Charlie Sykes (2:09)

Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Think about the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, Donald Trump was astride the world, master of the universe. Threatening to swallow whole countries, right? Threatening everybody in his path. And yet in the last couple of weeks, he's had to back down twice, hasn't he? He had to retreat on attacking Greenland, his board of peace was, I think, universally derided. And then of course, the new tone in Minneapolis. Probably temporary, but at least for the moment, it looked like he was backing off. He was somewhat humbled. In my newsletter yesterday, I described the little platoons of Minneapolis residents with cell phones who turned out to be Donald Trump's kryptonite, at least short term. He' sidelined Kristi Noem, sort of put her in the penalty box for a little while, apparently thrown Greg Bovino under the bus. Even Stephen Miller is backing off. So we have a lot to talk about. How much of this is temporary? How much of it is real? What happens now? And joining me somewhere in Florida, in a closet in Florida, our good friend Mike Pesca, who is the host of the just the longest running news and opinion podcast, I think, in the history of mankind or something like that. Mike, how are you?

Mike Pesca (3:32)

They did find one in the Pleistine era. No, I think you're right. I started it like 12 years ago and I am in a closet because we wrote out this blizzard or were forced to. And so we're in Florida, which is nice. I live in Brooklyn. I know you Wisconsinites don't even look at this thing as a blizzard, but it's a blizzard, right? Deem it a blizzard. Yeah. Okay. As long as we have the Badger State blizzard seal of approval, I don't feel so bad about being in my father in law's closet. And if you're watching the video, my face is blocking his pants and he has very nice pants. But I don't know if that's a visual. You were.

Charlie Sykes (4:04)

Well, I'm really glad, I'm really glad to hear that. No, no, I'm willing to concede that this was, this was a real blizzard. Of course, you know, the weather's somewhat nicer in Florida. It's about, I think zero degrees here in Wisconsin. It's been that way for, for some time. So let's talk about what's going on up, up in Minneapolis. We have the sort of somewhat climb down the defenestration of Greg Bovino. Just give me your thoughts on all of that because this was an interesting development. I always stress how temporary this is, that the problem with the Trump administration is not about personnel, it's not about Kristi Noem, it's not about Greg Bovino, it's not about Tom Homan. The problem with the Trump administration is Donald Trump. It all flows from him. But it was still interesting the way in which this played out. They went from complete denial and Smearing of the victim in this case, Alex Preddy, to a cover up, to an acknowledgement that, damn, this looked bad. So, Mike, what's happening up in Minneapolis? What is your take?

Mike Pesca (5:07)

Right, it's not about personnel, because these people who you named are accurate reflections of Trump's policy preferences. However, I think if you unwind back and really ask yourself, did the administration have a theory of the case? I think did. And I think they were wrong. And so I'm going to say some things that I've heard you say over the show is that they were spoiling for a fight. They thought that if they could have aggressive immigration tactics, especially in blue cities, they'd provoke a reaction and then they'd look good. Because this part is right. Their theory was that Americans hate chaos and scenes of violence. That's true. Here's where they were wrong. Who would they blame the chaos on? And when they went into Los Angeles and picked fights with some protesters in an area of town that a lot of Los Angeles didn't know existed, you know, that one square foot area didn't really work for them. When they went to some other cities, it didn't really work. When they went to Minnesota, they got the chaos. But America is rightly judging the administration and the ICE tactics to be the source of the chaos. And there are reasons for that. And it's the signaling that the ICE that the ICE agents got from especially Stephen Miller, but that is, there's so much horror and there's so much humanity at stake. But if you wanna be very gimlet eyed about it and just look at it from an amoral standpoint of strategy, that is where their strategy went wrong, I think.

Charlie Sykes (6:34)

No, I think that that's exactly right. I mean, they did create this monster and then they encouraged the monster to be as monstrous as possible. As you point out, you know, Stephen Miller telling them, you have absolute immunity, you have absolute impunity, by the way, which I think is, is untrue. But they thought that chaos was the latter. Right. For my Game of Thrones reference here, that chaos was the ladder to power. In fact, as you point out, the public is seeing this and going, well, this is not a good thing. Why are we seeing the chaos? Trump and Miller assumed that the public would blame the protesters or the criminal class of immigrants. In fact, what they saw was this completely unnecessary surge of a thousand ICE agents who are acting as a brute squad, fomenting one act of violence after another. And by the way, you know, here's kind of an interesting irony that, you know, we thought we were in and we still are in a post truth world in which we would have all the deep fake videos and everything. But the decisive thing that seems to be playing out is individuals as average ordinary citizens with the cell phones taking those videos and showing, you know, telling those stories and they've gone viral and, and isn't it interesting, I mean, I'm really struck by how this broke through, how this, this showed up on social media sites that were not political. And I think that this is the key thing that's happened here is that a lot of folks, you know, it's one thing for the political podcasters, like, you know, us to talk about it, but this was showing up on, on podcasts for bourbon drinkers and cat lovers and mountain climbers and I mean they're, they calculated that they could control social media and it came back to bite them in the ass, didn't it?

Mike Pesca (8:25)

Right. Because they know that with our attention being attenuated, they can have narratives that don't have to be even close to true, but they can brand elements that they don't like as purely antifa or terrorists. And there is sometimes enough truth to that that unless you have the time to dig through it and to figure out exactly when they're lying or when they're not and who does beside or you. But when you see not just a video, but videos from dozens of angles combining good and pretty, then it's very hard to ignore. Now, I think there are a couple of things and I'd like to ask you about this. I don't think that the abuses of ice when they were just going to people's houses and detaining five year olds and really doing the, the detention and the things that I defined either brutally or more civilly when they were doing the ice things of detention, it wasn't breaking through, it was the deaths, it was the killing. And the killing comes back to the permission structure that Stephen Miller especially gave. And there was good Axios reporting about how all of this falls at the feet of Stephen Miller. And there is a signaling within the administration because they're so disorganized and discombobulated and the executive has no executive function going on in his own head. I think, I think that's fair to say so that what you do is you take, if you're a gnome or a Bevino, signals from other members of the administration, you get way, way, way out ahead of your skis, to use a blizzard term. And what happened was, I do think the administration Figured, well, we have these trained professionals who know what they're doing. And they thought of the riots of 2020 and they thought of how mostly the police forces did their jobs. And that wasn't the case here. That got to be less and less the case because they were injecting more rhetorical chaos into this situation. And ICE agents just took the signal and began acting what I would call unprofessionally and if there was a real investigation, what maybe we would call criminally.

Charlie Sykes (10:31)

No, I agree. I agree with like 95% of that. I do think that some of the stories were breaking through. That story about the, what was it, the five year old girl or the two year old girls lose track at a certain point. These stories of these children who were being taken away from their parents were being deported. I think that there was sort of a growing sense of what's going wrong here? Who are these people? Why are they behaving this way? Breaking the windows of cars, dragging people out. So what was happening was, I think that the ground was being softened up and then you had the killings, which as you point out, really did break through. There is no question. And one of the things that they've discovered, and I think this is interesting, is that, well, maybe they haven't discovered it, but it's been revealed that they are not in fact Jedi Masters. They are not able to say, you are not seeing what your eyes are telling you. No, we are going to tell you what reality is because that's worked for them in the past. Right. That they have this almost infinite confidence in their own belief to warp reality into their own image. And they just figured, and you could see with the playbook, we're just going to figure he was brandishing a gun, he was, he was a terrorist, and that they could get their supporters to believe all of that. And yet the visual evidence was so compelling, it was so overwhelming. What do you make? Okay, so that's the first one, is that their pattern of being able to basically Jedi mind the MAGA cult just simply may have worked with the MAGA cult, but it does not work with the normies. And I think they're losing the normies big time in these stories.

Mike Pesca (12:07)

Yeah, but I do think, but for the killings, I don't know how much you would see a change. We saw it in polls. So this I'll definitely concede the polling, even on immigration, his best issue, he turned under Trump, turned underwater on that just from enforcement reasons, just from horrific visuals of see cot prison, which America was not in favor of. And even if you put aside the debate over Kilmar Garcia, these everything having to do with kids. But I don't think yesterday or today, I think I saw a headline on espn. Victor Wembanyama, who is the great, as you know, the great like unbelievably tall basketball player from the San Antonio spurs, says the killings are horrific. I don't think you'd get a quote, the necessity of a quote. ESPN thinking about that because their, their ratings when they got into the social justice coverage of the of 2020 and 2021 wasn't great. So I don't think you'd see that. I don't think you'd see Bill Simmons, another sports guy, big sports platform, having to end his about how he couldn't not comment on it. So that's what I'm saying. I'm saying that but for the killings, I don't know that Trump would be at least rhetorically pulling back. I don't know how much it is, but it does seem like, you know, Bevino has been sidelined. I don't think Bavino would be sidelined or Noem would have gotten even a slight shot across the bow. But for these killings. And the killings aren't just the random occurrence of what happens when you have 4,000 ICE agents. It's all these ICE agents essentially told that there is no consequence to doing your job poorly or criminally.

Charlie Sykes (13:47)

No, I think that's true. And so this breakthrough moment that you're saying, so do you think there's going to be a boycott of the World Cup? I mean, there's starting to be that buzz.

Mike Pesca (13:58)

No.

Charlie Sykes (13:58)

Why not?

Mike Pesca (13:59)

I don't think people are bad or evil. I just think that they want their lives to be enjoyable and some sense of justice around them. But the three levels of what people want is my theory of government. It's not just mine. But first, people want security. Second, people want prosperity. And third, people want justice. And so the enjoyment, whatever enjoyment the world takes from the World Cup, I think they'd be hurting themselves more than they'd be helping themselves advance a somewhat abstract theory of justice. And also, you know, who gets punished? Is it Trump gets getting punished? Is it FIFA getting punished? To some extent, but it's all these people who would enjoy themselves and the athletes in the world. It's also such a nice, I think it's a nice coming together and it's good that it's going on in America. I wouldn't want to punish America for the things that are bad with America because Down that road, we'll never have anything nice again.

Charlie Sykes (14:52)

We do need some nice things, don't we? Hey, let me play you a soundbite. And, you know, as part of the endless series of there is no bottom with this guy, you undoubtedly have heard, you know, some of the interviews that Donald Trump has given over the last couple of days. This was, I think, that he's sitting down with the Will Kain, and he's talking about the two victims, the unarmed protesters who were killed. And this is what he had to say. And I'm not sure about his parents, but I know her parents were big Trump fans. Makes me feel bad anyway. But, I mean, I guess you could say even worse. They were tremendous Trump people. Trump fans. And, you know, the daughter was. She was. I don't know if you could say radicalized, maybe radicalized, maybe not. I don't know. But I hate to see it. I hate to see that he has to make everything about himself, doesn't he? I mean, the way this man's mind works, it's fascinating, even after all this time, that he makes it about himself.

Mike Pesca (15:51)

Yeah, it really hits home if parents were Trump fans. Without it, I really didn't understand what the importance of a life lost for no reason was. See, I saw that. I actually first heard him say something like that when Tony Decopol interviewed him on the floor of that plant. And I saw the inklings of him for a second being something other than truculent. Oh, they were Trump fans. I had heard that. And that seems to have grown bigger and bigger in his mind. Yeah, the rhetorical. So it also shows that as Trump gets more and more. I don't want to say deranged, but loses it a bit and bit more, and I don't think we're in the 25th Amendment category yet. But as he gets less and less tethered to a rationality that all but those in his thrall would understand, the consequences of the things he says off the top of his head are more and more real. And so the three biggest issues in the world in the last month have been the Iranian protests, Trump's threat of Greenland, and what we're seeing in ice in Minnesota, maybe I should say the three biggest issues to America and in their place in the world. And they're all. They're all dictated by really irrational and not measured pieces of rhetoric that Trump has committed to. And even though we get more upset by rhetoric than deeds, and deeds are more important than actions, as you know, when the President says words not only does it have consequences? I'm sure you saw the accounts of Iranian protesters saying, I went out there because the president said he had our backs and people believe the president, help.

Charlie Sykes (17:29)

Is on the way.

Mike Pesca (17:30)

Yeah. And in all of those situations, we've had to do this great unwinding or in the case of a couple of those, not even unwinding, just because Trump speaks intemperately and also in a way that doesn't even help himself. Right. That used to be one of the standards. Like he says these things that annoy us, but they also annoy the liberals. And once you're, to his, once you're creating liberal tears, you're doing something good. But, but, you know, as I said on my show the other day, one of the reasons that Democrats and liberals are so upset by this is that they're just a subset of America and humanity. And people are upset by this.

Charlie Sykes (18:08)

They are. No. And apparently now we're sending a great armada to Iran because we have to wag the dog at this point. But the incoherence of his policies and the unpredictability, I think has, seems to be settling in on people. I don't know whether you saw this interview that the, or the story about the Prime Minister of Slovakia who's actually, you know, kind of pro Trump and he is telling people how alarmed he was by the mentality of Donald Trump after meeting with him at Mar a Lago. And I think that you sort of see this, this, this sense around the world that we just can't be trusted. I mean, one of the big stories, kind of a wonky story maybe for some listeners, is the way that the EU basically said, you know, fuck you to Donald Trump, cutting this massive trade deal with, with India. And you can just see, you know, whether it's, it's Canada, whether it's Europe, they're going, you know, we, we no longer think of you as a reliable trade partner. So let's go on, you know, sticking with, with what's happening in Minnesota and what, and what happens right now. I want to get your take on all this, first of all. Yes, go ahead. Sure. Absolutely.

Mike Pesca (19:12)

Know that the slow. The Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico is, was widely described as Trumpian.

Charlie Sykes (19:19)

He's very Trumpy, very, very maga.

Mike Pesca (19:21)

Yes, he was shot. He took a bullet. Not, not for Trump, but for these ideals. And he's broken with him because Trump forces even the people who are predisposed, cynically or politically or whatever, to be on his side. He forces them out of that position when he Picks these fights just with the words he uses, not any actual policy thought or forethought. So, sorry, I just wanted to add that context, but go on.

Charlie Sykes (19:46)

No, no, this is, this is, this is really important because you can imagine what these conversations are like behind closed doors. And yet there are real consequences. I mean, you know, as you point out, if we do have an armada of aircraft carriers heading toward Iran, you know, that is going to have real world consequences for a lot of people. So, going back to Minnesota and domestic politics here. So what do you think Democrats in Congress should do? Right now, it seems inevitable that the Senate is going to vote down any spending bill that includes funding for ice. Is that the right call? Is this worth drawing a line in.

Mike Pesca (20:22)

The sand for Senate Democrats 100% not to do it. You have to always evaluate what are the downsides of not doing it. Enormous. Right. That's the only reason I supported the last shutdown, especially for Schumer's own self preservation. But there are arguments that why preserving himself is actually good for the party in the country. But yes, to not do it at this point would be ridiculous and feckless. And also, I think they quote, unquote, won the last shutdown. And this is something that Republicans should be forced to come off their points to. Number of Republican senators, sure. Thom Tillis, who's not seeking reelection, but some who are, and Murkowski is, and, and Collins is. And we've also seen even dissents from Moran of Kansas and a number of Senators Cassidy of Louisiana, signaling that essentially they're not going to go all out to support the DHS bill. I saw some comments by Collins saying, oh, you have to understand that the majority of this funding isn't ice. What is she acknowledging there? That ICE is so politically toxic that you can't even begin to defend it. And that's a huge difference from what I started talking about, which is the theory of the case, which is he thought this was the best in the best policy and the best.

Charlie Sykes (21:43)

It's amazing.

Mike Pesca (21:44)

For him, it's clearly not.

Charlie Sykes (21:45)

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, ICE is talk. You have the polls showing half of Americans now, you know, support abolishing ice, which used to be kind of a, you know, you know, an edgy, an edgy position. You have states all around the country taking action. But I agree with you. There is no way the Democrats can, can go into that Capitol building and vote to continue to fund what has been going on. And maybe that's one of the reasons why Donald Trump figured he needed a clean House. He needed to, you know, clean up a little bit. My guess is by the time there is. There's a vote, people will understand. You know, putting Tom Homan in charge of this does not fix the problem. You have tens of billions of dollars flowing in there. They are recruiting people. And I keep coming back to this. The thousands of agents that they are recruiting now to be the mask, you know, members of the brute squad, you know, the thugs that we're seeing here. What kind of person is saying, I want that job, I want to be in that. I want to be in that picture? And we know how badly trained they are. So there's just no way that any Democrat can in good conscience vote to continue business as usual, because this is not business as usual. And that's always like the push pull with Democrats. Right. You know, with Chuck Schumer. No, it's not normal Chuck, really. This is not 1994. You know, the rules are changed. It's a different world.

Mike Pesca (23:04)

Right, Right. You're not negotiating with Fritz Hollings over the table.

Charlie Sykes (23:09)

No.

Mike Pesca (23:10)

And it is interesting that Tom Homan actually is an improvement in this situation. You said you're not going to solve it by solving. By sending home. And Homan, who took the $50,000 bribe in his cava. Yeah, his cava. To go bag with, seemingly without confidence. He actually is an improvement in the situation because he has some experience in running a law enforcement agency, whereas Kristi Noemi clearly does not. And Greg Bevino maybe has the wrong kind of experience, and that tells you exactly where we are. That was a question. Good question for Democrats. As you could tell. You run a podcast, and I run a podcast, so I like to ask questions. My question for you is, what do you think the Republicans should be doing? Do you think that John Thune at this point should be saying, why are we in this job? Why do we have Article 1 powers? Don't you think? Can they? And during the Trump administration, angering the Mad King has always been bad policy for them. But can they? And will they assert? And I hear so much reporting about how they're very frustrated, having given away their powers and their prerogatives. Can they assert any of their powers now? Is this a moment to do this?

Charlie Sykes (24:23)

Well, there's several answers to this. You know, will they do it? Probably not, because just assume that they're gonna continue doing what they've been doing. The muscle memory of being sycophants. Can they do it? Absolutely, yes. And I've been asking this question literally every day since the beginning of Trump 2.0. Why had members of Congress been so willing to turn themselves into potted plants, particularly senators? I mean there was a time within our lifetime when being a United States Senator was a very, very big deal, when members of Congress thought of themselves as a co equal branch of government and how they have just surrendered their Article 1 powers on one issue after another. This is like fundamental to the founding right that James Madison just simply assumed that there'd be a jealousy between the various branches, that they would provide a check and a balance on one another. Never anticipating this kind of absolutely spineless caving in. Also self humiliating. What is the point of being a senator if in fact you have no influence? If no one's taking what you're saying seriously, so should they? Can they? Absolutely, yes. Will they? Look, we've seen the Republican Party over the last 10 years. I have, you know, little confidence. On the other hand, it does not take very many Republicans to change the entire dynamics of American politics, does it? It only takes a few, you know, Mike Johnson has a majority of what, like, you know, half a vote? All you need is a few people standing up and saying, we're done with this bullshit. You know, hey, we're still here on tariffs, on foreign policy, on war, all of these things. We're here and we're not going to simply roll over anymore. But who knows?

Mike Pesca (26:04)

Yeah.

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Mike Pesca (28:17)

And they surrendered their power by drips and drabs suddenly and then all at once. And I, I know it is harder to get it back, but I think about some of the inflection points and just the, the confirmation of RFK Jr. There's a big one and there are several big ones across along the way and I think a lot of them regret it. But once you do it and once you go down this road and once you establish yourself, yourself as instinctively rolling over and showing your belly, how do you get it back? You can. There is power within the institution and the executive is leeching power because Trump is not on top of his game as he was. And I also think that he was actually assisted by the people who kept guardrails like Mattis and McMaster.

Charlie Sykes (28:59)

Oh, absolutely. In retrospect, yes. More so than we realize at the time. Yeah.

Mike Pesca (29:05)

Right. Because he could say the things he said and that not follow them up by doing the things that were undoing his popularity. And that dynamic is gone this time around. So we see with Taco, I don't know if you saw the Bloomberg story that they did an analysis of how often Trump actually caved on his tariff threats. And it's not all the time. It's not the A Trump always his chickens out, but he followed through a quarter of the time. And so at that point, I think you're probably safe to say Trump mostly chickens out and we're going to have to play it like that. But there's just an example where he thinks he has a certain rhetoric that helps him in negotiations. Maybe he would say this about Greenland, maybe he would say this about the extreme rhetoric around Iran and ice. But the rhetoric gets ahead of him and he's being hurt. And without someone to actually rein him in, what we're seeing is not just bad for the country, but bad for his own standing, his own self interest. He's a person who doesn't always he thinks he has a supreme knowledge and understanding of his own self interest and he does not. Not as good as he thinks he does.

Charlie Sykes (30:16)

No. And I think that he's paying a price for the hubris where and again, you think about some of the things that happened that this overweening confidence that I know there's a lot of spin saying, you know, well, this is the art of the deal. No, it really wasn't. Now, speaking of people who have abdicated their role, let's not forget the U.S. supreme Court or the courts. Now, the courts as a whole have actually done a pretty solid job in holding Donald Trump accountable, with the exception of the Supreme Court. In many ways, this is the John Roberts presidency when you granted him that kind of immunity. And we're still waiting on this big Supreme Court decision on tariffs, which, you know, whether they've delayed it or not, it seems to me to be a pretty, you know, cut and dried constitutional question that the Congress never intended to give this kind of sweeping power for Donald Trump to wake up and say, you know, the president of Switzerland rubbed me the wrong way. I'm going to impose a gazillion percent, you know, tariff. He actually said that out loud. So it'll be interesting to see what the, what the courts do with all of that because, you know what, judges are people. And they're watching what's happening as well.

Mike Pesca (31:24)

Yes.

Charlie Sykes (31:24)

And they're watching. If they're watching Donald Trump turning into a mad king, this is not irrelevant for them.

Mike Pesca (31:30)

So the Washington Post, number of outlets have reported this. The Washington Post had a graphic, a grabbing graphic back when the Washington Post had a lot of staffers, I guess that showed that Trump was essentially 17 and 0 in front of the Supreme Court. And on my show, I talked about some asterisks on that. The Supreme Court has bought into the theory of the executive that is unitary. And so therefore a lot of of the decisions will flow from that. But I do think that couple of decisions that are pending, it's not going to be an unblemished record for long. I think Lisa Cook, who was the harassed Fed, not chair, but Federal Reserve member, I think her ouster, governor, Yeah, I think her ouster is going to be questioned or disallowed by the court. And I do, I don't predict anything with this ruling and I eba which are the emergency powers that Trump is, is invoking. I can't see him winning outright. I can see either the court just saying no and giving him a clear loss or doing what they like to do, which is to making a narrow, specific ruling, something like, well, he doesn't have the powers. But since the Senate gave him the powers in this case, he does have the powers. But I do think that he's going to stop winning in the court. And it's an interesting point you made. Of course there are people and, but I also think that this was going, the IPA ruling, the tariffs ruling was going to be against him to some degree. No matter what else was going on, just on the law. I think they followed the law.

Charlie Sykes (33:01)

You know, I, well, I agree.

Mike Pesca (33:02)

I think that, I think that Alito, Scalia, sorry, Alito and Thomas, they're in their own category of two. And then you have the other conservatives who have a conservative take on the law and we could fault the actually conservative. They're actually conservative. And so a lot of rulings, if the world's most fair minded conservative were on the court, they would agree with a lot of these rulings. And that is a consequence of our democratic system and who was nominated and you know, also lock and demographics and Ruth Bader Ginsburg not getting off the court, all of that. So sometimes I do worry about calling the court illegitimate because of the, and you didn't. But I hear this a lot. And the problem with that is I don't think many of their rulings are illegitimate. And once we call the court illegitimate, when they actually come in and curtail the administration, well then haven't we done what, what Roper was alleging in man for All Seasons? When you clear all the trees in England and then the devil is just staring back at you.

Charlie Sykes (34:08)

Yeah, well, this is also one of Donald Trump's projects, you know, the MAGA project, which is to delegitimize, you know, any independent institution, including the courts. And he has spent years trying to delegitimize the courts. So I agree with you that we need to be very, very cautious not to basically adopt his playbook because we are going to need that at some point. And the difference between a Supreme Court justice and a United States Senator is they don't have to run for reelection, they don't have to worry about primaries. And you're right. And I think your analysis of the, of the court is also correct. So let me break down a couple of things that are, that I think are Waste of times. But, you know, things that, you know could happen or not gonna happen. I just wanna caution people, because I get this in the comments section all the time about the 25th amendment. The 25th amendment is basically a dead letter, people. The Trump Cabinet is not going to remove him from office. They are the Trump Cabinet. He selected them for one thing and only their abject loyalty to him. Not to mention the fact that the first person that stands up and says, I think that we ought to invoke the 25th Amendment, all Donald Trump has to do is fire them and they're gone. So this is not gonna happen. It's completely but close to this. What do you make of all the talk about impeaching Kristi Noem? Because again, we've been through the impeachment thing before. There would be a lot of noise. Is this a good messaging thing? Because it's not actually gonna change anything. So what is your take on that? If a member of Congress, the House called you up and said, you know, Mike, you know, everybody, you know, the base is all riled up. Should we actually go through the motions of trying to impeach Kristi Noem, knowing that we're not actually going to be able to remove her? What do you think?

Mike Pesca (35:51)

I see no evidence that impeachments without the plausibility of a conviction ever work for the party doing the impeachment. Now, sometimes, to go back to the calculation of what if you don't do it, it. I think that with the first impeachment of Trump over the Ukrainian deal, it had just reached a fever pitch, so the Democrats had to do this after debating various items to impeach. And I'll definitely acknowledge so many of these things are impeachable, which has no real definition, but if we define it as a high crime or misdemeanor or an action undertaken by the executive that is entirely antithetical to what he or she. But in this case, he swore on the Bible then, yeah, so much of the stuff about Greenland's impeachable, so much of the stuff about, you know, hegseth and bombing these civilian boats or perhaps military boats off of Venezuela's impeachable. But in terms of politics, don't draw to a losing hand, I say, and with nomency, I would not do it unless there was an actual crime. Now, I know high crimes and misdemeanors doesn't actually mean an actual crime, but what is not just in the rhetorical sense of her heading the department has been criminal, but what is the actual crime that you can point to. And maybe someone out there has. Has constructed one that I haven't seen, but I just think she's. And mismanagement is also cause for impeachment, but there's a large body of law on that. Malfeasance and nonfeasance. Yeah, I think that she. I think she should be out. I don't think it's. She's gonna be out because the Democrats insisted on it and somehow got a conviction in the Senate.

Charlie Sykes (37:36)

Well, see, this is it. This is it. I mean, you know, she could be fired or she could resign, or they could put her in some sweet place. You know, I. I would point out that there are a number of vacant ambassadorships around the world. Algeria is looking for an ambassador. I think Cameroon has an empty ambassadorship. They could definitely ship someday.

Mike Pesca (37:52)

Call balls Christie, you can just ship her out.

Charlie Sykes (37:57)

Whereas once you have an impeachment, what happens is they rally around. It's like the harder you push, the more resistance you get. So I'm not enthusiastic, but where do you come down on the question? There's interesting debate among Democrats about abolishing ice. Polls are suggesting more and more people are open to that. But there is a debate between people saying, no, well, let's demilitarize ICE or let's reform ICE versus abolish ice. None of this will happen, of course, until there is a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress. But I mean, imagine so you have, you know, President Gavin Newsom or President, you know, Andy Beshear and the Congress. Do you. Do you abolish ice? Do you create an ICE museum or, you know, of atrocities and just move on? What do you think? What would you advise them?

Mike Pesca (38:48)

An ICE house? An igloo? So the history of abolish ice, this phrase, this notion, but I also think the branding was started by a guy named Sean McElwee who ran an outfit called Data for Progress. And Data for Progress is actually a decent enough pollster, but they're a very left wing, maybe they would say, progressive organization that tries to agitate for change. And he invented the hashtag and used to brag about how he got the hashtag to become more than a hashtag. And he got a number of high profile senators to agree to it. I remember when Chris Kirsten Gillibrand was running In New York, McElwee used to have these salons in bars in Brooklyn. And every once in a while, a senator would show up. He was more and more popular, famous. And then it turns out there's great Book written by Ben Terrace, largely about him. He was a gambling addict who was actually. Actually placing bets on the elections that he was taking part of it. It's not sure that he actually had any core beliefs. And so just because the guy who invented the thing has all these negatives, doesn't mean the thing is wrong. I would also point to the history of Kwanzaa, for instance. But abolish ICE is a bad idea. It's always been a bad idea because ICE stands for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and America wants Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. And there's always a cadre of people who will be willing to swing too large and go over broad. And, yeah, I'll acknowledge I'm temperamentally a centrist, I guess you would say a more conservative in terms of redoing the fundamentals of America. But I would essentially say that if there ever was an eminently reformable organization, it's ice. Don't let the cartoon version of the organization tell you what the organization is or can be. And also under Joe Biden, with. With lax immigration enforcement. I don't know that I looked particularly great either, but we need this. We need immigration, we need custom enforcement. If you look at what ICE does, they do a ton of stuff in terms of rooting out child predators. They do a ton of stuff in terms of things that overlap with the Secret Service and the currency. We need these functions. So what are we talking about? Just a rebrand or breaking it up into separate entities? I mean, a bureaucratic fix. Just make the government work for us. You don't have to undo the government or endorse anarchy. You just make the things we need to the government to do. You just need the government to do them.

Charlie Sykes (41:18)

Well, yeah, I think that's the. That's the nuanced argument that may be facing a lot of headwinds. And from the base, there's actually some polling on this that I wanted to bounce off you. Blue Rose Research, which is a Democratic polling outfit, very secretive. This is the, you know, the, you know, under the radar screen. Apparently it went into the field for two days following the murder of Alex Preddy to test 57 different messages. Democratic. The best performing response, which drove Trump's disapproval percentile to 72%, came from Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who wrote ICE's clear abuses of power are only creating danger in our communities, that law enforcement's goal should always be to keep people safe and build trust, and that ICE was violating people's constitutional rights and needed to stop wreaking havoc that was the message that basically these agencies should make us safer, not more dangerous. The comments from Jackie Rosen, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar also worked. Blue Rose concluded that messages that focused on de escalating and emphasize specific measured demands for public safety, accountability and protecting constitutional norms perform better than those that called for abolishing ICE or tied the administration's action to rising authoritarianism. So right now there are messages out there that are working, you know. But again, there's going to be a lot of history.

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Charlie Sykes (44:41)

Agree here. Okay, so I wanted to ask you about in the time that we have left, one of the things that has also changed since the killing of Alex Preddy has been that there have been a lot of people who have over the last year appeased or gone along or gone silent about the Trump administration that are now being pressured to speak out. And I'm talking about a lot of the Silicon Valley tech folks. If I had to make a list of people that I'm really glad that I am not Today, one of them would be Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, who had this amaz, I mean, talk about bad timing, bad optics, that the day of the shooting, when the entire world is watching what's happening in Minneapolis, he's at one of these, you know, let them eat cake parties at. Was it at the White House or Mar a Lago, I'm not sure where they were unveiling this horrible documentary about Melania Trump. And so you had the split screen of the chaos here and all these rich brologarchs who are down sucking up to Donald Trump at this, at this elaborate event. And now he's under a lot of pressure. So a lot of these guys have gone along with Donald Trump. They thought this was the smart move, and now suddenly it's like, oh, shit, you know, maybe that's had unintention, you know, unintended consequences. If only they'd been warned about that. What do you make of Tim Cook in this particular moment?

Mike Pesca (46:05)

I would always want to trade places with Tim Cook. He's richer than us in Apple stock.

Charlie Sykes (46:12)

Although hard to argue with that.

Mike Pesca (46:13)

His bigger headache is that of the Magnificent Seven. Apple kind of bungled AI and is not as rich as their peers.

Charlie Sykes (46:19)

Yeah.

Mike Pesca (46:19)

So I do, obviously the timing was terrible. And supporting the Milania documentary, which is, if you look at the other means of enrichment, the other means of theft essentially that the Trump administration is engaged in. This is a more on the up and up one. Right. It's not just giving money to Trump coin. It's kind of double bank shot paying paid documentary. Of course, it's a. Paul. Yes, it's definitely, it's one step down.

Charlie Sykes (46:52)

From giving somebody a kava bag full of money. I mean, it really, it just, like there's, there's a movie involved, but it's pretty much the same.

Mike Pesca (46:59)

You know, I always wondered if the kava bag was one of the bright yellow bags, you know, that's one of their alternatives, or they have the brown bag. So, yeah, it's a terrible look for him, as they say. I think he'll survive it. I just contrast it with, with four years ago when corporations were compelled to get involved, affirmatively involved in many, many social issues, and it did not do well for them. And just like on polling, you decided David Shore's outfit, Blue Rose. The polling is clear that Americans do not want their corporations to be leaders in the social justice realm. And so I think if that's true and if you're saying, yeah, I didn't like, like when, you know, seventh generation Paper towels. Told you that just as we support the environment, we support abolishing the police, which was something that this paper towel company once actually did say. Really just as we said, that goes a little too far. We perhaps should hold our fire for. This is. This is a little different. Right. I was going to call him Tim Apple. Cook didn't have to go there. Cook didn't have to say it. So this isn't compelled speech. But what corporations, what CEOs do, is they play nice with the power structure to try to maximize shareholder profit. There are good ways to do this and bad ways to do this. I think what Bezos is doing with the Washington Post is really, really troubling to me as a journalist and a fan of journalism. But I also think that if you judge Cook fully on what he's done, he's more on the good side of that tough to navigate but highly paid line to walk talk. And it's not easy. I mean, no one, no one's heart hurts for these guys. That's how highly paid they are and that's how much influence they have on society. Much more so than when George Romney was in Het was head of gm. Like unprecedentedly so. How we think, how we act, it's really important. You want them to get it right, but I think they are basically compelled to more or less play nice with the administration. Not you do things like going to.

Charlie Sykes (49:03)

Well, they have choices of a movie. Yeah, especially equally shitty movie. By the way, did you see the Variety review of that movie that if they showed it on an airplane, people would still walk out, which I thought was pretty good. I just. Are you planning on going. Are you planning on screening it and writing a review of it? Because I'm giving it a pass. Just so you know, there's so much.

Mike Pesca (49:25)

Lacuna to the life of Melania. I want it to all be filled in. I have so many questions about Melania, and yet. But I still feel that this Brett Ratner vehicle is not the way to answer said questions.

Charlie Sykes (49:36)

No, it apparently is not. So, you know, I think that we're at this moment right now where we keep asking ourselves, you know, is there a breaking point? And, you know, I have been. I try to navigate between the triumphalism of the people who are peddling, you know, Hopium, who every week you're talking about, these are our wins. They know, you know, the walls are closing in. This is the turning point versus the defeatists. The people who are always like, Trump is forever. Trump can never be stopped. We are all doomed. America is over. The reality is much more complicated. And maybe I have become too cynical and a little bit too jaded because I have seen this irrational exuberance saying, well, this is the turning point, this is the moment, and it never happens. But at some point, things come to an end. And, you know, if history has some lessons, it is that hubris can destroy even the greatest of empires. And Donald Trump is not the greatest of empire. But there does seem to be this overweening hubris, and he's had a bad week. He's had to climb down on Greenland, he's had to climb down on Minneapolis, but his gut instinct is going to be, I need to escalate someplace else. So give me your sense of where we're at in the Trump trajectory.

Mike Pesca (51:06)

I don't think you're wrong to be cynical. Cynicism is defined as the belief that everyone's motivated by self interest. And that's exactly what's going on with the administration, exactly what we were talking about, and exactly. Even just not contradictory. The mad king, the pessimism. While I was reading Barbara Walter, who I think, you know, she was one of the earliest people who said she studied societies and we're trending towards fascist autocracy. So I was reading her newsletter, and she's a very, very pessimistic person. And she said something like, the Democrats may win the midterms, at least in the House, and they may even win 2028, but that's not enough enough. What we need is mass demonstrations. And I was wondering if she would say, well, that's what we got in Minnesota, so it satisfied her condition. Or I wonder if it's a forever moving horizon where you're never able to satisfy it. But I do think that Donald Trump will not be president in 2028. I do not think the Republicans will hold the house in 2026. I think that just the very fact that these are the markers and they are still standing measures of our republic, these are institutions that we look to and we say, oh, what's going to. How are they going to define our country? That alone is a good thing. I was also listening and talking to my friend Yasha Monk, who's also a good political scientist, and he was one of the earlier ones who said, Barbara Walters, Walter and Jason Stanley and the young, yes, we are becoming a fascist state. He was very, very skeptical of that, and he's less skeptical in Trump's second term. But still, I do think that the elections will be more or less free or fair. There's always some chicanery, and there may be some more. But I do think that Democrats will be able to compensate for that. We will. And this is the real measure of democracy. The will of the people will be reflected at the ballot. And I, I do think that that will continue. And I don't think that Trump, as distracted and dissolute as he is, has so eradicated the scaffolding of democracy that we take for granted. Once did and now don't, but it's still there. So, yeah, I'm a lot more optimistic. I don't know. The weird thing is, I don't know when I say reflect the will of the people, I'm not 100% sure that the will of the people will always or will be for many years an anti maga or anti Trump will. That, I think, is the real question. It's not as will he steal elections, but will the majority of people who vote want to vote for that? More or less? I can't say no.

Charlie Sykes (53:47)

I am somewhat less optimistic than you are. But that last point is, you know, keeps haunting me here. In fact, I had a guest on a couple of days ago who was talking about democracy, democracy, and I said, you know, is it possible, though, that democracy can give you fascism? Is it possible that people will vote for many of these things? You know, if you had had a referendum, you know, in, in the 1850s, I think that most of the states that had slavery, the, you know, democratically would have endorsed that sort of thing. You know, that democracy is not. Is not necessarily the answer. I agree with you. And let me actually end on. I guess I'm less optimistic about his, his, his ability and his willingness to mess with the elections. But, but I'm gonna end on a hopeful note here, and it's really in the last couple of days because one of the big questions I had during that period where he was gaslighting, where the administration was gaslighting the country about the killing of Alex Preddy, when they were saying that he had it coming and all of this sort of thing was that he was counting on the fact that the American people, in fact, were willing to tolerate this sort of thing, that they were willing to embrace that version of law included the brutality versus what we've actually seen, which is there's an innate sense of decency and fairness that was offended. And so, you know, this blowback that we're seeing right now is the American people saying, okay, we may go along with tougher borders or more enforcement, but we do have a line and we are not crossing that line. We have not been so brutalized. We have not that we are embracing this ideology in this culture of cruelty. And that was reassuring to me because as long as there's a residual sense of belief in law and fairness, you know, and just, you know, just fundamental decency, that is a limit on what MAGA can do. That is a limit. And I think that people like Stephen Miller thought that perhaps, you know, there was no limit or that they have softened people up, that they would accept the unacceptable. That appears not to be true. So that's my glimmer of hope that I'm holding on to today. Get back to me next week to see whether I still have it.

Mike Pesca (56:01)

And to that I will add under the taxonomy of security, prosperity, justice, it is up to the Democrats to recognize this and deliver security and prosperity.

Charlie Sykes (56:13)

Yes, security and prosperity.

Mike Pesca (56:15)

The border situation, when there was the border situation or the immigration situation that obtained for at least three of the four years under Biden, that is what we call a self goal or a cell phone that opens up the possibility for this cruelty.

Charlie Sykes (56:30)

No, I agree with you. I would think there's three. There's people want to be safe, they want to be secure, they want to be prosperous, by which they mean they want to be able to buy the big ass truck. And number two, they want leaders that appear to be strong as opposed to weak. This is something that Bill Clinton talked about back in the 1990s. So strength, strength, security, prosperity. Take those back. If you don't get those, you might not achieve it. Mike Pesca, thank you so much for all of your insights and all of your time. Very anxious. Our audience should be very anxious to check out your podcast the gist. And again, I'm very, very grateful for your time today.

Mike Pesca (57:11)

Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure. I always love listening to the show as well.

Charlie Sykes (57:15)

Well and thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. We do this all the time. We will continue to do this because, well, you know what I'm going to say. We need to continually remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.

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