← The Kinzinger Report
The Kinzinger Report
Empty Warehouses | ICE Abandons $700 Million Detention Center Plan - June 19, 2026
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I'm Adam Kinzinger and you're listening to the Kinzinger Report where I bring you top stories and analysis on current events and the growing threats to our democracy. After serving over a decade in Congress, I help you know what's true and what really matters so that we can all work to save this country that we love so much. Hey everybody. Welcome back. So before we start, I wanted to wish everyone a happy Juneteenth. Today we celebrate the day the last enslaved Americans learned they were free two and a half years after the law said they already were. Freedom showed up late, but it showed up and it made our country stronger in the long run. Our top story today, the government just quietly admitted that it's $700 million plan to lock people up in warehouses is falling apart. Wow, such a shock. ICE bought buildings all over the country to stand up a network of massive new detention centers. And now it's trying to sell them off or hand them to other agencies. Americans rejected the cruel immigration enforcement under Kristi Noem. And now the administration is trying to retreat from those mistakes. We're also going to get into the President's dangerous new intelligence chief, a damning voting machine report. The White House is hiding the President comparing himself to Hitler and Stalin. Normal day and four former presidents gathered in Chicago for a night that felt like a window into a kinder America from the past. Do me a favor, like always, be sure to like subscribe. Send this to somebody who needs to see it. We all have somebody out there like that. So anyway, let's get into it first. After spending more than $700 million to buy warehouses for locking people up, ICE is now trying to give them back. Last winter, Immigration and Customs Enforcement went on a buying spree. The plan pushed by then Homeland Security Secretary Noem was to build a network of government owned detention centers big enough to hold nearly 100,000 people. Now new reporting shows that ICE is planning to get rid of at least 7 of of those warehouses, either by selling them or by pawning them off onto other federal agencies. After Gnome left, the new Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen opened a review of the whole detention strategy. And the department is going right back to what it did before. Renting space in jails run by private companies and local governments. Here's the part that should make you angry. ICE didn't just buy the buildings. It signed contracts worth more than $1.3 billion to convert and run facilities. Now some of those buildings are headed back onto the market and taxpayers are on the hook for the cost, anyway. These empty warehouses are a symbolic site. Massive empty buildings that have gone completely unused because of. The American people rejected the violent immigration enforcement that they were witnessing. It may take a lot to force change, but this is an area where the American public opinion won in the end. The President can pretend like his approval ratings are fake all he wants, but these empty warehouses prove that there are times that he and his administration still hear the noise and have no choice but to respond. That should give us a little hope. While ICE is dealing with one expensive mess, the President's new intelligence chief showed up early to start making his own mess. This week, Bill Palti became the acting Director of National Intelligence, taking over from Tulsi Gabbard, who steps down today. Pulte is 38 years old. What did he do before the gig? He ran the Federal Housing Agency, where he made his name opening mortgage fraud investigations into people the President doesn't like. He has no intelligence experience at all. The president told the Wall Street Journal exactly what he was looking for. He called the intelligence office, quote, unnecessary and or too big and said he wanted it smaller. Look, yes, we. We probably should downsize dni, but you don't do it like this. A source close to Pulte put it more bluntly to cnn. President Trump wanted someone in that position who's a true loyalist, who will do what he wants him to do. He has that in Bill. Now, normally, that would be embarrassing for somebody to say, but that is actually important if you want the job. So Pulte got to work. According to cnn, he showed up at the office a full day early, caught the staff off guard, and asked for a list of every single employee so he could decide who to cut. Sources say he's looking at firing hundreds of them. And by the way, this isn't about money. As we've talked about, the waste of money everywhere. In an earlier briefing, he reportedly asked whether he could take the President's Daily Brief, one of the most sensitive documents in the entire government, whether he could take it home with him. He also asked about his security clearance and whether he had access to his own government plane. Gosh. Look, the Director of National Intelligence sits on top of 18 agencies, including the CIA and the NSA. The job exists for one reason, to keep Americans safe. When you have the guy who's a loyal fanatic to the president asking to take classified information home and wanting access to private planes, it undermines the security of our country. It basically gives our enemies the clear signal that stopping them is no longer our top priority. Meanwhile, that same office is sitting on a report that takes apart the President's biggest lie. For months, the White House has been delaying the release of a report on the security of America's voting machines, led by Tulsi Gabbard, National Intelligence Director. According to Reuters, the report did reveal some vulnerabilities, like software that could be updated. Then we should update it. But it found no evidence of a single vote ever flipped a single vote, much less a whole stolen election. Clearly, this is a big problem for the White House. For years, the President has claimed the 2020 election was rigged. But when his own government went looking for proof, they found nothing and they're too embarrassed to tell you. With the report still waiting, the President decided to put Pulte in charge and publicly told him to take a closer look at the election fraud claims. Sound like he wants to do Overrun by an even more shameless loyalist. Until the answer changes. If that report actually backed up what the President had been saying since 2020, it would be the White House's top priority. Need to heard about it in a second. Instead, you're not even allowed to see it. The report that you paid for. And that silence says everything. While that report was buried to spare the President's ego, the rest of this week was spent feeding it. Just after midnight on Thursday, Trump posted a long document on Truth Social from a supposed quote presidential historian named Dave King. In it, King argued that Trump is the most powerful person that has ever walked the friggin planet. The friggin I added more so than Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Mao, Stalin, even Hitler. Sounds good to me, Trump wrote in the caption. In an interview yesterday, it was clear that King's flattering words haven't gotten to the President's head. What have you learned about not just the exercise of power, but the limits on your power as a result of the conflict? There are no limits, no limit.
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No not.
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I haven't learned that lesson yet. I know there are, but you know, there are no limits. But after Trump proudly read the same document aloud to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swann. Haberman and Swan were, you know, naturally skeptical. After a little digging, they found that King was not a historian at all. He was a former caddy of golfer Gary Player, a close friend of the President. Let me repeat that. This guy that says Trump is the most powerful man ever that Trump cited was a golf caddy. After the global embarrassment of Iran, it seems like the President's ego was in dire need of a boost. But just like on the golf course, only the caddy. We'll tell him how great he is. And finally, four former presidents gathered in Chicago for a reminder of what this country used to feel like and can feel like again. The Obama Presidential center held its opening ceremony on Thursday, bringing together all four living presidents. Joe Biden, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and of course, Barack Obama. For one night, it looked like the country a lot of us remember. It was hopeful. It was. Was decent, proud of how far we have come. Presidents from both parties on the same stage. But not everyone saw it that way. You turn on Fox News and you'd think you were watching a completely different event.
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That is Barack Hussein Obama. You know, they got on President Trump for building monuments to himself and then inviting entertainers to come sing. He was doing that for the American people. He was doing that for America. 250 Barack Obama built a monument literally to himself and then had U2 come and sing to him. And the liberals love it.
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Post columnist Lydia Moynihan called Obama a very divisive figure, pointing to the WOKE policies she said were on display at the ceremony. Here's the problem. A poll from that same day found that Obama is viewed favorably by 57% of Americans, while the current president sits at 34. But they still call Obama divisive. This is the bubble that MAGA lives in, and it's important for us to recognize it. A whole movement seen through the eyes of one man, imagining a country that simply doesn't exist. And in November, the rest of us are going to show them the America that we never left. Well, that's it for the show for June 19th. Thanks for being here again. Do me a favor like subscribe if you haven't share this, send it to somebody who needs to see it. Bill Pulte officially takes the reins at our intelligence agencies today. So come back next week and we'll tell you what his first day really looked like. Have a good weekend. Take care.