Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey everybody, big news. We are going back on the road. We wanted to be with y'all. Me and Sarah wanted to hug you. JVL wanted to greet you from a polite distance. So we're planning our spring Bulwark tour, and we demanded that it kick off with our friends in the Twin Cities. So we'll be there February 19th.
I guess it probably won't be very spring in the Twin Cities, February 19th, but that's okay. We're going to be there for a one-night show. Details are to come on that. Then after that in March, we're headed to Texas. We're going to be in Dallas on March 18th and Austin on March 19th. Minnesota tickets are going on sale Friday. The Texas shows will go on sale next week.
Watch your inboxes, thebullock.com slash events for more. Go to thebullock.com slash events. If you are not from Minnesota, by the way, come. Come hang with us. It's going to be a big venue. We're going to plan some other stuff February 19th. Hope to see you all there. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a doubleheader for you today.
Up in segment two is Bobby Pulido, who's running for Congress in South Texas. Super interesting guy I met last week. I'm excited to talk to him about immigration and what the hell the Democrats are going to do about their Hispanic voter problem, or even if they have one anymore. So stick around for that. But first, I'd like to welcome back to the show, staff writer at The Atlantic,
He was in Minneapolis last week to report on ordinary Minnesotans who mobilized to resist the occupation of their city. It's Adam Sarwar. What's up, man? Hey, how's it going? I guess I'd start here. Could you sum up the administration's actions in Minnesota in five words? An attack on an American city? I don't know if that... Say the line, Adam. Oh, yeah. I'm not going to.
I refuse to do it. I refuse to do it. I'm going to give you the Bart Simpson. It's funny that that's exactly where you were going, and I didn't even get it. Anyway, yes. I think you'd have to say the cruelty is the point there. I mean, you just look at how people are talking about... You know, the two Minneapolis St.
Paul residents who were killed by the Border Patrol and basically seeking to unperson them in order to justify the unjustifiable, which is, you know, the taking of the lives of people who pose no threat to anyone and who were killed. you know, when they were killed in the process of trying to protect or aid the people around them.
I'm just jealous I don't have a tagline. I mean, I've been talking 20 hours a week and nothing sticks yet, but one of these days. The article that you wrote, I think, had some really... deep and poignant elements that I want to get to and is maybe concerningly for you in line with some of the stuff I've been thinking about. You just put it better.
But I just before we get to kind of the deeper elements of your analysis, what's happened in Minnesota, just explain for people. I was interested to kind of hear the more rote, you know, play by play of what's happening on the ground. Like you were riding around with some of these ice watch folks. Like what exactly are they doing and what's happening? Yeah.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of community resistance in Minneapolis?
And talk about why that is foiling their operations, I guess. Is it because they're just going to leave the neighborhood if they're going to get harassed? Is it because it's warning people not to come outside? Like what is foiling about that activity?
Well, I mean, you know, ICE wants the element of surprise. So if people are ready for them, they might be able to escape or hide, you know, or something of the sort.
And the thing is, is that what people have told me is that, you know, it's not just if you don't have legal status that you should be afraid, because there are lots of stories of people stopping people who are citizens, who have legal status, who are here legally and being mistreated.
You know, I spoke to one Somali-American activist who told me that her sister had been detained at the Wibble building for hours, even though she's an American citizen. So I think it's not just a question of they're trying to warn undocumented immigrants.
They're warning anybody who might presumably be racially profiled by ICE because the Supreme Court said the 14th Amendment doesn't exist anymore and you can just stop anyone if you think they're an illegal immigrant because they have brown skin or they speak a different language.
Or the most apt group is people who did come here using the CBP One app or people who came here seeking asylum who've been doing their meetings. Stephen Miller wants to disentangle that group from people that snuck across the Rio Grande or whatever. But like that's a meaningfully different legal status.
And those folks are being treated no different than somebody who is an actual illegal immigrant who has committed a crime.
Well, to be honest, I don't think that Miller and whoever's running the like DHS social media accounts distinguishes between American citizen, undocumented immigrant person with legal status at all. If you are of a demographic category that they don't want in the country. I think they do not care.
Stephen Miller is a big fan of the racist 1920s immigration restrictions that partially inspired the Nazis. He said that the big problem with the country was when they repealed those restrictions in 1965. He's talked about if you import the third world, quote unquote, you get the third world, which is you can't even describe it as barely veiled, really racist statement.
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Chapter 3: How do ICE watch groups operate in Minneapolis?
It's not true. But it's also like just not true on the ground in Minneapolis. What is so moving about the sort of neighborism there is that everybody says it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what gender you are. It doesn't matter what race you are. It doesn't matter what religion you are. You are my neighbor. I will defend you.
And that is a level of commitment to social cohesion that I have yet to see from anybody in the entire MAGA coalition who all seem to be about stating these things, not so much as a matter of like principles they wanna see lived in the world, but as a question of like, brand building and political identity, which is, I think, what J.D. Vance is doing.
Yeah, exactly. I get my back up when somebody talks about how important social cohesion and social solidarity and the common good is to them in one breath. And then in the next breath, they smear and lie about their neighbors. We're going to get to social cohesion eventually. But first, we have to smear and denigrate our neighbors. And then on the back end of that, we'll get to friendship.
We're going to get masked men to shoot people dead in the street, and that's going to lead to social cohesion.
No, look, I mean, what they are doing is they are trying to come up with what sounds like a morally justifiable argument for violence against undesirables, people they want to leave the United States, people they want to force out of the United States by means of terror, whether or not they're actually citizens.
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Chapter 4: How does the Second Amendment relate to current events?
We are so hardcore. So we are going to win. We are going to lose. My voice hasn't dropped yet, but I'm so hardcore.
That's so masculine. There's nothing like screaming I'm so hardcore while your voice rises an octave. It's amazing. Yeah, look, you know, I think part of the cognitive dissonance here is that, you know, here's Stephen Miller screaming about how hardcore he is. But the people who are dying in defense of their ideals are people like Rene Goode, And Alex Pretty.
They're the ones who have proven to be tough, who have proven to be brave, who have been willing to defend, you know, the redeeming ideals of Western civilization, like due process, like equal protection under the law. like individual liberty, those are the things that are being defended by the people on the ground in Minnesota.
They are not and cannot be defended by men with masks and guns who have, quote unquote, total immunity to exact violence on a civilian population. It's just not possible. The person who is staring down a gun with empty hands is always braver than the person with the mask and the gun.
But what has happened is that MAGA has adopted this juvenile definition of masculinity where it's simply a question of dominance. They've replaced every redeeming quality of traditional masculinity or the traditional masculine ideal that they talk about, heroism, sacrifice, bravery. And they've replaced it with, you know, a capacity for violence and domination. That's it.
I want to add one addendum to that. The person protesting is obviously more brave than the guy with the mask and the gun, but sometimes the guys with the guns are brave, right? I mean, there is real police work that has to be done where you do have to encounter actual bad guys, actual troublemakers, where you do fear for yourself because they might –
lash out at you and they might try to harm you. And a lot of those guys are out in the streets in Minneapolis and all over the country and they're doing it responsibly and they're doing it like real men do it and they are not pushing women to the ground and they are not unloading their clip into dead protesters. And I think that's important.
I've had loved ones who have been on multiple deployments. But what is a reality is you cannot have people with masks and guns who are not accountable to the public because we don't know their identities, who have total, quote unquote, total immunity to use lethal force. That is just not compatible with a democracy. Because the lifeblood of democracy is accountability.
And if you give someone ultimate power, the power over life and death, and you say they can never be held accountable under any circumstances, then you've defeated the purpose of democracy in the first place, which is to find what the will of the people is and execute it.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of MAGA's immigration policies?
And so I guess I wonder, do you think that they're blaming him for having a weapon? Is something that can resonate? Is it something that you can talk about down there when you talk about your Second Amendment commitment? Or do you think that people think it's hypocritical? What do you think about the politics of all that?
I think there's a lot of principled people involved. that disagree with this. I mean, I don't know if you saw this statement from the NRA. It was kind of a rebuke from what he was saying. You know, they're staunchly pro-Trump. But I think they're starting to kind of realize that a lot of their principles are out the window.
And again, it's just, it's that tribalism of, well, if it's my team doing it, we're okay with it. And I don't think we should go down that road.
All right. You're in a Trump plus 17 district. Trump won it by 17. Yep. So what's the plan? What's the plan? How do you do that? How are you competitive there?
I think, Tim, 2024 was a huge anomaly down here. Remember, they gerrymandered the district again. So 65% of the district is new area to Congresswoman Monica de la Cruz. We've already traveled and gone and done town halls or meetings at all 11 counties in this district. This district is almost 80% Latino, Hispanic. And my music and my father's music, my father's also a singer.
We've traveled all these areas and met a lot of friends throughout the years. And we've been going, taking our message there. Now, just just for context, in 2022, Rochelle Garza ran against Ken Paxton. And in this district, this was for attorney general of the state of Texas. She lost by less than one point to Ken Paxton. So this district isn't as red as people think it is.
Beto O'Rourke in 2018 won it by almost 10 points. The people down here really, really vote for the person more than the party. Just for context, like in Starr County, which is right neighboring on the border, Henry Cuellar actually won with a larger percentage than even Trump did. So the people here really listen to the to the candidate and really vote more that way than a lot of party line.
There's lots of split ticket voting.
I'd listen to that pitch and it sounds like, OK, well, no, I understand why the Democrats feel good about your candidacy, what you do. You feel like this is something that you could potentially win. But like the other thing I hear is Beto won this by 10 points. Kamala lost it by 17.
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Chapter 6: How does the current political climate affect Hispanic voters?
Everyone.
Yeah.
Right. So everybody right now is in their information bubbles and they don't really see they only see one perspective. And I think how we break that is good old fashioned. Get out there in front of their faces, shake their hand, answer their questions.
And once you do that, go on Fox, by the way, those Fox anchors aren't that smart. All right. They can't run circles around you like they're not that smart. You can handle it. You can give people a little dose of reality.
I'm not opposed to it. Although it is pretty funny. They've written four attack pieces on me already, which shows me that – I saw one of them that said you peed on a Hollywood square.
Is that right? Did you get drunk and pee on a Hollywood square?
It's only half true. Oh, okay. Okay. I might have had a couple of drinks in me like 10 years ago, but I did not pee on Trump's star. I did not – It was a joke. I had a water bottle. There was police officers there. And I told them, hey, I'm going to do this joke. And I posted it.
And so they, of course, like always they do, they start clutching their pearls and saying, he urinated on Trump's star. And it was a joke.
Yeah, I thought we were making humor legal again. I don't know. That's what I said.
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