness. And so you have the opposing parties that Trump plays against each other, Rubio and J.D. vance. And Trump is very susceptible and falls prey to who's ever last in his ear. Timothy Snyder was on the podcast yesterday and he said you can tell when he's spoken to Putin on the phone, because for three days, it's Russian propaganda talking points. So Stephen Miller is. Has been sidelined from some meetings recently. And I think he will do it. I think he would cut off his left left arm. I think he would cut off his penis. I think he would give up his children to stay in this position under Trump. But the Republican Senate is starting to scream about Stephen Miller. And here is Senator Tom, Senator Tillis. And I just wish that, like Chuck Schumer would take a play out of this playbook. Play the clip.

Stephen Miller (5:28)

Called you a loser, I believe. I am thrilled about that. That makes me qualified to be Homeland Security secretary and senior adviser to the president.

Krystal Ball (5:38)

So the question was, the president called you a loser today. And he said he was thrilled about that. And he said, like, basically he bashed Trump, bash Kristi Noem and bashed Stephen Miller. So this drumbeat about Stephen Miller and because all of these people are so broken, they are so psychotic, this is such a toxic work environment. In Trump 1.0, guardrails were up, people resigned. Leaks, leaks, leaks. Trump 2.0, first year, everybody's kind of stayed rock solid together. This fissure right here is going to manifest into some massive, delicious shit show, shit throwing between the sycophants surrounding Trump. Now I want to bring something to everybody's attention that broke online last night from the BBC. So what is making people upset with Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem are these civilians getting shot. And then right after these civilians were executed and murdered there, Stephen Miller comes out, Kristi Noem comes out and says they are domestic terrorists. Some footage from BBC has murder victim Alex Preddy 11 days prior with a confrontation with ICE. And I want you to play this clip.

Stephen Miller (7:01)

This is a moment the news movement filmed on January 13th in Minneapolis showing a man who appears to be Alex Preddy interacting with Federal immigration agents 11 days before border patrol shot and killed him. Our footage was analyzed by the.

Krystal Ball (7:16)

Okay, so this is 11 days prior. The BBC says they can confirm this. As you can see, Alex Preddy kicks an suv. An agent comes out, tackles him. They don't arrest him and they go off. Everybody goes along their way. Of course the right wing media, echo chambers and Trump last night re lie, truth or whatever. A post that said Alex Preddy was a domestic terrorist. And I just want to say kicking a suv, not a good look, not peaceful protests, but does not warrant murder. And if anything, to me this gives ICE agents. There was reporting a few days ago that ICE agents had him on a list and they were targeting him. It gives ICE agents premeditation. You, there is no world where you live in a democracy where you kick a taillight on a truck that you deserve to be shot and executed and have nine bullets unloaded into your back. So here is how the right wing responds to this. Put up Megyn Kelly's tweet. Alex Preddy was itching for another confrontation with Border Patrol whom he'd been stalking, harassing and terrorizing. He had, he had been victimizing them. His felonies are on tape. He was reckless and it cost him his life. Find another poster boy. Illegal loving leftist. And that last statement there, illegal loving leftist. This is what all of this is for Megyn Kelly and for everybody on the right wing that people on the left, they. Their narrative is that we're terrorists, we're antifa, we love illegals and there's no sense of humanity anywhere. This is just he kicked a tail light, he's violent, he deserved to get shot. And what I want to say is here's the fundamental difference between my worldview and maga's worldview. I want people to feel safe. I want government to work and function. Right now as I'm sitting here, I'll tell you two anecdotal stories. A person that I know in Oklahoma City whose parents are of Mexican descent, ICE is going into red states too. Oklahoma City are hiding. People are not taking their children to school. There are ICE raid lookouts. These people are not criminals. These people are good contributing people in this country and they're living in fear and hiding. And this is before you even get to the people that are in detention centers that are being abused and served disgusting food and sleep deprivation. Another anecdotal story is somebody whom I exercise with here in New York City is in a relationship with a person who's here on a, on a visa, a work visa. And she's terrified that her boyfriend is going to get because he's brown skinned, that he is going to get targeted by ICE agents and cries about it all the time, living in utter fear. And I told her yesterday, the only thing you've ever done here is fallen in love with somebody who came here legally. And now she's terrified of her federal government. And for the Megyn Kelly's and for the people on the right wing, this sort of recreational cruelty is exciting for them. Knowing that people are scared and that they are promoting terror and abusing people and promoting chaos. It excites them. And that's the difference. I the P. I got no joy watching the January 6 insurrectionists being violent or beating people up. Nor do I feel like I have to take a victory lap right now, Megyn Kelly and say you guys are one the ones that are violent, which you clearly are. None of this stuff is good. None of this stuff is productive. None of this stuff promotes safety. And this whole we told you so nini, nene, boo, boo on on Instagram and on Twitter and in YouTube channels, all of this is so utterly insane because you want Americans to be at war with each other because you're pissed off that somebody put their pronouns in their in their Instagram bio. Or you're pissed off that somebody's not a Christian or you're pissed off that somebody's in a very healthy or maybe it's toxic gay relationship because you can't mind your own business. And so within your own Broken, brokenness. You seek to watch the breakage of other people and you think that that somehow is going to fix you and it doesn't. And I just think that's just abhorrent. Abhorrent that Megyn Kelly and probably all these other right wingers now are going to say that Alex Preddy deserved to be executed because he was pissed off at ICE for targeting innocent people. Whether they're here legally or illegally. I inherently believe in the goodness of people. I've worked as an interior Designer for over 25 plus years on construction sites all day, every day full of immigrant labor. These are good people that come over here and they get their wages exploited, but they're just grateful for the job so they can send money back to their relatives or they pay taxes and all of these things here and they do not receive health care. They're not going to the super bowl, they're not taking your job because all of the Americans on the job site are too busy taking 1500 cigarette breaks to stay focused on the job site. And that's just the reality of it.

Saagar Enjeti (13:08)

I completely agree with you. One thing I will say, just on a personal level, I have been, you know, you see now ICE wants to go and be security for the Olympics. You see, they're going to be at the Super Bowl. You can't, you know, the right to assemble guaranteed under the Constitution that nobody, nobody wants to enforce that. That's fine. We're just going to kick that amendment to the curb. Free speech. Nobody wants to talk about that. We're going to kick that to the curb. It has a chilling effect. When I went to the no Kings protest the first time I was rah rah couldn't wait to go. If there was a no Kings protest this weekend, I would have paused. I would go, but I would have pause. And there's no question how I feel on these issues because it's you are taking like I want to protest. I want to exercise my constitutional right while I am protected under the Constitution. And then you have to take a clear eyed view. They're killing people for exercising their constitutional right. That's it. There is no footing around that. And Megyn Kelly, isn't she a lawyer? Kicking a car is never a felony. I don't care what state or county or federal government you're in. Kicking a car is not a felony.

Krystal Ball (14:23)

And just the insanity that These are the January 6th insurrection party supporters that beat up cops, that wanted to hang Mike Pence, that wanted to kill Nancy Pelosi, that took a in the Capitol and rubbed their feces all over the Capitol floor. I mean, just some weird, violent, messed up and the ability to just, you know, like, oh, we're the party of peace and we're the party of the Constitution. And they're just so intellectual. Sexually dishonest. They're such liars. I mean, all day, every day. Americans need to understand that the right wing MAGA party and right wing MAGA Christians wake up every single day and lie. They lie so much that they start believing their lies. This is a party built on lies where they suck up to billionaires. The billionaires right now that are dismantling the United States of America on purpose. They want a top down rule. These people have no sense of, this is a great country. I need to feel appreciative. I want other people to live freely. They don't have those feelings. And then they have propagandists and psychopaths like Megyn Kelly who go along and propagandize these ambitions of theirs, these diabolical ambitions. And a lot of these top tier companies that have received tax breaks since Trump 2.0 and the BBB and have received all of these deals with the admin, they have fired thousands of people this year. Thousands. Tax breaks don't grow the economy. It's such a lie. All of these fiscal conservative Republicans, the evidence is there and they know it on the inside. But their racism and their homophobia supersedes any sense of morality that they have. And it is a cancer in this country how these lies have been propagated and how the Democratic Party has not attacked harder at this narrative of calling these people out for as morally bankrupt as you can get, valuing money over human beings. And that is the ethos of the Republican Party. And just to show you this, just to exemplify this, here's my gal, Molly, John Fast with a deadpan tweet. And this is a graph of the total funds provided for ICE by fiscal year. And Molly says, personally, I think it's too much money to give to Trump's private militia. And if you see 2017-2024, the graph for those of you that are listening incrementally, maybe just a little bit, goes up. And it doesn't even reach 20 billion a year. In 2025, this last year, the funding for ICE is up over 80 billion. And the data behind this is all of the people that are making money off of this are Stephen Miller style psychopaths. So Stephen Miller has quotas that these ICE agents you need to arrest this many people per day. Well, why would you have a quota like that? Wouldn't you just want to follow the law and say, if this person is here illegally and has committed crimes, then they are detained? That's not what this is about. They see these people as dollar signs and so they want to move them through the private prison complex. Because all of these people surrounding Trump are making billions of dollars and all of these companies are on the New York Stock Exchange. So a lot of Americans unwittingly are funding this. You have to follow the money with these people. The people that are taking your jobs are not immigrants. When you dismantle the immigrant population, the workforce, the labor force of this country, a country built on immigrants, our economy is going to flatline. So that's one issue. Number two, the more and more Trump provokes Europe by being obsequious to the needs of war criminal Vladimir Putin. Europe has a nuclear option where they can dump treasuries. And I think, you know, listen, people have been way too soft on this man for my taste, but it's abundantly clear that he is more aligned with the wishes of the failed state of Russia and the war crimes and the style of government, the dictatorship that Vladimir Putin has. And so for all of the fiscal conservatives that pray every night, you go to your church on Sunday and you think your white suburban life is just perfect, this will affect you, too. And this is what's so up about so many Americans. They will never give a shit about other human beings until their 401ks are upside down. And lastly, I want to leave you with this, the little five year old Liam Ramos. So remember, billionaires are making money off of torturing and abusing people. Megyn Kelly supports it. She likes it. Fox News supports it. They like it. Viewers of Fox News love recreational cruelty and value money over human beings while weaponizing their faith against you and thinking they have the moral high ground when these are the worst, most depraved individuals in our society, period. Hillary Clinton didn't go far enough. They're beyond a basket of deplorables. So here's little Liam Ramos. Put this up, Kylie. Liam Conejo Ramos, the five year old who ICE agents in Minneapolis nabbed last week, was shipped off to Texas detention facility with his dad, is now in poor health. His school superintendent told me today, Leave that up there. I want you to look at this little face. And he has a little hoodie on with little ears on it and the little tassels. And you can tell he's trying to hold in the tears. He is trying to hold in the tears. And there is a group of tens of millions of Americans that see this and all they see is a brown skinned kid. The people who claim to love Jesus the most, like Moses, Mike Grinder, Johnson, the people who weaponize their faith in the most diabolical nature imaginable, they see this and they feel nothing. And so when you see the video of Alex Preddy kicking a, an suv, that is a man using his privilege to stand up for little kids like that. And I don't expect the Megyn Kelly's and the Fox News crowd and the megachurch grifters to understand that. But I understand where his rage comes from. Because what you're seeing is injustice and inhumanity. And people who feel for other human beings with conviction and utter transparency will stand up. And I want to say this to you, Pumps. We will not be scared to go to another no Kings rally. We will never obey in advance. We will lock hands with everyone on the front lines of every single protest. I am not scared of these people. I'm scared of their end result. And I will fight with every fiber in me, every molecule of DNA, for this country and for our children to have a place if something happens to us. I want my kids and other Americans to know that I stood for something, that I valued humanity and our population, whether they're legal or illegal. I care about the treatment of human beings because I was raised that way in this country. And we have overlooked the abuse in the police state that our African American brothers and sisters have lived in for far too long. And it's our time to stand up without fear, without reservation, without hesitation and protest peacefully. These psychopaths that want to take over the country and demonize other human beings because we cannot and we mustn't stand for it. That's all we have. Like subscribe comment. We'll be back later with probably some more up news.