Rachel Maddow

occupation, I think it's fair to say, of a major American city that they essentially hoped to be the front page news headline that everybody remembered about the Trump administration at this time at the start of Trump's second year in his second term in office.

They went big with this on their own terms.

Nobody asked for this.

Nobody put them up to it.

They decided to launch this in order to show off what they could do.

And now they are in full retreat, with it being viewed both as a practical debacle and a moral debacle, and they are paying a considerable political price for it.

If you were one of millions of Americans who protested ICE out of Minneapolis, you should know tonight you are winning this thing.

and is worth understanding the power of what you have done.

President Trump today and tonight held conciliatory phone calls with the Democratic governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, and the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Fry.

Both of those elected officials were demonized by Trump and by the Trump administration up until, like, 30 seconds ago.

Once Trump started criticizing both of those elected officials, his U.S.

Department of Justice naturally put both of them under federal investigation of some kind, since that's how federal law enforcement works now.

The president gets mad at you or wants to hurt you for some reason, and bingo, magically you're instantly the subject of a federal criminal or civil investigation by the FBI and the U.S.

Department of Justice.

Even with those threats, though, even with those investigations launched against them, those threats against Minnesota elected leaders seem to have had the opposite of the intended effect on them.

It seems to have caused them to dig in and fight harder.

It definitely increased their political support, both in their state and around the country.

Similarly, the federal government's threats to the people of Minneapolis.

Federal agents increasingly unhinged an explosive violence toward the people of Minneapolis.

They're killing people protesting and observing and filming federal agents in Minneapolis.