In This Episode
This week Alex travels to Minneapolis to see first hand how the community is responding to the terrorizing presence of ICE and the killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti. She shines a light on the grassroots efforts of mothers mobilizing to help both students and teachers who fear being targeted, and speaks to Reverend Dan Johnson about how his congregation has been impacted as well the very un-Christian nature of this administration’s tactics. Then Alex sits down with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to talk about how President Trump’s rhetoric contributed to the attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar, whether judicial interference can stop the federal government’s overreach, and why access to voter rolls is an issue at the center of this crisis.
TRANSCRIPT
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: We’re at the Minneapolis Airport, which is where regular planes land, but it’s also where deportation planes take off. About an hour ago, a bus left with people who have been charged with, I guess, violating the terms of their entrance to the United States and are set to be deported, and they are going to be brought here. And then on one of these planes, one of the private chartered planes, they will be loaded on in shackles. And taken to who knows where, someplace where their lawyers can’t get in touch with them in all likelihood, and their family has no idea where they are, and it could be California or Oklahoma or Texas, but this is where it happens. And just because Greg Bovino isn’t here anymore and Kristi Noem is on the outs and Tom Homan is on his way in, it doesn’t mean that ICE’s work in this state is finished and not by a long shot. It’s fucking cold. Hello from Minneapolis. And yes, it is fucking cold. It is very, very, very cold here. And it has been an extraordinary week. On Saturday, Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at a veteran’s hospital was shot and killed on the street by federal agents. His death was captured on video at multiple angles and all of them were horrifying. So we’re going to East 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue, which is where Alex Pretti was executed by ICE and border patrol. The site of the shooting has become kind of unsurprisingly a vigil for people who want to remember what happened here. But it’s still like surreal to actually like I’ve seen the video I think a lot of people have seen the video so many times but it’s still very surreal to see the donut shop and this is the spot where the woman in the pink jacket was filming and that’s where he was killed. And you see like a lot of fuck ICE graffiti and that’s uh the vigil which is filled with flowers and candles and people just taking a moment to remember his life. And yet, the Trump officials who oversaw Preti’s execution, namely Greg Bovino, the commander-at-large of Trump’s immigration dragnet here in Minneapolis, he immediately characterized it as this.
[clip of Greg Bovino]: This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.
Alex Wagner: This appalling revisionism and apparently blatant lies on the part of the administration prompted a massive national outcry. And not just from Democrats, from former NRA spokespeople like Dana Loesch on CBS.
[clip of Dana Loesch]: Simply approaching law enforcement with a firearm isn’t indicative of ill intent, nor is it a crime. And as you accurately said, I have over the years, many years have been armed at protest, both concealed carry and open carry. I have been right in the front face presence of law enforcement while open carrying.
Alex Wagner: And from elected Republicans like Texas Senator Ted Cruz on his podcast.
[clip of Ted Cruz]: Escalating the rhetoric doesn’t help and it actually loses credibility. And so I would encourage the administration to be more measured, to recognize the tragedy and to say, we don’t want anyone’s lives to be lost and the politicians who are pouring gasoline onto this fire, they need to stop.
Alex Wagner: And so maybe it wasn’t the biggest surprise in the world when in the middle of this week, Greg Bovino was moved out of Minneapolis and sent back home to California. Just don’t call it a demotion.
[clip of Donald Trump]: You know, Bovino’s very good, but he’s a pretty out there kind of a guy, and in some cases that’s good, maybe it wasn’t good here.
Alex Wagner: In Bovino’s place is now Tom Homan, the country’s border czar, a man who supported family separations in 2017 and was also the subject of an undercover FBI investigation for bribery. So to be clear, Tom Homan is not exactly a white knight. In the meantime, here in Minneapolis, the deportations continue and the community remains terrorized. Parents are worried about their children, other people’s children, and everyone’s teachers. Like Libby, a mom turned grassroots organizer in St. Paul.
Libby: I started the signal chat after I showed up at our daycare, which was the same day that Renée Good was murdered.
Alex Wagner: So you guys are processing that and then they show up at the daycare?
Libby: Yeah within three hours they showed up at the daycare and then an hour later we learned that at a different location of our daycare a teacher had been abducted by unidentified masked agents that morning. They didn’t ask for her papers, she’s here working legally, But they, yeah, they just took her with no explanation.
Alex Wagner: And thus, the parent patrols were born.
Libby: Exactly. We have parents on all the corners and vests, and here’s our daycare right here. Some of the folks here are parents, some of them are neighbors. That guy right there is a grandpa an abuelo.
Alex Wagner: They’re out here during drop off and pick up?
Libby: Drop off and pick up. Yup.
Alex Wagner: This week, we are here on the ground, the very frozen ground, in the Twin Cities to understand what is happening to people in this place. How public executions and masked kidnappers have reshaped this part of American society. But also how it has knit itself together even tighter amid all the fear and uncertainty. Donald Trump has set his sights on Minneapolis, but of course, The deportation campaign does not stop here at this particular bend in the Mississippi River. So what can the rest of the country learn from the Twin Cities about what’s coming next? And how to resist. [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, we are going to ground zero in the fight for this country, Minnesota. I’ll be sitting down with the state’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison, to discuss why Trump’s ICE invasion might never really have been about immigration or fraud, but about blackmail. Whether Trump’s targeting of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar may have resulted in her being attacked this week.
Keith Ellison: It’s just like a mafia boss saying, you know, somebody needs to rid me of this irritating person. Why will no one get rid of this person who’s such a thorn in my side? What it means is, one of y’all go kill him.
Alex Wagner: And I’m heading to the Park Avenue United Methodist Church, just a few blocks from where Renée Good was shot to learn how that community is meeting the moment with prayer and baby shampoo. But first, we’re going to hear from a parent on the front lines and how she has taken matters into her own hands as federal agents have started turning daycares into battlegrounds. So you have a four-year-old and a one-year old?
Libby: Mm-hmm.
Alex Wagner: And they’re going to this school. Tell me a little bit about, you know, sort of what it’s been like to be a parent in this year and in the last three weeks in Minnesota and the Twin Cities.
Libby: Um, yeah, so it’s been tough, um, especially the last three weeks. So our signal chat started three weeks ago, the day that Renée Good was murdered. So really it feels like we’ve lived like three years in the last three weeks and especially. So I live one block from the daycare and being so close, you feel like you have to have eyes outside all the time. So if I’m working from home, I’m also looking out the window and trying to identify what car is driving by or what that sound is, or oh, is that a whistle? Is that, you know, is a horn? What’s going on? And it’s been this combination of feeling really worried and sad for my own children. I mean, there’s restrictions on their lives at this point. They no longer get to go outside during daycare.
Alex Wagner: Really?
Libby: Yeah, because they can’t have the teachers outside on the playground. And then the blinds are drawn on the windows at all times now too. So, especially my four-year-old, she feels… What’s happening, and I feel really sad for her, but more sad for the teachers who are living with this fear and have their own kids.
Alex Wagner: The front of the school posters talking that are very explicitly declaring the people employed there using E-Verify, just to sort of underline the fact that the people who are in the school are staff members of the school, are here legally, right? And yet, teachers, they don’t, the school doesn’t want or parents don’t want, community doesn’t want them out there on the outside, the blinds are drawn. Is that just because there’s just zero confidence in ICE and its tactics and the indiscriminate way in which they’ve been nabbing people?
Libby: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we’ve heard story after story of people being pulled over or detained because of their skin color. And our teachers are especially vulnerable because of their color and the fact that a lot of them don’t speak great English. So if they were detained, it would be hard for them to explain, like, here’s my papers, which they are carrying on them at all times. And then they are here on work visas, a of them. So that makes it. Makes them especially vulnerable. There was a teacher taken at a different daycare in the same company three weeks ago. She was here working legally. She arrived at work and masked men, without identifying themselves, took her from her car and detained her. And she didn’t happen to have her work papers on her. So before she could get her work papers to the Whipple building or to where she was being detained, ICE had already sent her to El Paso. And she was there for over two weeks and she was here legally. Um, so it’s things like that that don’t give us any confidence in the fact that everyone’s doing everything right, everybody’s following the law, that doesn’t matter right now.
Alex Wagner: You guys, it’s not just that you’re sort of just trying to navigate the situation. You’ve taken a proactive, the parents in this community have taken a proactive position, right? You, they’re the organized parent patrols, right. Those are happening at drop-off times. And then you’re also working to help teachers. Is that right?
Libby: Yeah, so we are organizing rides to and from school for any teacher that wants it. At first, we had just offered it to teachers who take the bus, because they’re more vulnerable on the bus stops, but then all these people who normally drive felt more comfortable having honestly just a white person drive the car. Yeah, it’s terrible. So we, at this point, are organizing about 130 rides a week for the teachers. And in addition to that, we have another group at our school that organizes weekly grocery deliveries at school. So we’re also organizing daily lunches because before teachers would go out and grab lunch on their lunch break. And that’s not safe.
Alex Wagner: Wow.
Libby: Also, like I said, a lot of the teachers have. Families, young kids. And a lot of them can’t go to school right now. So we also started a toy library for teachers or anyone who is interested to like check out toys or things to bring home to entertain their children. And we also have some for adults too because adults also go crazy when they’re stuck inside.
Alex Wagner: I just like the level of protection that’s required to just exist as a teacher, as a person of color. I mean, even for this podcast, we wanted to talk to the most vulnerable people and people are so terrified.
Libby: Oh my God. Yeah. Just yesterday I heard one of my coworkers has a child that has Spanish immersion daycare and they’ve also been organizing rides. And they had ice like following them on rides home and like honking trying to get them to stop. And luckily like they just kept driving and they didn’t pull over and they were able to get to their location. But we’re not talking about hypotheticals, we’re talking about. Real things that are happening.
Alex Wagner: Do you worry about your own safety being involved in all this?
Libby: Yes. But, it doesn’t really feel like there’s another option.
Alex Wagner: I know this week that the president is, I don’t even know how to characterize his attitude to what’s unfolding here. Greg Bovino has been sent packing, but Tom Homan is coming in and there’s been no significant change in tactics, it sounds like, right? They’re still deporting people, they’re still going after people. How are you feeling about what’s on unfolding here? And what’s your level of, I guess, optimism that it’s not going to be like this forever.
Libby: A lot of the parents who are organizing have talked about, okay, how do we make this sustainable for the long term?
Alex Wagner: Do you think it’s gonna be the long term?
Libby: This is not sustainable, you know, it’s not sustainable for parent organizers, it’s certainly not sustainable for teachers and their families. There’s this awkward thing too, where it’s like, you know there’s so many Spanish immersion daycares in the Twin Cities. If this keeps happening, I don’t know how they can stay open. And we have a major childcare shortage in the Twin Cities too. And so I don’t know where all those kids are going to go. So there’s also this awkwardness of, okay, do we try and get our girls in to a non-Spanish immersion daycare now before there’s this rush?
Alex Wagner: Because people will just give up on…
Libby: Or because they close, because teachers are either self-deporting or too scared to come to work or detained.
Alex Wagner: It feels like that’s the end goal, right? Like part of the Trump manifesto is to make America white again, basically, and to stop the diversification and the embrace of diversification. And what better way to do that than make it untenable for kids to learn Spanish.
Libby: Oh, absolutely. Or, yeah, or to allow people whose first language is not English to learn alongside them. Yeah, or live safely in our community. So yeah, at this point, we haven’t explored other daycares, but it’s really. You don’t know if you’re doing the right thing for your kid. It feels like we’re putting them on the front line.
Alex Wagner: How do you deal with that as a mom?
Libby: Um… I just keep going. Organizing the rides, a lot of my day is spent sending messages and looking at a spreadsheet of giving who a ride. And that spreadsheet gives me peace. Makes me feel like I have some control over the situation. Yeah, a lot of avoiding the emotions of what’s really happening right now.
Alex Wagner: That’s a lot, Libby.
Libby: Yeah, it’s, um… Yeah. And it’s like, you know, I’m so angry because, you know, as a, as a parent, I try and be present with my children, um, and try and not constantly be looking at my phone, but I, I don’t have an option right now, it feels like. So in the morning, when I’m getting them ready for school and giving them hot chocolate, you know, um I’m also like responding to messages and making sure teachers are getting to school safely. And then the same thing in the evening. And, you know, as a working parent, like I only get those three or four hours with them a day. That time is now like divided. But also, it’s like, how dare I be upset about that when like one of the teachers that we were giving a ride home last week, we learned there was ICE outside her house literally knocking on her door. Like, how dare I feel sad that I have to text when my children are around when like other moms are having to worry about if they’re going to see their children again or get to go home to their children, you know.
Alex Wagner: It’s hard for everybody.
Libby: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: Unfortunately, in this day and age, the story moves quickly, right?
Libby: Oh, yeah.
Alex Wagner: The story moved away from Minneapolis, and then it came back because of Alex Pretti. But inevitably, it’s going to go to a different state, and there’s going be raids in some other part of the country. I mean, what, for lack of a better term, advice would you give to other parents out there who might ultimately have to face the same things you are dealing with?
Libby: I would say in these times, especially when everyone is so scared, it’s so easy to turn on each other. We’ve heard about that happening at other daycares, just disagreement over the best way to handle things and how much involvement parents should have versus the corporation running the daycare should have, I think. The most important thing is to like give everyone grace and to remember that we’re in this fight together, even if sometimes we might disagree on methods. I mean, that’s not to say sometimes I don’t send little side texts and like, can you believe what this person said? But finding the humor and the pettiness in it and then realizing that that is pettness and that we’re fighting a bigger fight than just, why did this person say this crazy thing in a chat?
Alex Wagner: Like even when you’re fighting, the fighting fascists, there’s room for side eye.
Libby: [laughter] Right. You always got to manage everybody’s emotions.
Alex Wagner: But that’s a sign of humanity, right?
Libby: Well, and that’s the beautiful thing, right? And, you know, I, it’s hard to, this is probably not what most people are thinking, but there’s humanity in the people who are ICE agents as well, you know, they’re not just a unilaterally. We try and tell our four year old, like there’s no such thing as bad guys, you know, like people do bad things sometimes, but people aren’t inherently bad guys. And same is true with these agents.
Alex Wagner: Good on ya.
Libby: Easier said than done, but.
Alex Wagner: Hey man. You set goals, right? Try and meet them. Thank you, Libby. I mean, it’s really what you guys are, how you’ve responded is so extraordinary and really inspiring. So it’s great to hear firsthand how it’s being done.
Libby: Yeah, no, thanks for talking about it.
Alex Wagner: When we come back, my conversation with Reverend Dan Johnson of the Park Avenue United Methodist Church.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: Here’s my conversation with Reverend Dan Johnson of the Park Avenue United Methodist Church, which sits just a few blocks from where Renée Good was killed. The congregation has been thrust into the middle of ICE occupation, but they have very much risen to meet this moment. Well, I mean, let’s talk a little bit about what we actually started.
Rev. Dan Johnson: We’re just going right into it.
Alex Wagner: We’re going right in podcast style. Um, I mean, what has it been like being the pastor of this congregation in this moment, right? You, Renée Good was killed a block from here.
Rev. Dan Johnson: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: And then a few days ago, Alex Pretti is killed in the interim. The church doors are open to people who are getting pepper sprayed and tear gassed you yourself. Experience that? I mean, tell me from sort of just the firsthand perspective what it has been like to live through the last few weeks.
Rev. Dan Johnson: In between those two killings, this whole street, this whole street and Oakland on the other side. So essentially this peninsula of this block was completely surrounded by—
Alex Wagner: ICE?
Rev. Dan Johnson: ICE. And then subsequently protesters. You know, I betray my bias, but anything that would have been even called remotely their work was probably cared for in the first half hour. And it’s then after that, that there was an intentional occupation of this whole.
Alex Wagner: Intimidation.
Rev. Dan Johnson: Yeah, intimidation of this of folks and just essentially at 9 starting at 9:20 in the morning till about 11:20 blocking off these main these main arteries into into Minneapolis where people are just trying to go for their medical appointments and to work was completely inaccessible and so obviously with these one-way roads here once you get in the midst than we had a whole mix of our. Civilians just in their vehicles and ICE additional ICE support coming in behind them so. Everything is you know intermixed.
Alex Wagner: Oh and so chaotic and part of the reason Renée Good was shot is because there’s this very chaotic intersection of people in their vehicles and ICE agents and there’s no sort of strategy it seems. There’s no tactical awareness of the civilian life.
Rev. Dan Johnson: For sure, and even for our own staff, not just filming what, you know, recording what was going on, but then essentially almost like first aid response to folks coming, as the flashbangs go off and then the pepper bombs go off, we had people.
Alex Wagner: Coming in here?
Rev. Dan Johnson: Yeah, we opened the doors to as an emergency station, really for people to wash their faces, wash their hands. And in the process, several of us on staff, myself included, Wendy as well, you can’t help but have the pepper bomb cloud waft over you as you’re trying to assist others. For me, just personally, there’s a passage from the book of Ezra in the Bible about the building of the second temple. Was after, in the midst of occupying forces that… Uh… Invaded toward on the first temple and when the second temple was being built as a chapter three talks about uh… People that were thinking back to the past and all they’d lost and others that were looking for it toward the future and all that they hoped for and uh… And uh the passage reads the shouts of mourning were uh… So loud and the shout of joy were so loud that they couldn’t distinguish between the two. And that was, that’s a little bit of what it feels like to be a pastor in the midst of this, is attending to the shouts and cries of pain, and at the same time finding the spots of hope and joy that can also propel you into the future.
Alex Wagner: I think that’s one of the things we miss on the outside is the sense of community is so robust and so intact. And to your point about joy, that sense of togetherness seems so profound in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Let me ask a little bit about how you have had to recalibrate the way that the congregation functions since ICE came to town. How have the people that used to come worship here, how have they had to change their habits, how have you adapted?
Rev. Dan Johnson: I mean, any church is already busy with a lot of ministry. We provide mutual aid, as well as worship services and stuff, service to our broader community service inside. But in addition to the ongoing stuff, then there’s the constant need to be reactive to the crisis of the moment. So for example, some of our ministries that we provide, a health clinic, a preschool. A thrift store, a Spanish-speaking service, some of these have had to go to online only or by appointment only work. So that’s significant.
Alex Wagner: How do you do that?
Rev. Dan Johnson: Because the very people, the refugee and the immigrant communities that benefit the most from some of these services are the ones that are being really limited by access both for their own safety as well as the programs themselves needing to protect themselves. So for instance, you know, our director of preschool is followed to the door, you know and harassed on her way to work just because of the color of her skin, our Spanish-speaking congregation needing to go to all virtual when that culture is especially devoted to relational kinds of ministry and being together face-to-face. That said, we’ve actually seen an increase in attendance for our multicultural English speaking service because the caregivers are needing support themselves. I mean that’s it’s traumatic all the way around, both for the targeted people, as well as those that are trying to provide advocacy and care for others. Even if ICE reduces their impact in this moment, we’re gonna have trauma services that we need to be providing long-term. So for instance, two weeks ago, members of our central neighborhood just called and asked, could we have just some space in your building? So we can safely talk to our neighbors. This is a community that’s used to people being out on their porches to talk to each other. Sometimes, even in January, I’ve seen them out on the porches to talk with their neighbors—
Alex Wagner: You’re just talking about, and these are not necessarily people who are in danger of deportation. This is just the community feels like they can’t speak outside.
Rev. Dan Johnson: Exactly. And so they asked, said, could you open your doors? And we said, what would be a good time? And they called it just healing space. And initially, we were just going to provide a space for them to gather and, you know, just have some coffee and tea and a few snacks so they could talk. But then we had an area, Becoming Together Therapy and Wellness, that offered volunteer therapists to come in just to do some trauma counseling and trauma informed activities with kids, our children family staff person created a meditation center and some other activities for family, there was a yoga instructor that came, and it wasn’t big, but 26 people came that first night, but it was 26 people that would have been alone in fear in their own homes otherwise, and they were able to gather in community.
Alex Wagner: When congregants aren’t coming into church. Do you hear from the folks that service them or that talk to them virtually or communicate with them virtually what they’re most worried about? I mean, I’d just love to, any perspective you could offer on kind of the conversation that’s happening between—
Rev. Dan Johnson: Well, I think they’re most worried about the about the profiling.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Rev. Dan Johnson: Of that especially people of color was initially Black and brown and now it’s our Asian American Siblings as well that also fearful we have starting as far back as Christmas we started to have people that could be walked to and from their cars just for security, So that I think that’s one thing is just safe safety for themselves and a fear of profiling just being outside on the streets. One of the interesting mutual aid programs that has surfaced, you would expect things like food delivery because they’re no longer comfortable coming to our parking lot for our once a month food delivery. Now we do deliveries to their homes. But think about just having your dog walked. We have volunteers that are walking dogs because people are afraid to just walk their own dog.
Alex Wagner: Walk their dogs. And I would assume these aren’t just, these are people with citizenship.
Rev. Dan Johnson: Certainly certainly the vast majority in fact. Yeah, our US citizens. They’re just being profiled because of because of their color.
Alex Wagner: What do you tell people? Because you’re kind of recalibrating to say, okay, how do we manage this trauma in an ongoing, active way?
Rev. Dan Johnson: We can’t make promises that we can’t deliver on. I can’t tell them that, oh, we can tell them that they don’t walk alone, that this congregation is with them literally, literally walking with them on these streets, and we do. We’re committed to that. For a long time, I mentioned our Friday food distribution. And oftentimes we’d stock baby shampoo as a common product that we deliver to families with young children. You know where we stock it now, Alex? We stock it in our welcome center as a first aid tool, along with bottles of water. So if people are sprayed with pepper spray, we have an immediate response to them, for them. Of first aid, of baby shampoo and bottled water so that they can clean themselves.
Alex Wagner: Wow.
Rev. Dan Johnson: That’s an example of what has to happen almost in an urban combat kind of situation. We hope that that’s continuing and we will at the same time we’re doing emergency response. We’re also working for justice and advocacy work so that we try to get upstream of the crisis to the root causes of this social illness.
Alex Wagner: Some of the people who are on the other side of this have embraced Christianity and cloaked themselves in the name of the Lord in their politics. And yet, here you are, a man of faith, and we’re sitting in this church, and what is happening to this congregation, what happens outside of the four walls of this congregation seems so unchristian. And I just wonder how you reconcile you know, their position with what they’re doing and how you think of this all in the context of your religion.
Rev. Dan Johnson: I don’t want to disparage colleagues, but Christian nationalism is doing the cause of Jesus a disservice. So just for example, it’s not news, but the Whipple building, the Whipple federal building is an image for this whole Metro Surge operation.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Rev. Dan Johnson: Not only housing ICE agents, but also being a place for detaining people and deportation hearings and everything else. But no, he talks about the real name of it. It’s Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple, who was an Episcopal bishop of the church, who if you would look back at his history, he’d be the one on the outside protesting what’s going on. He’s turning over in his grave because of what others in the name of Jesus would say. Is the thing that they’re called to do.
Alex Wagner: Wow, the irony.
Rev. Dan Johnson: Yes.
Alex Wagner: Have you ever spoken to one of them? And if you could, what would you say?
Rev. Dan Johnson: Well, that’s an interesting question. I have not directly spoken to any ICE agent. I’ve been at several protests. I’ve on the street filming. My posture, when it’s happened multiple times around our building, is to be a person of prayer, to be praying for the citizens of our streets and for the protests to be heard without violence that compounds the issue for anybody on either side. To be honest, what I thought I would say is, if you took your mask off, would you be the same person? Would you be doing the same things as you’re doing now?
Alex Wagner: That’s a great question. Um, Pastor Dan, thank you for, you know, sharing the story of what’s going on.
Rev. Dan Johnson: Thank you.
Alex Wagner: When we come back, I’ll put this all into context with Minnesota’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: And we’re back. Here’s my conversation with Minnesota’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison. [music plays] So, Mr. Attorney General, thank you for-.
Keith Ellison: Good to see you, Alex.
Alex Wagner: Always good to see, even under these extraordinarily bad circumstances.
Keith Ellison: They are dire.
Alex Wagner: A lot of stuff has happened this week, right? And I want to get to the biggest of the big pictures. But first, let me just get, there are new sort of foot soldiers being dispatched from the Trump administration.
Keith Ellison: Right.
Alex Wagner: Greg Bovino packed his bags for California.
Keith Ellison: Right.
Alex Wagner: I think Kristi Noem is busy currying favor with the president, but Tom Homan has been dispatched to run Operation Metro Surge here and we now in the last few minutes got news from Pam Bondi that she’s on the ground in Minneapolis today and she’s saying that federal agents have arrested 16 Minnesota rioters for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement, people who have been resisting and impeding our federal law-enforcement agents. We expect more arrests to come. And then this is the kicker. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, nothing will stop President Trump and this Department of Justice from enforcing the law. Let me just first get your reaction to that coming from the attorney general.
Keith Ellison: Well, the attorney general has a poor record when it comes to accuracy and truth. Uh, the, you know, the Attorney General has made a number of outrageous, uh, unfortunate statements. She’s her department has sent out investigative subpoenas to myself, the governor, the mayor, but her department, the DOJ is not investigating Jonathan Ross, who killed clearly Renée Good. She is in favor of investigating people who’ve done no wrong, and she’s not in favor of investigating who have committed homicide. Now, I’m not saying Jonathan Ross doesn’t have any legal defenses, but there is no debating that he killed Renée Good and he is not under investigation. And so, I must say that the attorney general, what she says is fundamentally and inherently political. Is completely untethered to justice, is always about the spin, and this is deeply unfortunate, deeply unfortunate that the American people cannot trust the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of our country.
Alex Wagner: I mean, also, there was some President Trump played footsie with the idea of de-escalation.
Keith Ellison: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: But I don’t know, sending the AG here to make statements like that and talk about the danger that law enforcement faces on the ground. Even Tom Homan is not a white knight. This is someone that was a subject of an FBI undercover investigation and was a fan of child separations back in 2017. I mean, do you sense? Deescalation, are you optimistic that anything is changing from this administration? I know that—
Keith Ellison: Here’s why I’m optimistic.
Alex Wagner: Please.
Keith Ellison: I’m optimist because on the issue of immigration, which if anything is what propelled Trump into the White House again, he’s at like 39%.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Keith Ellison: He now is openly being criticized by the NRA and other gun-oriented groups because of his attack on the character of Alex Pretti, who lawfully and legally had a gun but never pulled it out before he was killed. So I think that the one thing you can count on Trump is to always be extremely image sensitive. And so because of that, I do think that they are looking for a way to de-escalate, but I don’t think it has anything to do with public safety or immigration or fraud or anything. Nothing they say it’s about is what it’s about.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Keith Ellison: And when they leave, they will also have a face saving explanation for that too. So yes, I do think that they are looking to deescalate. They have not yet. Um, and I, but I don’t think you’re ever going to hear an honest answer from Pam Bondi. You may hear an honest answer, from Trump by accident.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Keith Ellison: You know.
Alex Wagner: Right. Well, yeah.
Keith Ellison: By accident.
Alex Wagner: His lizard brain kicks in—
Keith Ellison: I mean, he wrote the one day he’s calling our governor names in a very insulting ones the next day he’s talking about how they’re oh just on the same wave length and all this kind of stuff. So, I mean you never really know. I me one thing you can bet for sure they’re watching the polls. They’re watchin their public approval and they will do what they think serves that.
Alex Wagner: Well, you’re the attorney general and there’s a case wending its way through federal court.
Keith Ellison: Yes, there is.
Alex Wagner: There was another hearing on Monday.
Keith Ellison: Yes.
Keith Ellison: Judge Kate Menendez, and she hasn’t issued a ruling. There’s a lot that’s read into each move each time.
Keith Ellison: She has not issued a ruling, but she has required additional briefing from the government, essentially asking them to explain why the position of the state of Minnesota is not accurate.
Alex Wagner: And this is a case for people who haven’t been following this, where the state of Minnesota is basically saying, can you please, like ICE needs to leave. We need to get ICE and Operation Metro Surge out of our backyard. And so we’re recording this on Wednesday, about two o’clock central time. The government, the feds are due to file that explanation by 6 p.m. Are you optimistic that she could just end this thing and that they would comply because the chief judge, the chief federal judge, I think Patrick Schiltz has said, you know, the federal government has ignored dozens of requests. He’s called the head of CPB to testify, which is kind of unprecedented because they’ve been so uncooperative. I mean. If the courts say you cannot do this, you cannot surge these federal troops into American cities without consent, you are making the situation you know, exponentially more dangerous. Are you worried that the federal government actually complies? Do you worry that Trump—
Keith Ellison: I do worry that, I do worried that, but Alex, let me just tell you what is at stake, if I may.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, please.
Keith Ellison: So if the US Congress passed a law saying all Minnesota law enforcement must be ICE agents or deputies of ICE, or if the president issued an executive order saying the same thing, the Supreme Court would say that is commandeering, that violates the 10th Amendment, that violates the balance of power between the states and the federal government, you can’t do it. That’s coercive and you can do it, Trump is saying, well, I’m going to achieve that very same thing by point, by getting 4,000 armed people to aim guns in Minnesotans.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Keith Ellison: A piece of legislation or executive order can commandeer the state resources, you better believe 4,000 armed, violent people can do that. And so that’s what’s at stake here. If we do not get a ruling that affirms Minnesota’s sovereignty, we’re opening the door for the federal government takeover of state authority and power. If they can, if they can do it. If they can’t do it with legislation or an executive order, they sure cannot do it at the barrel of a gun, and they sure can’t it at a barrel of 4,000 guns, which is exactly what we’re looking at, right here, right now. So there’s a lot at stake. Do I believe that they will listen? Who knows? You know what I mean? This is a lawless federal government. This is the federal government that is committed to the authoritarian project. They are. There is a reason why his favorite foreign dignitaries are people like Orbán in Hungary, and Putin, yeah, Prince Bonesaw, you know, is what I like to call him, and people like Vladimir Putin, who kills his adversaries and jails them and things and invades countries and you know because Trump wants to invade country. He wants to do the same thing. He did the same thing.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Keith Ellison: So you know they are his people. And if any American thinks he’s going to insult democracies like Denmark and Norway and the UK and Canada, but is going to cozy up to Russia, Saudi Arabia and Hungary. That’s not the clearest sign in the world. I don’t know what else to tell you, but I can tell you the 4,000 armed violent paramilitaries threatening Minnesotans, killing Minnesotans. Two in the last two weeks, then it must be self-evident to all that we’re facing violent authoritarian government led by Donald Trump.
Alex Wagner: I want to dig into like his end game because I think that there’s a part of Trump that’s just trying to accrue power for the sake of accruing power.
Keith Ellison: Right.
Alex Wagner: Part of it is also to own the libs and say, fuck you blue cities, blue states, I’m the king here. But there’s another twist in the plot, which I think you as a state official are well aware of, which is the extortion.
Keith Ellison: Extortion.
Alex Wagner: Or blackmail, if you’re not familiar with extortion dynamics, but that the attorney general, Pam Bondi.
Keith Ellison: Say it.
Alex Wagner: Sent a letter to the Secretary of State saying, effectively, and I’m paraphrasing, but this is the gist, if you don’t want our goons in your state, you need to hand us the voter rolls.
Keith Ellison: Yeah, that’s it. I mean, it’s unmistakable. They want other stuff, too. They want data. They want snap data that’s not public. They want a bunch of, they had three items that they were trying to extort us for. But that is fundamentally what’s going on.
Alex Wagner: I mean, that’s insane. That letter was sent to your state the day Alex Pretti was killed in the street.
Keith Ellison: Yeah, they’re demonstrating absolutely no concern for the Pretti family. I mean, that’s another thing that is completely… I mean look, Melissa Hortman, who sat at this very table many, many, many times, Trump never called her family or the governor when she was assassinated, never demonstrated or expressed any concern for Alex Pretti or Renée Good said that their killers were completely innocent. Backed up the claim that they were domestic terrorists. But yeah, Pam Bondi has said, give us your information. Basically surrender your sovereignty as a state or else, and that is what she’s done. And Judge Kate Menendez has really picked up that on Monday hearing, asked a lot of questions about that.
Alex Wagner: So she’s making the connection between the blackmail letter and what’s happening in Operation Metro Surge.
Keith Ellison: She was amazingly astute in her observation of the situation. And that’s why has demanded additional briefing. And I don’t know what it means. I know that I trust her and she’s a great judge, but it’s very clear that that is what’s going on. Bondi knows it, although she obviously would deny it now because it’s not to her advantage, but clearly they’re trying to extort our state. But what I say to everybody else is if they’re going to do this to this blue state in the upper Midwest, if they are going to say this to the state that has said no to Trump three times at the ballot box, if you’re going say this state that feeds hungry kids, universal school meals, paid family leave, this is a progressive state, then what they’re doing is saying that any state that does whatever we don’t want, anyone who defies us, We will punish you for that. And we’re not gonna punish you with executive orders. We’re gonna send armed paramilitaries to stick a gun in your face. Now, if that’s not authoritarianism, there’s no, the concept means nothing.
Alex Wagner: I wonder what you think. I mean, there’s, there are questions of how you check this authoritarianism, right? Obviously you’re doing it in the courts.
Keith Ellison: In the courts.
Alex Wagner: There’s another branch of government that’s responsible. The one that you’ve served some clocked in some hours at the legislative branch. And again, we’re recording this on Wednesday afternoon. We’re barreling towards a potential government shutdown.
Keith Ellison: Yes.
Alex Wagner: Uh, because Congress, Democrats in Congress, Democrats in the Senator saying You want to do what? You want funding? Now granted, ICE has a $75 billion pool of funding, a piggy bank that is a result of the one big…
Keith Ellison: Ugly Bill.
Alex Wagner: Ugly Bill act, so they can continue their operations. But as you talk about funding going forward, Congress is saying, Senate Democrats are saying, you don’t get this money unless you reform some parts of ICE, right?
Keith Ellison: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: It sounds like it’s a narrow list of demands.
Keith Ellison: Right.
Alex Wagner: And I wonder from both a sort of legal perspective and as someone who worked in the legislative branch, what do you think about that fight? And some of the reforms that are being talked about are, you know, no warrantless searches. Um, making sure that state, um, investigators have access to these investigations.
Keith Ellison: Exactly.
Alex Wagner: I want to talk to you about that in a second. No masks.
Keith Ellison: No masks.
Alex Wagner: Right. Do you think that stuff is, I mean, first of all, do you think that that fight is the right fight? And are you optimistic about those changes making a meaningful difference in a place like this?
Keith Ellison: Here’s how I feel about that. Why did you ever put one lawn side in one yard if you’re not willing to fight over this? If you’re willing to throw down over this, how do you call yourself a public servant? How do you deserve the office that you operate of? What are you doing if you won’t fight for this? And at a time when Trump is on the ropes and he is, at a times when senators are questioning, at a time when even Republican senators who were skeptical of some of his people, said, okay, based on your representations, we’ll vote for you, Kennedy or Noem or Patel. They’ve all been disappointed and burned. I think that there is space for victory on this. And I think we’re only talking about an extra 10 billion. But. Hell no. I mean, tell them, win this one or.
Alex Wagner: Go home.
Keith Ellison: Go home. And if there’s one reason for you to absolutely throw down and never back down, this is it. And I’m telling you, I mean, at some point, you as a politician, you, as a U.S. Senator, were, I hope, animated by nobler values. This is the time to remember them. There’s nobody who likes this. Let me tell you, in this state of Minnesota, we have Republicans, I remember this is the state of Michele Bachmann, right? I mean we got some right-wingers here, no question about it. I mean Pete Hegseth comes from here. But but my point is even many of them are questioning. There’s this guy named Michael Brodkorb, who used to run this thing called Minnesota Democrats Exposed, and he devoted his life to kicking our ass every single day. It was, most of it was BS and lies, but he was committed. He just had a Substack talking about, you know, this is wrong.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Keith Ellison: This is wrong, what Trump’s doing is wrong now. I’m not saying that. He’s he’s my he’s, my guy politically.
Alex Wagner: He’s not a convert.
Keith Ellison: He’s not a convert. He still over there. But I mean you got a lot of Republicans who know this is wrong. I mean you got Adam Kinzinger, you got Bill Kristol, you got this local guy, Thom Tillis—
Alex Wagner: James Comer.
Keith Ellison: You’ve got people saying this is wrong. And so as a dem, why would you ever cave now?
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Keith Ellison: I mean, right now, you know, the senator from Maine, the Republican senator from Maine.
Alex Wagner: Susan Collins.
Keith Ellison: So Susan Collins, you know who’s on the ballot, she better ask herself a question. Do you want to be a senator or not? I hope she does vote for this crap, because that’ll give us a good reason to get her out. And on the other hand, I hope that she votes no, because it’ll be good for the American people.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, it’s become a proxy vote for do you sanction what happened to Alex Pretti.
Keith Ellison: Right.
Alex Wagner: That’s basically the vote. It’s not a funding vote. It’s an ethical line in the sand, right.
Keith Ellison: Right. And every Republican running for election in Minnesota, everybody, everyone has to ask themselves, are you with the Trump administration shooting down our fellow Minnesotans or are you against it? If you stand with Trump in this moment, then you don’t stand with Minnesotans at any moment.
Alex Wagner: The official requests from Minority Leader Schumer. This is what they’re asking for in order to pass the funding bill. End roving patrols, tighten warrants, coordination with local law enforcement. Number two, enforce accountability, same use of force policies as local police. And three, masks off, body cameras on. Let me ask you.
Keith Ellison: He needs another one. No ICE investigating ICE.
Alex Wagner: Well, right. And I want to talk to you about that. The use of force, the fact that the investigation into Alex Pretti’s murder, execution, whatever you want to call it, is a use of forced investigation according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Keith Ellison: Well, the problem is not calling the use of force investigation. If the Department of Justice, its civil rights division, together with local authorities were to do an investigation, it would be a use of force death and investigation. So the problem was not calling, because it was a use a force, right? Deadly force. The problem is that ICE is investigating ICE. And it’s like, you know what, I thought about what happened and I figured that I’m fine. And I didn’t do anything wrong. You know what I mean? It is antithetical to any system of justice for the institution that produced the person who did the wrongful questionable act. To investigate that same act is just antithetic to any system of justice. ICE must hand over the investigation to the FBI and the Minnesota Department Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. That’s what they must do. And it must be a joint investigation. Both. Discover evidence and use the evidence however we each deem appropriate based on our investigation and our interpretation of the evidence.
Alex Wagner: What’s, I mean, we know that the Minnesota.
Keith Ellison: Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Alex Wagner: Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has been shut out of the Renée Good investigation.
Keith Ellison: That’s right.
Alex Wagner: Can you tell us what’s happening with the Alex Pretti investigation?
Keith Ellison: Well, we went to court.
Alex Wagner: Yeah. So what’s your level? I mean where does that stand and is there a chance that you’re going to be gaining access to the body cam footage and more of the evidence that’s central to this case?
Keith Ellison: Well. So, there have been three shooting cases in Minnesota, one of them is non-lethal, but they shut us off the scene and denied us access to the investigative file, the evidence, the fed’s file in Good’s case. And then in another case where a man survived, so we don’t say his name for his privacy, but he was shot in North Minneapolis. And so that Saturday night, well, that Saturday afternoon when we figured out and we learned about the Pretti shooting, which was that morning. We went to court right away to have a court issue a temporary restraining order to protect and preserve the evidence and to prevent destruction of any evidence. At this point, we’ve been advised that ICE is doing its own investigation. In the FBI, a civil rights department is not involved, but we’ve now heard from Trump there should be a full investigation, but it cannot be ICE doing the investigation. It cannot be the Department of Homeland Security doing the investigation. They don’t have the people to do this. Investigating a crime is actually a separate skill set of its own. If your agency is set up to do immigration enforcement, you’re not set up to do—
Alex Wagner: Criminal investigations.
Keith Ellison: Criminal civil rights investigations. We’ve been doing criminal and civil rights investigations for a long time. Let me just, you know, note for your listeners. The Department of Justice was set up by Ulysses S. Grant to protect newly freed people from the abuses of local authorities.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Keith Ellison: That’s what they were set up for. And everybody remembers the 1960s when Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney and other people murdered because of their civil rights activity. And quite honestly, the Department of Justice, civil rights was really helpful when we prosecuted. Of the people who killed George Floyd. And so this is what they do. They’re experts at it. They know what they’re doing. And to say they’re not doing it, but Homeland Security is doing it is a farce, is a joke. And no legitimate criminal investigator looks at that and says, yeah, that’s fine. They know, any real investigator knows that’s a coverup and it can’t exist. And… I’m hoping that, you know, you mentioned Mr. Homan’s involved. He was a real police officer. He knows policing. He certainly knows a little bit about officer-involved shootings. And I hope that he is able to, you now, share with them how this is done by professionals, not the amateur hour they got going over there.
Alex Wagner: Not Kash Patel.
Keith Ellison: Right.
Alex Wagner: I mean, it just seems like the Trump administration has so much riding on this. You could see that in their immediate response, saying this guy was a domestic terrorist out to inflict mass carnage on us.
Keith Ellison: What a lie, and accusing him of approaching, but let me just tell you, you mentioned Kash Patel. Yes, he is not a serious individual at all. But local FBI people are, and the problem is not the FBI in this situation. The problem is Washington FBI. If they let local FBI work with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension people here, and they do what they do and they know how to do it. We wouldn’t have these problems. The problem is Washington. But now, I’ve been getting notices that even the local FBI is not investigating and that Department of Homeland Security is doing the investigating all on its own, which is crazy. I’ve had police officers, who I won’t name, mention that the chain of custody with the gun has been mishandled. You know, I’ve been advised that, look, you know. This is not how you handle crime scenes, you know? And Alex, as a reporter, you’ve seen crime scenes where you see the little tents with the numbers on them.
Alex Wagner: Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Ellison: You know, this is marking evidence, marking the location of evidence, and it’s a careful thing that is done to make sure they can try to reconstruct what actually happened. This is what they’ve been trampling on. So what we’ve done is gone to court to secure the evidence, and I can assure everyone that we are taking responsible and effective measures to preserve and protect the evidence connected to the Renée Good case as well. I’m not at liberty to say exactly what, but I can tell you and I want people to believe me when I tell them that the state and the county together are taking the necessary action to make sure we have a case that we can eventually make a decision regarding charging or indictment on.
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Alex Wagner: We know today that the two officers who shot Alex Pretti were placed on leave and people are saying, okay, don’t read too much into that. That’s not like a wake up call that the Trump administration is sounding on all this. It’s just a pro forma thing. Like that’s what happens. And then when you’re under investigation, do you read anything into that? Does that signal anything to you? I mean.
Keith Ellison: Well, I’ll tell you this, what we heard, the first thing we heard was not that they were put on leave. What we heard from Bovino, who’s gone now, is that, in fact, the victims were the people who killed Alex Pretti, and that I heard one of them has gone to another city to continue his work even. I actually did hear that from a credible source. So now we’re hearing they’re on leave, I hope that they’re are on leave so that they don’t hurt anyone else. And so normally, if there was an officer involved shooting, the officer would be on leave. And so that is least consistent with some level of protocol, but it wasn’t an immediate thing. Remember, Alex Pretti was killed Saturday. Today is Wednesday. And we’ve just been hearing that this is beginning to square with a normal protocol.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, they were theoretically on the streets. Those ICE agents.
Keith Ellison: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: Which is just an astounding thing to sort of wrap your head around that they would have shot Alex Pretti and then gone back to work.
Keith Ellison: Gone back to work, yeah, which is which is what we heard happened.
Alex Wagner: In the meantime, I do want to talk about sort of the ICE’s level of impunity in Minnesota right now.
Keith Ellison: Yeah, it’s pretty good. Well, see, there’s a lot of people who haven’t been killed.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, well, that’s ri ght. Yeah.
Keith Ellison: Yeah, and, and you know.
Alex Wagner: Sam Bondi is here to show us how bad the protesters are. But really, my question is, is ICE at all, because, and Tom Homan may be a former police guy, maybe he will make some inroads, and legally speaking, in service of democracy. But what about the guys on the streets themselves? I mean, I think we have a report that ICE was trying to enter the Ecuadorian consulate. Which is, they were blocked, that’s prohibited by the Vienna Conventions. Like this is basic sort of law here, and they seem intent on violating it.
Keith Ellison: Well, here’s the problem, Alex, these people are exceedingly poorly trained. We’re not getting, uh, to use Trump’s phrase, we’re not getting the best, you know—
Alex Wagner: The worst of the worst of ICE people.
Keith Ellison: Right. We’re getting sort of these people who couldn’t hold a security job at a grocery store, and we’re getting these people, who are poorly trained. They’re being told that they have absolute immunity, which they don’t. So they’re being poorly trained, poorly instructed on their job. So of course they do insane things like that. And of course, they use chemical irritants. On cars containing children. And of course they use a five-year-old child as bait. And of of course, they’re busting windows and dragging autistic women on their way to a medical appointment out of a car. And of, of course they’re doing all these horrible bad things because they don’t know what they’re doin’. They’ve been told that they’re going to get rid of the worst of the worse, then they have absolute immunity. And they’ve been that in nothing they do, will they ever be held accountable for? So that’s what’s going on, poorly trained, poorly recruited, misinformed people who have a complex relationship with masculinity, you know what I mean? Whose idea–
Alex Wagner: And race.
Keith Ellison: And race, whose idea of manhood is violence and whose idea other people is that if they’re not white Anglo-Saxon, that they’re probably not supposed to be here. That they’re suspect.
Alex Wagner: I think that said explicitly, you don’t sound like me. So they said it from, and the idea that you could be an American and also have an accent and not look like someone who is white seems like a real betrayal. I think on the part of this administration and it’s lacking.
Keith Ellison: Yeah, and then on behalf of like, I mean, here’s the other thing. Are they racist? Sure. But the two people they killed are white people.
Alex Wagner: I know.
Keith Ellison: So like, if you, as a Minnesotan, think, well, I’m not a person of color, so they probably won’t hurt me, oh no, they’ll kill you. They have.
Alex Wagner: They’ll shoot a mom of the face and a nurse in the back—
Keith Ellison: Right. That is what they’ll do. They’ll say, oh, those people were protesting, but there’s a lot of people who were injured, hurt, abused and mistreated who were not even protesting. They were passing by. And so no one is safe from them. And here’s another thing about ICE and its composition and organization. Does anyone doubt that if Trump said, you guys, you’re my guys. And all these people who are sassing me and disrespecting me, I want you to arrest them. Do you think he wouldn’t do it? If ICE said, go arrest the governor, do you think ICE agents wouldn’t do it?
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Keith Ellison: They would do it. They are a praetorian, they’re a paramilitary praetorian guard. That is what they are. Unlike a police department, they don’t tell people their names, they don’t show their faces, they don’t wear badges. Unlike a police department, they’re not tethered to a location.
Alex Wagner: Right.
Keith Ellison: They can be sent anywhere. Unlike a police department, they’re not trained on proper use of force or de-escalation. Their only loyalty is to Donald J. Trump and they do what they think he wants them to do, which is to be violent towards the enemy within, who is anybody who disagrees with Trump, anybody who doesn’t look right, I mean, anybody who’s from another country. This is what’s going on.
Alex Wagner: I have two more things I want to talk to you about. I know your time is precious, so I’m deeply appreciative. Ilhan Omar. Yesterday night.
Keith Ellison: Great person.
Alex Wagner: A huge figure in both state politics and national politics and an object of obsession for this current president.
Keith Ellison: Yeah, he really is obsessed with Ilhan. I mean, here’s the thing. You know, I’m Ilhan’s predecessor and I was, you know, proudly helpful to her to take over where I left off because I wanted somebody who was a fighter and it was good.
Alex Wagner: You got one.
Keith Ellison: I sure did. And she was attacked with an unknown liquid substance at a public meeting. That does not happen, but for Trump’s repeated vile violent rhetoric. He lies on her constantly, he abuses her reputation, and now he is, Trump is engaged in what I think some experts call stochastic terrorism. And you know the term, it’s just like a mafia boss saying, you know, somebody needs to rid me of this irritating person. Why will no one get rid of this? Person who’s such a thorn in my side. What it means is, one of y’all go kill him. And everybody knows what happened, and he can say, oh, I didn’t say do that. But that’s what’s going on. And so Trump is responsible for what happened to Ilhan Omar. I have a very strong feeling he won’t call her to apologize or to check into how she is. But I just want anybody to know who’s listening to your show. Trump is a liar. Ilhan Omer is a very smart, very kind. Person.
Alex Wagner: Tough.
Keith Ellison: Who’s tough.
Alex Wagner: Watch the video. You see she’s ready to go after the guy.
Keith Ellison: She is, she, look, Ilhan Omar might not weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet, but Ilhan Omar has the heart of a lion, but she has also the heart of a mom and she’s, and she is a kind, good person. She’s smart and she loves the state of Minnesota. And Trump is always saying, they’re always, I think he uses the word complaining. They’re always. Ilhan Omar believes that America is a wonderful country that could be better, and she calls it to being better. That’s not criticize, that’s not tearing our country down. It’s calling our country to come up. And he doesn’t understand the difference. To him, flattery is the only acceptable level of communication.
Alex Wagner: And patriotism.
Keith Ellison: Well, he doesn’—yeah, that is patriotism. Ilhan is a patriot like he he’s he actually doesn’t really he’s the one who doesn’t give a crap about America really.
Alex Wagner: It’s him.
Keith Ellison: It’s it’s all about him. You know, believe me if it ever became convenient for him or he could lower his taxes by moving to I don’t know. Um Abu Dhabi he would do it.
Alex Wagner: Greenland.
Keith Ellison: Greenland. He would do it you know.
Alex Wagner: All right. This is not over. Right. None of this is over.
Keith Ellison: Even if there is a de-escalation in Minnesota, and I hope that there is, my big fear is where will there be an escalation?
Alex Wagner: Exactly. And so that’s my sort of ultimate question to you, which is, you are living through this. You are pulling all the leverage you can. You see a citizenry that’s engaged, that is aware, that is banded together. What is your guidance for the next blue state AG that has to tackle the kind of scenario that’s been unfolding here in Minnesota?
Keith Ellison: Absolutely. So like if I were in Maine and I got a good friend named Aaron Frey, who was the attorney general in Maine, uh, start reaching out to your colleagues early, get ready, get your memos ready on challenging the escalation. They call it Metro Surge here. They’ll probably call it something else there. Get, get, your memo’s ready, right? Start writing your legal briefs now on the insurrection act, uh and how it doesn’t apply. Uh, make sure you would give people advice on, uh, protesting now. Uh, and then show up at, show up and be visible. Don’t just sit in an office building and write briefs behind a computer. Show up at the community meeting, show up at the protest. I mean, I go to outside the Whipple building and just thank people for being there. Um, help people understand that they’re not wrong. And that one of the reasons that Trump is attacking us is because we live in states where there is a sense of the common good. Trump wouldn’t be attacking us if we didn’t welcome the stranger in Minnesota. In Minnesota, we are so embracing of all people, including immigrants, that we elected a girl who used to be in a refugee camp to be our congressperson. That’s Ilhan, she’s a woman now, but she was a girl and a kid. You know, trying to survive, you know, a refugee camp in Kenya when she came here, you know, and he is attacking us because we’re welcoming, because we believe in liberty and justice for all. We are in the bullseye of Donald Trump because we have paid family leave, because we believe that our trans neighbors have every right to respect and dignity and participation in this society. They hate our state because we don’t hate trans people. They hate us. And so that is what it’s about. And don’t let them back you off your values. Never quit, never quit. If you do quit, it won’t gain you anything. They’re still gonna crap all over you. So why not fight and maybe win? And then understand that the nation is behind you. The nation is behind Minnesota right now. And if he does deescalate and go to another state, we’ll be behind you there. And let me also say this. I have friends who are AGs in southern states who are border states. They’re fighting the Sinaloa drug cartel. They’re down, immigration enforcement people, because they’re up here. So you have some Arizona ICE agent freezing his or her ass off in Minnesota when they could be stopping fentanyl from coming through the border, proving that this is nothing but retribution and punishment and it’s wrong and it is immoral and we will never back down, not ever, never. He will quit before we do. And that’s the lessons I got.
Alex Wagner: Well, that’s a lot of lessons. Good lesson.
Keith Ellison: Uh, way to go, Alex. Thank you so much.
Alex Wagner: Thank you. So much for your time. Got it. You’re the best. That is our show for this week. As always, if you have been impacted directly by the Trump administration or its policies, send us an email or a one-minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to everyone who has written in already. Last but not least, please don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.
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