Minneapolis backlash reaches the White House

These days things are changing fast for Canada and the world. Every step of the way, the Power and Politics Pod keeps you up to date with new episodes six days a week. I'm David Cochrane and I speak to the biggest political players and bring you news from my insider sources. For your daily dose of democracy, follow power and politics wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast.

Well this week in Washington uh all eyes are many, many blocks from the White House, all eyes on Minnesota, after thirty seven year old Alex Pretdy was killed by ICE agents uh on Saturday morning. His death Adding to the growing protests in that state. What's unfolding there could have major implications for Donald Trump and for America. I'm on the ground in Minneapolis right now and it's really hard to put into words.

the level of anger I'm seeing from people here. You know, when this deployment is done and I come back to Washington and I close my eyes and think about what is going to resonate with me, it It's the images of people on their knees on the freezing cold ground in the ice. openly weeping, kneeling at the memorial for Alex Pretti.

Um it's really hard to describe this mix of anger and heartbreak and and frustration in this moment that is leading to pressure and and people here hope will lead to change. Yeah, clearly stakes are are very high and the White House seems to be realizing that. Things there evolving very, very quickly. And Katie, I I'm really curious to kind of get your assessment of what's happening in Minneapolis.

Everyone is on edge. We're gonna be talking about all of this on uh today's episode of our podcast, Two Blocks from the White House, uh where Willie and I are sitting, Katie of course in Minneapolis, we're asking uh whether this event could be a tipping point. American politics. I'm Paul Hunter. I'm Katie Simpson. And I'm Willie Lowry. All right, so Katie, as we've been uh noting, you're in Minnesota. You've been there since Saturday, the day Alex Predy was killed. We're recording this episode

early Tuesday afternoon. Katie, uh you've given us some hints as to what you've been seeing and hearing, but tell us a bit more. What's it like there?

Um when you show up at memorials the event is is generally pretty solemn. People are showing up with flowers, they're lighting candles, they're laying down signs and messages of hope and messages of thanks to Alex Pretty. Um one thing that that really stands out to me is that the way that people are openly weeping and openly sobbing and and the tears are coming from a place of not just sadness but anger.

I interviewed a gentleman yesterday who was standing outside of the hospital, the veterans hospital where Alex Prey worked, and he was just standing there by himself, minus twenty degrees, holding a giant sign that said the word hope. And he said, I didn't know what to do in this moment. I I feel so angry and he compared Seeing this the video of Alex Pready being shot and killed to the moment he saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center, he he said he had that same sense of

anger, outrage, sadness, frustration. And in some cases we are seeing people openly sobbing um and having those moments of grief together. And then we see the anger take on different forms. Um, I was at a protest on Monday night outside a hotel. where ICE agents have been staying and it had spread online here on the ground that um possibly this was the hotel that Greg Bovino was staying at. Greg Bovino has been leading the ICE operations in Minnesota.

Um he has been very widely criticized. He's the guy that made the allegations without any evidence that Alex Prey showed up at this ICE enforcement event uh and wanted to massacre officers. where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement. And of course there's been no evidence to back that up and nothing to sort of make that case.

At the protests last night it it was very tense. Demonstrators gather at night to try and make as much noise noise as they can. outside the hotels where ICE agents are staying because uh they don't want them to sleep. It's their their form of protest and they've been doing this quite regularly all around sort of Minneapolis and sort of the surrounding suburbs where wherever they find ICE agents are staying.

And when we got there it had been going on for about forty five minutes at that point and police were in position. We saw dozens and dozens of officers. They easily outnumbered the protesters who were there. And they started getting on the loudspeaker saying you have three minutes to leave. If you don't leave you could be arrested, you could be subject to chemical irritants or tear gas.

Does that include the use of chemical agents and the use of less lethal devices? Uh you could be targeted with less than lethal force the rubber bullets or the beanbag bullets that we've seen and and heard about. And when the crowd did not push back, that's when you saw officers sort of line up in formation and push into the crowd.

The officers were trying to create space between demonstrators and this this hotel and so they kept pushing and pushing and pushing. And my colleague James and I, he was the cameraman. We were right in the middle of it. There were three younger demonstrators who were sort of standing in an area where we were. And when the officers decided to push, there were state officers, not federal officers.

When they decided to push, they move fast and they quickly jumped on, tackled these protesters. There were two or three agents per person.

One young woman as she was on the ground and officers were sort of holding her hands back, tying her hands with zip ties, she's screaming, Call my dad. Somebody please call my dad And she had a bloody nose from when she sort of hit the ground and others were screaming, you know, Leave us alone, leave us alone and they were picked up uh fairly quickly and taken off to waiting vans. The tensions again, it it's really hard to describe. People in the city are exhausted.

And they are angry and you know, this is the way some of them are showing it. It just illustrates just how raw the tensions are right now. I would I would say persistent as well and and and growing. All the adjectives you use, Katie, but it's it's not easing up, right? I mean I was in Los Angeles at the sort of OG of these things uh uh push back against this. We've seen it in Chicago, we've seen it in Memphis.

But it's next level. I mean obviously because of uh Rene Good and Alex Pretti uh takes things to a next level uh uh uh effectively by definition. But it's like the th the throngs, the fury and the and the persistence and the growth

In Minneapolis. It's mind boggling and and and jaw dropping. Willie, uh you know, what's your sense of what we're hearing from the White House as this has all been unfolding in Minneapolis? Yeah, I mean it's it's reaching the White House for sure. And I think uh as as Katie said, Greg Bovino initially, you know, started this rhetoric that uh he was there to cause uh this is Alex Pretdy was there to cause maximum damage.

Christy Gnome and Deputy White House uh advisor Stephen Miller labeled him a domestic terrorist, but The video. from multiple angles just don't bear that out. And the White House is realizing that. Just yesterday, uh Caroline Levitt essentially distanced Trump from uh Noam and Miller's comments

Does the president agree with them? Look, as I've said, I have not heard the president characterize Mr. Predy in that way. However, I have heard the president say he wants to let the facts in the investigation lead itself. The protesters have essentially uh run Bovino out of town, the White House clearly realizing that they're losing the messaging on this. But I want to go back to the video aspect of this.

of the things that that makes what's happening so far reaching in its impact is the fact that all of these incidents have been caught on camera. And it seems many times they contradict what the White House is trying to say about them and a at a certain point, you know, it's a little bit more than a

Uh you can say what you want, but people are seeing with their own eyes what's happening. And generally, usually not just from one angle, but from multiple angles. And it just it makes it a lot harder for the White House to control the narrative.

Interesting to hear uh Caroline Levitt then yesterday saying the facts will lead the investigation when the half the questions were about well wait a minute, the way the facts quote unquote air quotes were presented by administration officials off the bat is is completely the opposite of what the video Suggests I was you know, like so man you know, on Saturday I was driving in my cars listening to coverage of what was unfolding in Minneapolis and then uh the anchor uh read

one of the statements about the the domestic terrorism or the brandishing a gun and I just thought, oh man This is gonna change the nature of the conversation in Minneapolis because it sounds like this guy was a bad guy and he had his gun out. And then it was only hours later when I saw the video, like millions of others, that wa wait a second. That that's that's not like what the government said, what the administration said is demonstrably

Not true. It's remarkable to the point where as and Katie I'm sure you know can speak to this as well, like Tim Wals, Governor of Minnesota is advising Minnesotans to pull out your cameras and video everything because that's the only way to document for real what's happening.

Yeah, he described it as collecting, you know, images of atrocities being carried out in Minneapolis and hopefully that they will be used for future prosecutions. One thing I wanna point out is word spread so quickly about the shooting of Alex Prey. Uh and the first video was out within the hour after the those shots were fired. A lot of people saw that video before they heard what it was the Department of Homeland Security or senior officials in the Trump administration were saying.

And so when they'd seen those images in that video, and that was just one of several videos capturing what happened on Saturday. uh when when the words very clearly did not match what people saw with their own eyes. It only fed into the way people look at the Trump administration here from everyone I've spoken with, with one exception and I'll talk about that exception in just a moment.

The vast majority of everyone I've spoken here, they view the Trump administration with zero credibility. They do not trust what's coming out of of senior officials' mouths. Um because there's been so much resistance to the immigration enforcement operations here on the ground to begin with. Um so y you already have that underlying undercurrent. And then when the way that federal officials described what happened with the shooting of Renee Good and that did not match the video

that people had seen. And then again, uh with Alex Predi, you're seeing it again there. It just added to that sense of You cannot trust anything you are hearing uh from the administration and that is widely what I am hearing from people on the ground.

Now I said there was one exception. Um we were doing a live uh hit for Ian Hanemansing on his show on Monday night. And I'm standing outside the Veterans Affairs Hospital where Alex Predy works. And as I'm standing there, it's there's a sort of a candlelight vigil happening. And a gentleman in a large white truck pulls up and he starts shouting at me. And he starts saying, What about Jocelyn Nungare?

What about Lake and Riley? People who were killed by individuals who were illegally in the United States. And at the time he was yelling at me, we were live on TV and and then He he started swearing at me. I'm like, Okay, if someone starts swearing at me, it's not gonna lead to any sort of productive engagement and trying to get opinions and and that kind of thing.

But I did hear that. That was the first time I'd heard that on the ground, where people brought that up. And certainly that is something that we've heard from some, not all. some in some American conservative circles when there's been pushback about the ICE operations on the ground.

We've heard it from the White House before as well. Caroline Levitt has has brought up those those uh victims as well in the Trevor Burrus. And Donald Trump has. Yeah, exactly. I would say it's almost like After the killing of Renee Good, despite the fact that video told a different story than what the administration was telling or saying, the administration had enough inertia with the these ICE operations to kind of

power through and keep going. But this second instance, i it just seems like it it it's kind of stopped them in their tracks. The fact that we're seeing this twice, two Americans killed in the span of uh just a few weeks, with the videos, seemingly the facts on the ground so uh disparate from what the White House was initially saying. And just to add another layer to all of this, uh now you know we talk about Tim Walls.

Governor of Minnesota and also What seems a lifetime ago, the Democratic nominee for vice president uh under Kamala Harris, a point not lost on Donald Trump, uh uh We should put out there in a state that voted for Harris, not for Trump. These are all part of the mosaic of what's going on there. So Tim Walls has now activated the National Guard in Minnesota and is calling for calm, but also calling out the federal government in this country and asking Americans broadly to pay attention.

That you're not with this anymore. If you voted for this administration, heck, even if you thought Operation Metro Surge was a good idea, sounded like the thing to do a month ago. You're still allowed to look at what's happening here in Minnesota and say This isn't what I voted for and this isn't what I want. Even if you voted for Donald Trump, even if you voted and supported this kind of stuff. Broadly is his message. It's interesting, isn't it, Willie? Um he calls this a moment of

Inflection. An inflection point, possibly. Uh what are the polls suggesting about how Americans feel about all this? Aaron Powell Yeah, well I think it would it's interesting. Walls there was kind of acknowledging the fact that a lot of Americans, a majority of Americans, are supportive of the idea of cracking down on on immigration. The numbers have really started to change in the last few years. few weeks based off of ICE's actions in Minnesota.

Uh just last week the New York Times and Siena came out with a poll that said Six in ten Americans say ICE tactics have gone too far. Now these polls don't even take into consideration uh the killing uh of Alex Pready because they came last week, but Reuters Ipsos came out with a poll that was taken from Friday to Sunday. So uh some of of the polls will reflect the change uh

in kind of opinions after the killing of Pretty and those numbers are not very favorable for Trump. Thirty nine percent uh approve of Trump's handling of immigration. That's down from forty one percent the month before. 53 percent disapprove. And here's the the the real number: 58 percent disapprove of ICE's actions. So The White House and Trump are seeing these numbers and I think you're seeing them begin to course correct what that course correction uh ultimately looks like.

We'll have to see, but the the numbers are not in their favor at all at the moment. Trevor Burrus Although important to point out, uh there's still plenty who agree. This is true. And independence were quite significantly against uh these actions. But Republicans still more or less overwhelmingly in favor of them. I don't think I'm not sure if we've mentioned Renee Good, uh the woman who was killed a couple of weeks ago or or so now. And that uh Katie was

Not far from where George Floyd happened, uh, in Minnesota. That kind of felt like things were gonna change then. It felt like a turning point of a kind. in some aspects of American life. Wha what are your thoughts? I mean, does this feel like a turning point in America? In a lot of interviews we do, something that is pointed out to me quite frequently is that uh Minneapolis i is a community that knows has been through s things like this before.

these kinds of you know, moments of outrage and anger and heartbreak and disappointment and and sort of frustration, broad frustration, um to the point where people are are pushing very hard for change. Um and the point that the Trump administration, at least in this moment, seems to be trying to take on a different tone. it demonstrates that perhaps the backlash, the pushback, the outrage is resonating in the places where, you know, change can happen. I g I gotta say I I

I I don't know how to where I land on this. I was in front of the White House the other day because a big storm came in and wanted to go down and just, you know, take the The perfunctory the the photo of the White House in snow, et cetera. And there were some tourists there and I started chatting with people and I was saying, well, you know what happened here a couple of years ago?

That was Black Lives Matter Plaza. That building over there was on fire. I stood here and watched people throw rocks through that window of that that lobby of that building and set that on fire. And then I got to thinking So what has changed since then? Because we all thought that was an inflection point and and I'm you know

Not rocket science to say that the r the race issue and the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement have been resolved. They have not. I was in Newtown after that the massacre at Sandy Hook. And everybody thought that was an inflection point and that the gun laws would change in America, and they did not. We've all covered monster storms.

Uh hurricanes and and what have you, where at different times people have thought, well, this is the climate change moment in America, and then people went back to l lives as usual. It's it's and yet in this instance in Minnesota. We've got the NRA and the Democrats on the same side of things arguing, you know, uh together, which is not unique, but certainly unusual. I I don't know. Willie, what are your thoughts on where we're at?

You to uh borrow a kind of idea from our own Prime Minister, I think perhaps the inflection point was the twenty twenty four election. Um a and this is just the kind of continued fallout of that decision, right? It was a decision by the American people to fairly um overwhelmingly elect this president and Вот зкарійсь experiencing are the repercussions of that decision. You know that feeling when you reach the end of a really True crime series.

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What about Capitol Hill, Willie? What's what's going on there in terms of pushback? Uh yeah, well Groundhog Day, anyone uh like uh uh uh come Friday there might be yet another government shutdown. Essentially all over what's happening in Minneapolis. So last week the House passed with the U.S. some uh Democratic support a a funding bill that included funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which of course ICE is part of it.

Uh that bill would also include uh about ten billion dollars for ICE now. It's a up for for vote in the Senate, but now Senate Democrats after witnessing the killing of Alex Predi are saying, wait, hold on, let's try and decouple the DHS funding from the rest of the funding bill. But that requires buy-in from Republicans at the moment. Doesn't seem like they're gonna get it. For this bill to pass they need uh sixty votes. Republicans hold fifty three seats, so they need seven uh Democrats.

The betting odds uh appear to be that we might be headed for another government shutdown here. I've got a I've got about a hundred and fifty questions on that for you, Willie. But instead I'm gonna turn to Kevin. somehow emerges real pushback from Capitol Hill against the White House. How big a deal would that be, Katie? Oh it's gonna start another sort of fight like the one we witnessed um in the fall when um Democrats refused to support the continue funding the government.

Uh it led to the longest government shutdown in US history and it it led to some real significant consequences for people all across the country that either rely on federal resources or work for the federal government. Um, Democrats are looking for moments where they can sort of stand up and say, We are trying to do what we can, what's within our power, even though we don't hold the majority in either of these chambers.

So it could set up another moment where we see Democrats trying to take a stand to show their supporters, listen, we can try and do something. I think as always Katie is spot on there. You know, Democratic voters want someone to stand up for them. They don't want the whole onus to be on state and local authorities to to kind of protect the the citizens. But what I what I will say is Ice has already got

seventy five billion dollars in funding guaranteed over the next four years, right? That's from the big, beautiful bill that was passed this summer. So Uh some of this would really just be about optics, right? The agency has the money they need to keep carrying out the operations that that they've been doing. So ultimately the Democrats decide that it's not kind of worth it.

Katie, don't you love it when when someone says you're spot on and then they say but no I'm in charge. Here's something we have it just before we move on to Um we haven't talked much about prominent Republicans. Uh y you know, the polls are interesting that Willie was talking about, but it's my sense that It's not just the usual suspects who are not hinting, actually saying out loud that ICE has gone too far, that this is not good, that this is

however they want to phrase it. Is that something that could have an effect on the thinking of Donald Trump?'Cause that's the ultimate question here, right? How is all of this gonna play with Donald Trump? Katie, wh what do you think about that? Is this contagious, I guess, is the ultimate question with the Republicans pushing back?

The thing is, it is an election year, right? It is the midterm elections and Donald Trump has openly said that if Republicans lose control of the House, if they uh lose control of the Senate or if there's a shift in power. Um, he is concerned that he is going to basically be impeached for all kinds of different reasons, that Democrats, uh particularly House, will push forward and try to move ahead impeachment proceedings.

Even though he is not up for election, this next set of midterm elections, it really matters. Q two years of investigations and impeachment processes. If the uh power changes on Capitol Hill. I go back to Groundhog Day anyway.

Okay, let's uh you know before we go, let's briefly shift gears here um and talk about Donald Trump's latest one hundred percent tariff threat to Canada, just when you think tariffs can't get any higher. Groundhog Day. They might. Um last week we kind of anticipated this, I think, uh on the on the podcast when we were talking about how Donald Trump so far seemed okay with Canada's

uh agreement with China to allow thousands of Chinese EVs into the uh Canadian market at a reduced uh tariff in exchange for China lowering tariffs on some Canadian agricultural products. But that didn't last, did it? No, and you know what? I don't think it has anything to do with the merits of the deal that Donald Trump is really upset about in this moment. It perhaps has something to do with that speech that we talked about last week. Uh that Uh Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered in Davos.

Uh, where basically uh he made the argument that everything has changed. We cannot work with our reliable partners uh in the United States in the ways that we have before. Nostalgia is not a strategy. and that it's time to come up with a plan and we've got to do it together. Um calling on all other middle powers.

This is the world now, Willie. Yeah, but boy, I mean clearly, you know, Trump gets to Davos, the wind completely taken out of his sail by Carney, and flies home and thinks about it and like he gets more and more frustrated. And then he just unleashes this kind of Twitter storm essentially on True Social. uh over the course of uh twenty four hours, all essentially bashing Canada, bashing Kearney. So clearly he was unhappy with the Prime Minister.

And um what I have been told is that at least some in Trump's inner circle, some, not all, had been advis advising the president that Say, look, you know, every time you lash it at Canada, it's very clear what the reason why is. It's because you're mad about this speech.

And every time you bring it up, it gives people another opportunity to revisit the speech and the the points that Mark Carney was making and it just it just brings attention to, you know, the the thing you don't like in the first place. However, uh it's continued. So um uh it it doesn't seem to me like that advice has necessarily been followed. But who knows? Maybe, maybe this is restrained Trump. Maybe he wanted to post.

Many more things and say many other things and make many more threats. We we never know. We never know, right? Willie, Katie, yet another fantastic conversation. Um And look at the thing. Next time we should do it with beer. Second. Seconded. Can I second that? Look, before we head off in another uh direction this week, I want to share a note that we received from a listener after our first episode, Kevin Gillioni from Toronto.

Told us he was a fan. And he said, This is a quote, I hope you could do more than one a week. Oh my god. I hope y I hope you can release breaking news if there's enough information coming through on an important issue. Well, Kevin Yes, we'll be jumping on breaking news whenever we can, uh giving you the most up to date analysis that we can, but we won't be publishing more than one a week. Unless Willie or Katie you'd like to do that thought

I love you guys so much. But one So we have the perfect balance. You know, whatever we're just chatting about in the newsroom no matter what. To be fair, I think that podcast would probably do even better than this one. But also shout out to Kevin. Thanks for listening. Shout out to Kevin. Thanks to everyone, including Kevin. Uh listening to the podcast so far. And thanks for sharing it with your friends and family who might be trying to make sense of this period in US Canada politics.

Please remember to follow us wherever you're listening now so that you never miss an episode. And send us an email anytime. Let us know what you think of the podcast. Ask us a direct question not me but ask you know Katie or Willie um ask us anything we'll try to answer one or two questions each week our email address is Washingtonpod all one word at cbc.ca that's washingtonpod at cbc.ca

Katie, Willie, thanks again. Both of you. Thank you. Good luck out there in Minnesota, Katie. We'll see you on TV and elsewhere. Thanks. See you next time. For more C BC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcast.