Chapter 1: What led to Donald Trump's agreement for an investigation into Alex Pretti's killing?
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I'm Jon Lovett.
I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Lovett is joining us from Minneapolis, where he's been talking to protesters and residents about the latest on the ground there. We're going to talk about that, about how the political blowback from the second American killed by federal agents is finally causing at least a partial retreat by Trump in the White House.
And we'll also get into how Democrats in Congress are planning to use this week's government funding deadline as leverage to demand changes to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
But first, by now you all know and have probably seen footage of federal agents killing 37-year-old Alex Preddy of Minnesota, an ICU nurse who was filming the agents on his phone and helping a protester who'd been pepper sprayed when the agents tackled him to the ground, removed a gun they found on Preddy, and then shot him at least 10 times.
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Chapter 2: How has the political landscape shifted in response to the killing?
They've been lying about people they've grabbed off the street. They've been lying about people they've put in detention. There's just only some of those stories where it's so egregious and the person so obviously deserving of more that it gets this kind of attention. And so the tragedy, right, is that this
wonderful and beloved person was gunned down because of poorly trained, angry, twitchy, aggressive federal agents who feel beholden to and protected by Donald Trump and his goons. We went to the memorial where he had been killed, and you just see so many people who they're just standing there in silence, just really unable to move. A lot of people have never been to anything like that before.
They've never felt this before. They've never experienced anything in their communities like this before, so wrenched by this. And it's all just so completely avoidable.
And the lying about it, I've seen a bunch of people scratching their chins to complain about all the ways in which everyone but Noam and Bovino and all these people are ultimately responsible and ICE is ultimately responsible and the Border Patrol responsible.
Chapter 3: What demands are Congressional Democrats making regarding DHS reforms?
But the lying is escalation. The lying is a form of ratcheting up the tension. And it's only because pretty is such a like a tribune to good values that they've kind of had to blow up in their faces.
I want to talk about the line because I think it is the most chilling part to me. Yeah. Because I think we are so used to because we now have a reality TV show president. We have a bunch of Fox pundits running the cabinet. We are so used to like, well, we're all in this political warfare with each other.
Chapter 4: How did the community in Minneapolis react to the killing of Alex Pretti?
And so one side lies and the other side lies. These are the people in charge of the federal government, which is the most powerful entity on the planet. They control just enough manpower, enough weaponry to destroy the whole world. This is the Department of Homeland Security. It's not immigration officials. Department of Homeland Security is supposed to protect the country. And they are lying.
And lying easily, callously, without even blinking, without even seeming like they feel like, oh shit, we got to cover our asses. They're lying so easily about something that they know was filmed at multiple different angles. So it's not like they thought they could get away with this. They're just they're just lying, thinking like, I'm going to just say whatever the fuck I want.
And who the hell cares about that? And that to me is like the most chilling part. And they just kept going like they all jump in. You see Pete Hegseth, our defense secretary, jumped in with a post saying who's from Minnesota, who's born in Minnesota. Yeah. That said ICE greater than sign Minnesota. Also, why is Scott Besson commenting on what CBP and ICE are up to? You're the Treasury Secretary.
I don't know. That's not my job. Don't comment on it.
Chapter 5: How did the killing of Alex Pretti differ from previous incidents involving federal agents?
Fucking Vice President of the United States retweeting Stephen Miller calling his boss, which was exactly Tommy, which is like all this, all this stuff about they're all doing it because they're all afraid of ICE.
Chapter 6: What role does public opinion play in shaping government actions regarding ICE?
Miller. I mean, they're afraid of Trump, but they know that Miller's the enforcer because Trump's busy with his ballroom and a whole bunch of other shit. He's doing his Melania thing, his screening of Melania. And Miller's the real boss. And so when Stephen Miller says, oh, this is an assassin, they're all like, oh, we all got to jump in.
Right.
J.D. Vance then on Sunday tweets his fucking story that he told last week about, oh, these ICE agents in Minnesota, they were having dinner. And then suddenly everyone, a mob came in and they and they locked the door and they felt scared.
scared for their lives.
They're like, what were they? It was like, did, did reigns of Castamere start playing? It was like a fucking red, like the door locked from the inside. Did they just casually get up and walk out? You know?
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Chapter 7: What was the immediate government response to Alex Pretti's death?
But he was like, he basically, he basically told that story to say that like Minnesota officials have created this chaos so they can have moments like yesterday where someone tragically dies and politicians get to grandstand about the evils of enforcing the border. And I'm like, That is, like, you are so fucked up. Like, J.D. Vance, forget about, like, his values, his morality.
Like, to tweet something like that after someone is murdered, like, you need to see someone for help. Like, you're fucking psychologically nuts. Yeah, and just, like, the casual, like, the callousness and the total disregard for the truth, it really just, like, saps your personality. faith in government and humanity. But then the efforts to blame the victim are just like Cash Patel, right?
He says, you can't bring a gun to a protest. They're trying to suggest that, you know, that he is Alex Pardes at fault because he brought a gun to this protest. And it's like, are you fucking kidding me? Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people at a protest. You guys lionized him. You treated him. You made him into a hero.
Kash Patel specifically offered to raise money for Kyle Rittenhouse to sue the media about his reputation. And by the way, he made these comments on a white nationalist podcast with a guy named Stu Peters. Stu Peters is so vile and so anti-Semitic that he sold a meme coin called J-Proof, i.e. Jewish Proof,
And then Kash Patel later lied to the Senate and pretended he didn't know who Stu Peters was, despite being on his show eight times. I think that that that aside there, I think just like tells you about the character of the people in these government positions. Kash Patel is the FBI director, and he got that position because he was willing to lie and say whatever it took to get power.
And that's where we're at. And it's just like we the conclusion from this, which is a conclusion most of us have have drawn years ago, but especially true now. It's like we cannot trust a single thing that our government tells us about anything, especially DHS. But like, you know, we just had, you know, the story last week about the five year old boy who they took.
from his family and is now somewhere in a detention facility in Texas, maybe sent to Mexico. Now they're reinstating the remain in Mexico policy, this five-year-old. And they tried to tell us the father abandoned him. The mother didn't want him and all these lies. And, you know, they're trying to argue, but it's like, We can't believe any of that.
We're supposed to believe that the agent who killed Rene Good had internal bleeding. We're supposed to believe that the car hit him. We're supposed to believe there were two rounds of ammo that Alex Prady brought with him. They haven't produced any pictures of the ammo. I think if they had that, they would... We can't believe anything. We cannot believe anything the government says right now.
There's something about Vance, that unrelated story about the lunch incident... It was dinner. Don't worry, it was dinner. It was the dinner incident. You can interrupt people's lunch. Sorry, it was the main meal. Main meal. And then the work hit the phrase, so they can have moments like this. So they can have moments like this.
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Chapter 8: What insights does the New York Magazine article provide about Trump's health and political strategy?
Yeah. And so, you know, Homan wasn't tough enough, right? Because, of course, Homan is an Obama administration holdover from way back. He was some mid-level ice guy or senior ice guy there. And so Homan wasn't tough enough. And so they kind of demote Homan, or at least he's out of view.
They get Bovino on the ground with his SS coat and his phalanx of agents that he needs to have around him, even when he's going into target to take a piss. He's a big, tough guy. And so they have ā so then it's Bovino. And remember after Goode was killed and Hohmann is in one of those first interviews and he's like, I think there should be a full investigation.
Like I think we should not call it domestic terrorism. And then suddenly he's like back on the talking point. So Hohmann ā they all see Hohmann as like a cuck, right? Hohmann is a real ā Hohmann is a real beta to them, which is fucking nuts because ā
Lewandowski and Noem, they don't like Homan. There's like a tension there, right?
Right. Yeah. So now Homan is back in. And I guess this is the last of Greg Bovino for a while. Trump also said on Monday that he had a, quote, very good call with Tim Walz and that they, quote, actually seem to be on a similar wavelength. I'm sure Wells laughed at that.
The Wells office said that Trump agreed to allow for an impartial investigation into Preddy's killing that involves Minnesota state officials, which they had originally been trying to keep out of it. And they did for goods investigation, lack thereof, not a real investigation into goods murder. And that also Trump agreed to, quote, look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota.
And of course, there's that reporting that some of the Border Patrol is going to leave with Bovino. Also, apparently, right before we recorded, Trump talked to Fry, Jacob Fry, as well. And they had the mayor of Minneapolis and they were supposed to have like a productive call as well, according to Fry. There were also hearings on Monday on both of the points that Walz and Trump talked about.
And these were court cases brought by the state of Minnesota by Attorney General Keith Ellison. One, asking a judge to stop the ICE surge and the Border Patrol surge immediately. and one demanding that the Department of Homeland Security preserve all the evidence from the scene of Preti's death.
You know, the judge seemed reluctant or sort of torn on whether they could actually stop this enforcement operation during the hearing. Though the one thing that was really getting the judge was Pam Bondi's letter that she sent basically saying, we'll take out our agents only if these conditions are met. And one was, we want your snap, your food stamp rolls.
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