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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
Foreign. Welcome to an emergency version of the to the Contrary podcast. I'm joined by my good friend, Adam Kinzinger. Adam, we're going to do the Sunday podcast, but you and I are talking on Friday morning. And this news just broke that the FBI has just arrested a Milwaukee judge for apparently. Well, they, they, they allege that she was concealing an illegal immigrant. So Cash Patel put out a tweet that has since been deleted. Now, by the time people hear this, who knows? But it goes just now. The FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on charges of obstruction after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week. We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in a courthouse, allowing the subject and the legal alien to evade arrest. Thankfully, our agents chased down the perp on foot, and he is in custody. We'll have more to add later. Look, I'm sorry, Adam. It's always risky to comment on a story as it is developing, but this does feel like a bright red line has been crossed. The Rubicon has been crossed. Whatever analogy, Cash Patel and others in the Trump administration have been threatening to go after mayors and governors and even judges. But arresting a judge in an immigration case, this feels like a major escalation that we had to address today.
- [01:41]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah, it really does. I mean, look, I. Again, details come out. Are they technically legal to arrest? I don't know. Maybe. I'm sure the courts will have to litigate that. But this has never, as far as I know, never been done before because there's an understanding. Look, I mean, that, that there's state kind of law, there's federal law. You can't. I, I do feel like this is, Is this a, A message to other judges, like, be intimidated? Is this a message to other law enforcement be intimidated? And, and I think what's even more disappointing, Charlie, is you recognize the FBI, who I have. You know, I wanted to be an FBI agent when I was a kid. I mean, you know, you are raised believing as this, like, kind of amazing organization is as political now as anything else. And Cash Patel probably very likely made the decision himself. Let's arrest this judge. He knew it would make Donald Trump happy, I'm sure. And this is chilling. And again, I said this to you offline just before we started. I'm like, this is month four. Like, we're in month four. And, and we're now, you know, we're now in the, in essence, kind of the final, the final. If you will, like, guardrail is the courts. And so far, Trump has kind of disobeyed the courts. Not really. Who knows? This is massive. This is chilling. And I think the only thing left is just directly, directly ignoring a Supreme Court order. And that could come.
- [03:11]
Charlie Sykes
Well, you know, when you think about all of the institutions that he's been attacking, whether it is the news media, the universities, law firms, et cetera, make the law. Long list. The attack on the judiciary is in many ways the most fundamental, because that is, as you point out, that's the last guardrail. They are the one institution that can push back. And there have been a lot of indications that the judiciary is not only finding its backbone, but really understanding the stakes here. I mean, you go back to that decision by Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson from the 4th Circuit. It was a week ago in the immigration case, where he clearly understood the lawlessness of what Trump was doing. And he is a very, very respected conservative judge. And then almost immediately, you had the Supreme Court step in and buy a vote of 7 to 2 and say, we're not waiting for you. We are banning you from renditioning migrants to the Google log in El Salvador. So almost on a daily basis, you have federal judges around the country who are striking down or slowing down Trump's initiatives. So he's decided, I think, to go to war with them. Now I'm, again, you have to kind of connect the dots. This is a state judge, is a local judge. She's well known here in Milwaukee. I don't know why they chose Milwaukee, but this has now become a test case. And you said, is this intended to intimidate the judiciary? Absolutely. I mean, fear has been at the center of this administration since January 20th. And it's not just the judges. You have, who's the. The czar, the. The. The guy that comes out and, you know, says, you know, just hang on there, we're gonna. We're gonna arrest everybody.
- [04:55]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah, that dude. Yeah, the bald guy, right?
- [04:59]
Charlie Sykes
So, yeah, the bald old guy who's been saying, you know, Tom Holman. That's it, Tom Holman. Well, he has suggested that they might arrest governors, mayors, others if they do not cooperate with ice. And this is a fight that Donald Trump, I think, wants. Although if there's a definition of overreach, you might have had it right here. And by the way, I mean, this comes out. I know you've seen this new Washington Post poll out just before this. Trump's immigration ratings turned negative. Post ABC Ipsos poll fines President Donald Trump's approval Ratings on immigration, relatively strong in the early weeks of his term, have dipped into negative territory, according to this poll, a sign that his administration's hard line and in some cases, legally dubious enforcement tactics are losing public support. So this was his strong spot, right? This was his sweet spot. And a lot of people were telling Democrats, don't talk about this a lot. Don't. Don't talk about Abrego Garcia. But it seems that people are paying attention and going, yeah, we want the border to be secured. We want something. But the way you guys are going about it. What do you think?
- [06:11]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah, I mean, it's. It's. It's soulless, Right? Like, I said this to my fellow Christians at one point in a tweet or a comment, I said something like, look, you can support border enforcement and you can support some level of deportations where you basically can't share your faith with your opinion is when you start celebrating it. It, and you enjoy it, and you listen to these White House videos where they're dragging chains and they call it asmr. And I mean, it's just. It's just evil. I mean, it's evil. Even Nazi Germany in the 30s probably did not celebrate deporting Jews like this. Right. And, you know, if they had ASR. ASMR videos back then, I doubt they would have done that. They would have at least been more secretive. And so, yes, I mean, I think, look, it's tough for us in this moment, like, when we're kind of driving down the. For it. You know, the road in the forest and seeing the trees pass, it's hard for us to. To. To feel like his numbers are falling fast enough because it's like, well, what do you mean? Still? 49% of people are. Still 40% of people still approve of his economy. But that's a pretty drastic fall for a president. I mean, those are the kind of numbers you see after George W. Bush goes from, like, 90% to 60, when the insurgency kicks off in Iraq, it is record pace. Now, the question is, first off. Well, let me back up a second. If I was this judge in Wisconsin, yeah, I would actually love this, to be honest with you. I would be like, you know what? I will fight you on this. Now, the problem is, is it's quite possible that she actually did shield a bad dude from getting deported, in which case, most Americans would be like, she shouldn't do that. And that's what. And everybody has to be aware. That's what the administration will focus on, is, who is this guy? And what did she do? That's not the issue. Just like with the guy in El Salvador, it's not about whether he's a gang member or not. The issue is due process. And in this case, the issue is the FBI, which is not a judiciary branch, by the way. It's law enforcement, which should come under the judiciary, making a decision to arrest a judge that has a. That is not even under the federal government, is under the state of Wisconsin, which until about seven minutes ago, the Republican Party believed state governments were supreme to federal governments. This is nothing but fascism, honestly. And it's. This is what Know Erdogan would do. This is what the country of Georgia would do, and this is what you would see out of Viktor Orban. This is exactly how they would start out.
- [08:33]
Charlie Sykes
And the obvious point, you're exactly right. I mean, the Trump administration is going to want to focus on the. The illegal alien. But let's keep in mind, Hannah, Dugan is not just a judge, he's an American citizen. So now we are starting to arrest American citizens for not telling ICE what they want to know. Not just any American citizen, but an elected official. Not just any elected official, but a judge. This is alarming. And by the way, accompanying this story as I printed this out, this is also a piece, I think, in the. From the New York Times. All the federal judges are meeting in Washington, D.C. right now. And the headline is judges Worry that Trump could tell the U.S. marshals to stop Protecting Them. So you have the judges. There's about 50 judges gathered in Washington for their biannual meeting of the Judicial Conference. Actually, this happened in last month. It was the first time the conference met since President Trump, and apparently they are worried about it. I guess the point here is that if you really want to piss off judges, do the kind of thing they did in Wisconsin. Donald Trump is putting all of his chips forward, saying, I can bully them, I can scare them, maybe they will back off. I'm thinking that right now he's overplaying his hand rather dramatically. We will see. Okay, so, Adam, we're going to talk on Sunday morning with the. The podcast. I wanted to get this out this afternoon. So we'll talk again and again. A reminder to people who are watching all of this that you are not the crazy ones than.