Afternoon all. Sending along a new discussion with Greg Sargent of The New Republic that we had live earlier today. I asked Greg to come by and talk about his new TNR article, Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot To Build A MAGA Terror State, and what he thinks of what we are seeing in Minnesota now. A recording is above and a transcript is below.
Here is Greg’s big takeaway about the moment:
So I think that people like you and me have been waiting for a moment like this one in the sense that we have wanted the country to awaken to the threat that Trump poses. And the shooting of Renee Good, that horror in Minneapolis, I think has jarred the country into a new state of awakening about what’s happening right now. And the country’s engaged. And I think one really clear sign of that is that Democrats are finally stepping out of their defensive crouch on this issue and going pretty hard at it.
For more on the encouraging polling I discuss with Greg see my new post, New Polling Finds Public Turning On ICE.
During our discussion I read a comment Hopium community member Tim Wegener left on this morning’s post, Restoring Rule Of Law and Reining In Ice. Here it is:
As a resident of the Twin Cities, I cannot describe for you what is happening here and capture it accurately. There are over 2000 ICE agents here. As I understand it, the Minneapolis police force is 1,200 full time officers. As Simon mentioned, they are going door to door in some neighborhoods without warrants. They are pulling US citizens out of cars for no reason and jailing them for hours. They are making traffic stops (which they have zero authority to do) and pulling US citizens out of cars and jailing them.
We are under siege and that is not hyperbole. Schools are closed. Families are not leaving their homes. Networks have sprung up, led by a number of churches, to deliver food to families. Whatever you are seeing or reading in the news is not nearly capturing the lawlessness, the fear and the anger.
The bravery of our citizens in pushing back cannot be overstated. The observers who keep document these atrocities are heroes. The organizations that are training constitutional observers deserve our thanks. Minnesota is not going to go down without giving it our all.
Here are some excerpts from a powerful new editorial from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Minnesota is under siege, and it cannot stand:
Minnesota has endured unrest before. What the state is now experiencing looks and feels different. Battalions of armed federal agents are moving through neighborhoods, transit hubs, malls and parking lots and staging near churches, mosques and schools. Strangers with guns have metastasized in spaces where daily life should be routine and safe. It feels like a military occupation.
Heavily armed and masked government agents are prone to confront any American they encounter in the street but especially people of certain colors, accents or styles of dress. The encounters are often violent. The federal agents operating under the insignia of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Homeland Security, functioning largely anonymously, have disrupted the life of large swaths of a state.
The occupation of Minnesota by ICE cannot stand.
………..
ICE will not likely be abolished. But, at minimum, it must be reformed. It must be structured to operate within the same constitutional norms that govern other law-enforcement bodies. That means clear rules of engagement. Training must be rebuilt, not lightly adjusted. Rigorous de-escalation training and understanding of the community impact of enforcement actions must be prioritized. The current ambiguity invites overreach and more deaths. Clear limits on force and escalation protect civilians, undocumented residents and agents alike.
Oversight must also have teeth. Independent review, transparent reporting and real consequences for misconduct are essential to restoring trust. ICE should meet the same standards expected of other police agencies, especially as it relates to the identification of agents and use-of-force guidelines.
Public protest and civil disobedience remain essential and foundational tools in a democracy. They must remain peaceful and focused on reform, not escalation. To date, Minnesotans have shown remarkable restraint in the face of disruption and loss. That discipline matters now more than ever. But how long before there is a breach in the face of willful provocation?
The central question ahead is not whether immigration enforcement will continue, but whether it can credibly continue under the current structure and imprimatur of ICE. If battalions of militarized federal agents can occupy American cities under the pretext of combating fraud, arresting undocumented felons and targeting any American seemingly at will without transparency or accountability, then no state is immune.
It is currently happening in Minnesota. It’s wrong, and it must be stopped.
To Tim, and all Minnesota Hopium Members - we incredibly grateful for your courage in this challenging time. You have become an inspiration to us all, and we will be by your side every step of the way……
Since our discussion Greg has dropped a new article on the TNR site, Joe Rogan’s Harsh New Takedown of Trump ICE Raids Hands Dems a Weapon, that I also strongly recommend. Here’s the Joe Rogan clip Greg writes about where he forcefully condemns what ICE has become:
Pleased I could bring this timely discussion with one of the most important chroniclers of Trump’s escalating fascism to you today. Get to it when you can. Promise it will be worth your time.
Keep working hard everyone. We have a lot of hard and important work ahead - Simon
Greg Sargent is a staff writer at The New Republic and the host of the podcast The Daily Blast. A seasoned political commentator with over two decades of experience, he was a prominent columnist and blogger at The Washington Post from 2010 to 2023 and has worked at Talking Points Memo, New York magazine, and the New York Observer. Greg is also the author of the critically acclaimed book An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics.
Simon Rosenberg:
Welcome, everyone. Simon Rosenberg, Hopium Chronicles. We’ve got a great event today. Joining me for what will be a lively conversation is my good friend, Greg Sargent from The New Republic. Greg, welcome.
Greg Sargent:
Hi, Simon. How are you doing?
Simon:
I’m good. It’s great to see you, brother. We talk from time to time on the phone. We don’t see each other in person that often, so it’s always great to be with you. I get to be on your podcast from time to time, and it’s great to have you back here at Hopium.
Greg:
Well, thanks for having me on, Simon. Always a pleasure.
Simon:
So listen, you’ve been in the guts of this conversation around immigration, border security, ICE. Stephen Miller, you wrote this remarkable profile, or I won’t say profile, but a story about Stephen Miller in The New Republic a few weeks ago. In the last two weeks we have seen now what is a dramatic escalation of the way that the administration, the regime, is using ICE… to sort of assault, attack a city in unprecedented ways. I mean, to me the most remarkable statistic is that there are more ICE agents in Minneapolis–St Paul than there are police right now which is just sort of a remarkable thing. Just take a step back. You’ve been writing about this every day for weeks, months now. Where are we in this as a nation? I mean, this is an unprecedented event in our history… lawless and dangerous. Just what are your thoughts today?
Greg:
So I think that people like you and me have been waiting for a moment like this one in the sense that we have wanted the country to awaken to the threat that Trump poses. And the shooting of Renee Good, that horror in Minneapolis, I think has jarred the country into a new state of awakening about what’s happening right now. And the country’s engaged. And I think one really clear sign of that is that Democrats are finally stepping out of their defensive crouch on this issue and going pretty hard at it.
You know, you and I have talked about this before, Simon, but there are a few Democrats who have really stepped up to this moment. People like J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, Gavin Newsom in California, now Jacob Frey in Minneapolis. These are Democrats who are using their bully pulpits to let their people know that they are under siege and under severe threat. And all the data that you’ve been writing about so well, and that I’ve been looking at as well, really shows that the country is awake, I think. And folks should tune in. We’re about to drop a piece this afternoon at TNR.com that will shed a little more light on that. And I hope you’ll check it out.
Simon:
And… talk to me, Greg, as somebody who just wrote a major piece in Stephen Miller, about what you think the goals of all of this is, right? I mean, some of this is impulsive. Trump was in trouble. He had a bad last couple of weeks of December. You know, they needed to change the subject and get it away from Epstein and the economy. Right. Whenever he gets in trouble, he goes into this reflexive kind of strongman thing that he does. But now, and it started with the attack on the Somalis, which was the equivalent of the eating cats and dogs that we saw during the campaign in 2024. But now it’s metastasized into something far more significant. And I just wonder, Given what you have written about Stephen Miller, what’s a reasonable assumption about where this is all heading in 2026?
Greg:
Well, I think Stephen Miller came into this term with a huge amount of hubris, really, and understandably so. The 2024 comeback, as I think you’d readily admit, Trump’s comeback was a stunning event. It was a real surprise in many ways. While we always knew it would be close, I think a lot of us thought that Harris would eat it out. You and I discussed that a number of times in public places, and we were wrong. And Trump’s durability, the durability of MAGA at a time when it seemed to be on the defensive and on the run, was a real awakening for, I think, us.
So Miller came into this understandably thinking that he could shock and awe the country into accepting his fascism, right… that’s the phrase that Tom Homan the Border Czar are used, but it applies to Miller even better, I think. He started doing things like lining the White House driveway with mugshots of Latinos and using totalitarian propaganda language with abandon. Essentially not disguising the extremeness of their agenda in any way. And I think we’re seeing that even more so now… but what’s happened is… the country is in the midst of a genuine backlash to all that stuff. And I’m glad you brought up the campaign thing that they did when they depicted Haitians as cat eaters and pet eaters and all the rest of it. They thought that they were going to be able to get Americans to kind of sleepwalk their way into their understanding of our national moment, which is that immigrants are fundamentally a threat, and a danger to our national health and cohesion.
But in a really striking irony, every bit of data we’re seeing and every display we’re seeing on the streets of these cities is showing that the American people see the threat as Trump, the threat as MAGA, the threat as the government militias that he’s unleashed on the country.
Simon:
Well, and I want to drill down on something a little bit. When you talk about fascism and the Miller Project, you know, he’s been writing recently about the Immigration Act of 1965. He’s been bringing it up. And for those of you who don’t know, you know, we had in the mid-60s the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. But we also had this other very consequential legislation that passed in 1965 called the Immigration Act… which redirected the targets of immigration away from white Europeans to allow people to come in from all over the world. And it’s what dramatically changed the demography of the country. I was born into a segregated country in 1963, and the population of the United States then was about 89% white and 10% black and 1% other. There were only 3 million Hispanic Americans in the country at that time. And we’ve seen this huge explosion, particularly of Hispanics and Asians, but the broad panoply of people from all over the world.
And Miller has now identified that act and the decision to allow non-white immigrants into the country going back now over 60 years… I mean, we’re talking about… the Immigration Act is 61 years old this year… as sort of the thing that destroyed the country. That America was great before this, and now we’ve been in this perpetual decline. We’ve lost geopolitical power. We’ve lost economic might. We’ve lost social cohesion. We’ve lost our values. And yet, Greg, as you know, in the last few years, America was arguably stronger in the world than we’ve ever been. The economy under Joe Biden was arguably the strongest American economy in history. And, you know, we had the lowest unemployment rate in a postwar peacetime economy, the lowest uninsured rate, the lowest poverty rate. I could go on and on. And so behind this kind of grand argument about the polluting of the blood is just bullshit. Right.
Greg:
Yes, it is bullshit. And you’re right to identify that as absolutely pivotal to Stephen Miller’s worldview. We did a big piece on this that people can check out… it’s a long piece on Miller’s worldview. He, in those infamous emails that he sent to Breitbart reporters, you know, a number of years ago, he was scaldingly critical of the 1965 act. He criticized Ted Kennedy for what he did to the country… in the Miller worldview, that was when everything started to go to shit, when we started to let people in from the “third world.” There’s one quote that we discuss in the piece that I think is one of the most revealing ones of all. He said, “if you import the third world, you become the third world.”
Now, you know, this is not what happened in America. Right. What actually happened is all these immigrant groups that came into the country in the wake of the 1965 act, and the decades that followed that, actually assimilated as well as previous groups of immigrants. Which, by the way, included his own relatives, Miller’s own relatives.
And so, here’s his project in a nutshell. He wants to unmake the world that the 1965 act made. And Simon, you’re 100% right to talk about the core deceptions here… his depiction of of that act as an impediment to national greatness. He sometimes goes out there and he says, okay, in the postwar years, we were stronger than we’ve ever been. And of course, he neglects to include the fact that Europe was in ruins after World War II, which allowed us to build up industrial might in a major way. And also, unions were strong, which enabled workers to get a real big chunk of the pie. Those things… he doesn’t credit to making America strong. He only credits the fact that immigration was more limited.
Simon:
Well, and I think this is going to be an enormous debate for the next 10 or 20 years because they made a decision that this world that we built in 1965 after 1989, sort of this idea that we extended the American-led global order, or the American Revolution to the rest of the world through this American-led global order, and that it somehow made America weaker rather than stronger than we have ever been… and this is the core of Trumpism. The core of Trumpism is that globalization and immigration led to national decline.
And yet, in 2024, there were cover stories in The Economist and others about America’s economy being the envy of the world and us coming out of being dominant in all global industries. China had receded in the last few years of the Biden era economically. America’s power and might in recent years was, I think, far greater than it was in the 1960s, for example, when two-thirds of the world were not aligned with the West and Western values. We had the unaligned nations and we had the communist world. The idea that somehow we were safer or that we were stronger and more command of the world prior to the Cold War ending… it’s just insanity. It’s not a legitimate view. It’s a sky is blue, sky is red thing in my view.
I think what we have to recognize is that this is the ideology that’s driving the entire administration because Stephen Miller is essentially the ideological chief of Trumpism now. He’s defining… the core public ideology, not just on this, but also on foreign affairs. He’s weighed in heavily on foreign affairs recently. And I think that we have an obligation to really take on the sort of the core lie that is driving all of this.
Greg:
I think there’s another dimension to the big picture case you’re making. You may all recall that Stephen Miller went out there recently and said, in essence, the international law is over, right? Under Donald Trump, America is going to do whatever the hell it wants. And because it’s strong… the strong do what they want and the weak accept what they must, that sort of thing. And that, too, is an effort to unmake the postwar world because as you know better than anyone, you write about this, Simon, in the wake of World War II, we built up a set of international institutions and commitments to human rights that were, you know, extremely admirable things, right? They were extremely admirable things, and they contributed to making the world a better place and the country stronger in all kinds of ways.
And he just rejects at the core the very idea that anything that binds America in any way or requires it to enter into international agreements in any way is just weak and debilitating. And that’s just bullshit. And we should say so.
Simon:
Yeah, I mean, it is it is amazing that, you know, I write about how the fundamental decision that FDR made after World War II was to build a world around freedom and not dominion. And the Four Freedoms became the kind of guiding construct of all of the international institutions that were built, the whole way that we understood the world, And freedom from fear, by the way, being one of the four, which is something that’s very relevant to today.
Greg:
Yes.
Simon:
And it was rejection of dominion. It was a rejection of a politics of dominion… where a country could have dominion over another or a person could have dominion over another. It’s one of the reasons that FDR forced the Europeans to get rid of all their colonies after World War II. Because that was dominion and we were building a new kind of politics.
Stephen Miller’s articulation last week, which got a lot of play on CNN in that interview, that the era of freedom is essentially over and we’re turning to an era of dominion, and where the strong dictate over the weak is an unbelievable repudiation of everything that’s made America the most powerful nation and wealthiest nation in the history of the world. And we’re really dealing with an incredibly radical… I mean, I think we have not adequately as a society, or even among the intellectuals that talk about all this, have not really adequately described the radical and fact-free nature of everything that is now happening. And that’s why today, in what is one of the most shameful moments in the history of this great country, our Vice President and Secretary of State are in Europe to demand them to turn over Greenland to the United States in a way that would literally end and dissolve not just the era of the UN Charter, but also NATO. This continued sabotage. Whatever it is they think they’re doing, they continue to sabotage the things that actually made us powerful and great and prosperous as opposed to the alternative.
Greg:
Well, Simon, I do want to add this. You know, you’ve written about this extensively, that Democrats and liberals really have to engage this big picture debate. I really love one of your formulations, which is that Democrats have to run as patriots. It really captures it all. But I do think we should point out here that one of the reasons Democrats and liberals sometimes don’t step up and do what’s required is that on some level they’re frightened of the argument that Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are making. On some level they’re deeply demoralized about their own ability to make the case that you’re making.
And I don’t know what the source of that is but I think we should be having, as part of this, a big conversation about what the source of it is. It’s a tactical retreat in the sense that… it’s a conclusion that… okay it’s just too hard to explain this to voters, so let’s just pivot to the kitchen table where we can win? Or is it a deeper demoralization? Is it a sense that on some level, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller are speaking to authentically held majoritarian views about the liberal international order, flawed as it is. And I think we need to engage that as well and figure out why exactly Democrats feel too skittish to make the case that you’re talking about here.
Simon:
[Laughs.] Yeah, but I think you’re right, Greg. I think that I will be honest with you that I can understand why Democrats have focused on affordability in health care. It’s been hard for me to understand why we haven’t added a third leg to that stool, which is patriotism, love of country, and understanding that the central American project was to be defenders of democracy here and everywhere. And that makes our arguments… being both a warrior for the middle class and a proud patriot defending democracy, freedom, and liberty… seems like a stronger formulation rather than a weaker one. And the way that it’s being presented in some circles is that this is a choice as opposed to it being an “and.”
In my view we don’t really have any choice about this. I mean, there’s only one way we’re going to get to the other side of all this. And the notion that we’re going to restore our democracy and regain liberty and freedom by talking about…as the central discussion with the American people, egg prices being too high… it’s fantastical because we have to create, in my view, a story that we talk to the American people about that creates the predicate for the repairing of democracy.
And this is why I think this moment, with what’s happening with ICE, is so important. What I wrote today is that the goal here shouldn’t be about ICE funding… it should be about the restoration rule of law. That should be our objective, that rule of law has broken down in Minnesota through ICE’s behavior. And our aspiration here should be using all the tools in the toolbox to restore rule of law. And I think thatl, you know, who’s going to be against that, by the way? I mean, you know, 25, 30 percent are against everything we do. And that’s fine. But we’ve seen the polling on this. I mean, there is enormous concern in the public about what they’re seeing with their own eyes.
Greg:
Well, absolutely. And just to your point, and to go back a little bit to Democratic skittishness, you may note that we’re seeing a certain type of Democratic strategist rush out there right now and say, well, we can’t be for abolish ICE, right? You know, this is at a moment when there’s this enormous opening to talk about Trump and Trumpism as fundamentally a threat to civil order. As you say, the rule of law is in collapse in Minnesota and Trump’s Stormtroopers are the reason why it’s in collapse. And we have an opening to say that Democrats have an opening to say that liberals have an opening to say that in a sustained way because people are listening. And so, you know, getting into a debate about whether to use the precise words abolish ICE is just, I’m sorry, it’s f—ing ridiculous.
Okay, Simon, it’s ridiculous. And anyone who’s even engaging that debate should shut the hell up. What we’re talking about here now is making the case that Trump is out of control, that he’s unleashed heavily armed government militias to attack Americans, wholly unbound to the law, wholly unaccountable to the law, and Democrats are going to stand for an end to the damn madness. That’s what Democrats should be for, an end to this madness.
Simon:
Well, I want to reflect, Greg, on something… you know, I talk about how I wish our leaders in Congress spent more time with people like Timothy Snyder. Ruth Ben-Ghiat and other historians who can walk them through what happens when this starts happening. And what tactics have been successful, and not successful, and spending less time talking to people that do ad testing, frankly. [Greg laughs.]
But the thing that I want to come back to is… this notion that we know from history that it starts with an out-group and then it moves into the center of the society. And that what it started with was undocumented immigrants right, or “criminal aliens.” And then it was now essentially all undocumented immigrants. And then all immigrants. And I’ll give you an example of this, I mean, it’s been reported today that a hundred legal refugees, Somalian legal refugees who came into the United States legally, who went through the refugee process, which is pretty rigorous, by the way, and are living legally in the United States, have been arrested and detained and brought to Texas.
And those are people that are legally present in America. They have all the right to be here. And they’ve now become criminals, in essence. And so what’s happening is… the reason why we all have to be concerned about this is… that as we know from history, this is how this works if it doesn’t get stopped. They just keep going deeper and deeper into society and into the enemies of society.
The fact that they’re now openly arresting legal immigrants to the United States, and detaining them, and putting them into detention centers far away from their families, far away from their jobs. And that we’ve seen this creep with the way that they’re treating American citizens. I think for me, there’s been a lot of outrageous video, but the thing that is sticking with me most right now… is there was a video last night that I saw where a bunch of ICE agents had to walk through a crowd to get to where they were going. A crowd that was just standing on a street corner. They didn’t have signs… just people standing. And instead of asking people to move or walking around them, they just walked through the crowd, punching everybody… literally people that were just standing there getting shoved and punched and attacked. And it was like, in what universe could this be legal, acceptable behavior in any kind of civil society?
Greg:
Absolutely out of control… you know, obviously the shooting… the moment before the shooting when one of the ICE officers, as he was walking toward Good’s car, said “get the fuck out of the car.” On what planet is it okay for public servants to talk to Americans or anyone that way? Like, that guy should be fired immediately. And that’s not even the guy who shot Renee Good in cold blood, I believe.
Simon:
It’s actually a separate person.
Greg:
Right, it was another guy, but you know, that was the atmosphere in which that shooting happened. These guys are out there looking to beat the shit out of Americans because MAGA has demanded it and because Trump has empowered them. And now we’ve got Stephen Miller and JD Vance out there saying that these guys have total immunity. It’s a lie. They don’t have total immunity, but the fact that they’re saying it is a signal to all these people out there, right?
And let me ask you a question, Simon. Have you seen one syllable from any administration official anywhere that they are uncomfortable in any way with those types of incidents? Putting aside the shootings… have you seen a sign that they are saying in any way, please don’t treat people that way?
Simon:
I think the context of your question… and I talk about this at Hopium, is that I think that Republicans are growing weary of defending the indefensible, is what I call it, the cumulative ugliness and failure of the Trumpian project. That they have to go out and defend it to their voters and on television. And whether it’s Greenland or the snatching of a foreign leader or whatever it is. The argument I’ve been making is that the administration is just pushing even Republicans past a point where they can defend them any longer. And just last Thursday, we had five votes that went against Trump in one single day in Congress. It was his worst day in Congress of repeated repudiation and rebuke coming from his own party in votes that happened.
And that was a warning shot to them that they needed, you know, to cut the shit basically and stop being so crazy and doing things that are so harmful. And then this happened. What’s going to be really important for us, and this is part of what I want to ask you, is that, you know, the claim of absolute immunity is something that cannot exist in a democracy. And the assertion of it is so offensive, it’s so un-American, it’s so unbelievably... I mean, honestly, I was shocked. It’s very hard for any of us to get shocked any longer.
But when J.D. Vance came out and claimed that people who worked for the United States government could do whatever they wanted and there could be no criminal prosecution of them, it’s essentially an assertion. It’s a version of Stephen Miller’s assertion that the rule of law has ended in America. At that moment, that’s an assertion from a Yale Law School graduate that the rule of law has ended because there are unaccountable agents. This is pure fascism, right? I mean, this is sort of the essence of fascism. So no, I don’t think we’ve seen anyone in the administration or even, frankly, anyone in the Republican Party sort of start raising the flag that this has gone too far. It will be interesting to see what happens with this discussion that the Democrats are going to bring to Congress about the funding of ICE in the next few weeks and about whether Republicans start siding with us on basic civil rights, civil liberties issues, which used to be central and core to the modern conservative movement up until very recently.
Whether we can forward some kind of coalition to rein in ICE… I mean this certainly has to be the aspiration. I’m not optimistic about it, but I think it’s something we have to try. I want to turn it to you… what should we be doing that we’re not doing now? As democrats, I mean, what what would be your advice to the family about how we proceed here.
Greg:
Well, I think you’re seeing people like Pritzker and Newsom and Jacob Frey in Minneapolis talk in a forceful way about this stuff, a way that Democrats tend to kind of avoid doing. And this is just a starting point. But speak with some damn conviction about what you believe to be right, wrong and true. That’s what these guys are doing. There was a great moment from J.B. Pritzker where he basically said I want to send one message to Donald Trump, if you come for my people you’ve got to come through me. Okay, that should be the animating spirit for Democrats now… Trump and MAGA are a threat to the well-being of ordinary Americans, they’re unleashing heavily armed government militias that are wholly unaccountable to the law on Americans, they are sending a very clear message that even people who hurt and kill Americans probably won’t be held accountable in any way.
They have sent that message very clearly to this ICE force, which is scaling up as we speak, getting more weaponry, getting more personnel, drawing up more invasion plans. And Democrats should start with what you might call a J.B. Pritzker test, right? If you want to come for my people, you come for me. You come through me.
Simon:
Yeah, I want to read something from a Hopium community member, Tim Wegener, who lives in Minnesota. And this morning he posted this on Hopium. I think we’re all at the point where we’ve been shocked by these videos and to your point, Greg, we are awakening, but I just want to read you what Tim wrote this morning.
As a resident of the Twin Cities, I cannot describe for you what is happening here and capture it accurately. There are over 2000 ICE agents here. As I understand it, the Minneapolis police force is 1,200 full time officers. As Simon mentioned, they are going door to door in some neighborhoods without warrants. They are pulling US citizens out of cars for no reason and jailing them for hours. They are making traffic stops (which they have zero authority to do) and pulling US citizens out of cars and jailing them.
We are under siege and that is not hyperbole. Schools are closed. Families are not leaving their homes. Networks have sprung up, led by a number of churches, to deliver food to families. Whatever you are seeing or reading in the news is not nearly capturing the lawlessness, the fear and the anger.
The bravery of our citizens in pushing back cannot be overstated. The observers who keep document these atrocities are heroes. The organizations that are training constitutional observers deserve our thanks. Minnesota is not going to go down without giving it our all.
And I think that part of what we all have to realize is that this isn’t going to happen to “them.” Whoever our version of them is, it’s happening to us. And I think there has been an ability, just as there was in Germany, right, to think that, oh, it’s just going to happen to those people over there and not to all of us. We’re now at the point where we know the story, right? They’re coming for all of us. And they’ve made that clear. They’re terrorizing a major American city in completely lawless and unaccountable ways. It’s incredible the impunity that these people are showing on the ground. And the encouragement that they’re getting from Trump and Vance and Miller and others… it is time now for Democrats.
Every Democrat in the country should be issuing aggressive statements defending the people of Minnesota, offering resources and help, and making it clear that they’re going to fight, you know, in this legislative process over the next few weeks. We’re going to do everything we can to use our levers to restore rule of law, to rein in ICE, to roll back this outrageous levels of funding that they don’t need in order to preserve our democracy and freedom and liberties. And I think we’re being given a real opportunity as a party to show… we know who they are… and we have to now let it be clear about who we are.
Greg:
Well, listen, I agree 100 percent. I would really try to underscore this. Any Democrat who’s not willing to basically say that… you know, if you want to come from my people, you come through me, shouldn’t be in public service anymore. You’ve got to be willing to defend your constituents from the threat that they’re under right now. You’ve got to be willing to defend the country from the threat that it’s under now. And if you’re not willing to do that, step aside and let someone else take over who is willing to do that. That’s basically where I think we are.
Simon:
Hey brother I’m with you. And I think it’s a good way to end. We use a line at Hopium a lot about how the best way out is always through. And I think that the the time where we could imagine the easy path is gone. I mean, we’re in it now and we have to go win. And I’m just grateful for your daily commentary. You’ve been bringing it for years, Greg. I used to call you the hardest working man in show business. You produce more content. You found a good, new, wonderful home with The New Republic with Mike and everybody. And I’m just really grateful for our friendship and for your intellectual leadership and your courage at a time when our country really needs it. So thank you for all that you’re doing every day.
Greg:
Well, look, Simon, you’re doing a lot of leading here, and we’re all very grateful for it. And, you know, keep up the fight man.
Simon:
You too, brother. And listen, Greg, how do people follow you? And tell us about your podcast and just how people can find you.
Greg:
Sure. So I’m on Twitter at GregTSargent, although my account was just hacked. I think I’ve been able to get it back, thankfully. So you might be able to find me there. At Blue Sky, I’m at gregsargent… and I host the daily podcast for TNR which is called The Daily Blast. It runs five days a week. It’s not too long, I promise. It’s only around 20-22 minutes a day. And it’s quick and easy and fun. So that’s where you can find me.
Simon:
Okay, brother. Keep fighting. We’ll have you back soon…
Greg:
Anytime, Simon.
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