Trump Admin Retreats on ICE Agenda

Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections for teens. Instagram teen accounts have built-in content settings and limits for who can contact teens. Plus, teens under 16 can't change these default safety settings without parental approval. So parents can help teens connect safely. Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections for who can contact teens and the content they can see. Learn more at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. On the under $3 menu at McDonald's, a sausage burrito is $2. So dip, drizzle, or douse to your heart's desire. Because no matter how you sauce your sausage burrito, it's still just $2. Limit time only. Prices and participation in the very, prices may be higher for delivery. Welcome to the beat. I'm Ari Melburgh, covering President Trump, polling ICE and federal agents from Minneapolis. This is a clearly measurable step by the Trump administration amid what have been... ongoing protests and backlash that has overwhelmed them in their message. The announcement actually made by the very official that Trump sent to Minnesota after agents killed a protester and they wanted to change the so-called face of operations there. Tom Homan stating that 700 agents are leaving now immediately. That is a measurable drawdown. We also want you to have the full picture. It still leaves about 2,000 agents there, which is unusual. This whole way that Trump has been putting ICE and DHS agents in these places has been unusual. And they are part of a larger force that we know has been drawing the protests over everything from the masked policing to the menacing of American citizens. Some agents caught on camera threatening people, threatening to punish First Amendment rights. the unprofessional and untrained tactics, and what you see on your screen, the two Americans slain, which has shocked the nation's conscience. So before I go any further, let me just tell you what the facts are here tonight. President Trump is reducing the forces there. That's a fact. And the Trump administration is publicizing it. For a very PR conscious president, that shows the impact of these protests and the pressure and this backlash. Because there has been, at the political level, a failure by the administration to do what it so often does to try to change the subject, replacing one outrage with another, with one topic with another. Trump has done that. That's one of his well-known media political tactics, something that even his critics say. with lament that he is effective at because he has been a reality show star, a self-promoter, an early Twitter adopter. Everybody knows how he does that. And it's failed here. So now, after all of this and those deaths and these other problems, the Trump administration is trying to shift both message and policy. And that means there can still be the usual exaggerations. As journalists, we try to fact check and cover what's happening. But there is a shift. activist warning the administration has a much more to do if it is going to actually respect the Constitution and public safety in Minnesota and elsewhere, which is why protesters are continuing on many efforts. There's now about 30,000 people in counting trained as constitutional observers. That's in that state alone. Across the country, this issue has become a focal point for the protests against Trump.

And the kinglike efforts to search or patrol or police and even kill all without the legal oversight that this country has long demanded, especially of federal government intrusions into what is usually local police tactics. The administration initially tried to ignore and criticize and even mock the many millions of Americans who turned out across this year the second term. And we've covered how some have folded like CEOs and read while other groups, protesters, citizens on juries, many journalists have not been cowed. But the approach is failing because the administration is now, both as I mentioned in the drawdown and in its messaging trying to at least say they're offering something back. to those many millions of protesters. The Trump administration has reached a point where it does not want to risk looking like it cannot see any aspect of a problem that is before all of us that Americans have seen across the political spectrum with their own eyes. Because when you see masked ice agents menacing people as they've been caught on video, killing Americans and then a government lying about those videos and then the government initially saying they wouldn't even investigate or have any rule of law for this. No, that's a problem people see. Drawing down several hundred agents who are a part of that is a way of saying, hey, we get it even if people can debate whether they get it at all yet. Rachel Maddo has been reporting on the results from those protests, including halting the construction of new ice centers. We are seeing continued rolling huge anti-ice protests everywhere now. So these wonderful patriots have defeated the concentration kids. My director of inspections, licenses, and permits revoked the building permit for this detention center.

Are they going to be able to build a huge permanent archipelago of camps, of lawless prison camps? There's pushback everywhere, including in red states, red counties, and red cities that says no. Pushback everywhere saying no. Pushback of huge measurable levels. Citizens, also showing courage in places where we just watch agents kill their neighbors, even as CEOs and elites fold. Local officials using powers, we can take it off the, let's take off that video for a sec. I'm getting so many flashes. Local officials using powers that they have to thwart the ice tactics in any way they can. As Rachel described there, this is still... A country we have here. That means there's local officials. That means there's different power centers. There is federalism. And there's capitalism, which sometimes is seen as going along with anything. But capitalism can also mean the public demanding rules, human rights, values, rule of law on the companies that they have any leverage for. Then we've reported on Democrats in D.C. who are in the minority, but are now trying new ways to protect the public from using that shutdown clash to taking testimony from witnesses in public, which we heard this week about these killings. That alone is powerful because the Trump DOJ has signaled that in some of these cases, it may not even bother fully investigating killings of Americans. So Democrats in that sad, obviously regrettable situation are not just writing letters criticizing it. but taking the testimony in public themselves. This is what people saw. This is how this killing went down. Here's the question about whether this person should still be walking around with a gun, making a salary from your tax dollars, let alone the more long-term legal question, which has to be investigated, whether anyone committed a crime pursuant to those Americans shot to death. I will tell you, an aggressive government can leave people feeling abused and hopeless. Politics sometimes, even as people are dying, can feel like it's viewed by many as a game, with political hacks deliberately trying to leave people feeling powerless, like their voice doesn't matter, like protests will be met with more of the very things that people are protesting, including government violence and abuse, something we've covered dates all the way back to earlier, uglier periods in our history. And yet some of these activists are now seizing lawful, peaceful, and effective power. It's happening before our eyes with, as I mentioned, at least some measurable results without any indication that Trump has retracted the ICE agenda. I say that by way of introduction to a special guest tonight to start the program because we have a familiar beat guest, Jay Komen Duri, an Obama campaign veteran, and A Roo Shania J. who directs the sunrise movement in Minneapolis, which is organized protests like this one. We mentioned that pressures hotels to stop housing ice agents, to pressures local businesses, that tries to have lawful direct action. And as we see on our cameras there, people at night trying to make sure their voices are also heard, even at a time where some of their neighbors were killed. Welcome to both of you. Aru, your thoughts on...

what works and what you say to people who do feel potentially dispirited, which I mentioned can be part of the agenda. Yeah, I mean, I think everything that we've seen in the last three weeks since Renee God was first murdered is an incredible example of what organized people can do. We're at a point now where in Minneapolis, 5% of every single neighborhood is in a signal chat organizing to be able to respond to ISIS overreach. It's an incredible density. And what we've seen is that that network of ordinary citizens was basically able to force. the U.S. government to take a step back. To force the government back is an incredibly powerful thing. And it happened because of the density of organizing happening right now. It happened because, and you can hear this from Gregory Bovino himself, it happened because his agents can't go anywhere without getting yelled at, getting blocked from the roads, getting noise outside the hotels they sleep at, getting refused service at restaurants. We're making it impossible for them to operate, and that is having success. Yeah, and you're doing that against the pushback and sometimes possibly illegal crackdowns. Just a couple headlines here. Homeland Security forcing tech companies to hand over data about Trump critics. There can be times that's legal. There can definitely times where it violates the First Amendment, depending on the details. The DHS having the secretive subpoenas, again, around Americans. When we talk about sometimes now security letters or that being used against... possibly foreign terror attacks, legally that's been allowed. Whether that can work against Americans in the long run once exposed is a big question. And you see local coverage in Maine, ICE demanding a Maine sheriff's employment records, result after he criticized it, which shows you, as is often the case, when there's autocratic creeperu, someone who's devoted their life to being in law enforcement in Maine, learning very quickly that if you... exercise First Amendment rights. Sheriffs can obviously speak on these matters. There may be a DHS Trump crackdown. Your view of how your teams are fighting this, you can't minimize it and say it's not a risk, but how are you fighting it and sort of keeping spirits up? I mean, I think that something very beautiful was unleashed in the Twin Cities the last three weeks, this sense of solidarity of being on the same team. There's... I think about the moment after Alex Pretty was killed, I drove out to a few blocks or the block where he was shot. And the minute that I got there, I saw this man getting tackled to the ground and having tear gas sprayed at him. And a couple of us pulled him up. And I remember grabbing snow and pushing it to his face to wipe off the tear gas. And there was just this like... this fear, but also this sense of like we're in it together. I think that's what it is at the end of the day. Like people are seeing crisis happen and it is actually calling us closer together and into more bravery and more courage. So yeah, there might be tracking and there might be surveillance. But I think courage models courage and hundreds of thousands of people are finding that out right now. Che, what does political history teach us about, about what Arru is sharing there? Well, I think that

Courage is contagious. And I think you definitely saw that with what Aru and the Sunrise Movement and the people of Minnesota did in pushing back against Trump and MAGA. And what it really did show us is that, you know, normal people taking to the streets are far more powerful than any of these elites who have coddled to Trump, who have surrendered to Trump could ever imagine. You know, as another famous Minnesotans said, the times they are at changing. And the reality is that the mega vibe shift that people talked about a year ago, a year and a half ago that caused all this elite surrender to Trump, it is now shifted back. And it is shifted back because of the people of Minnesota. We have a clip from some of the sunrise movement material. We played some of this in the lead. But here it is with full sound, the chanting. And this was at one of the Hilton hotels. As this is a welcome here. No, please. No fear. As this continues, we see some agents then, though, threatening people in ways that probably violate the Constitution, and they're not hiding it. Here's one agent. This is an ICE officer. We believe this was in Maine on January 23rd. It's not illegal to record. Exactly. Yeah. That's what we're doing. Yeah, why are you checking my information down? Because we have a nice little database. Oh, good. And now you're considered domestic terrorists. We're videotaping you? Are you crazy? Arru, what do you tell activists in terms of these type of engagements, especially a time where some have escalated? And I should mention that, you know, most law enforcement training, federal and local, discourages getting into escalation or arguments with individuals. If there's a, if there's an operation going on, then you might have legal reasons to detain someone and you're engaging. But they generally discourage exactly what we saw there, what sounds like a threat, possibly illegal, if acted upon, but also a kind of a churlish. menacing of a random person in this case seeming to be an American. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, these ICE agents are completely untrained people who have been sent out onto the streets and are currently terrorizing ordinary people. I think it's... terrifying and also the fact that that is what is happening is exactly why we need hundreds of thousands of us out on the streets documenting them showing what they're doing and making sure that they are not welcome in any of our cities and i believe that if we can beat them back in minneapolis we can beat them back across the country and i hope that this becomes a turning of the tides to make sure that ordinary people can yes get out in protest but also that we make sure that The institutions that enable this in the day to day, the hotels that house them, the rental car companies that rent out cars, that we stop letting institutions enable ICE to operate. And if we do that, I actually think that we could be able to push back ice from any city that they try to enter.

Che, what do you think about how that works in our politics where there are policy issues that people debate furiously, sometimes endlessly? And then there are issues that go in the category of values, where if you're completely out of step with them, you're likely to lose... every election until you get back in step. And I wonder if you think in this second term where some of the worst things people warned about Trump that were minimized by all sorts of figures, including elites, that they're actually happening. And the mass agents and the obvious discriminatory approach of this, I've mentioned of the top three states, Aru, you probably know this, where the most undocumented immigrants are. Two of them are Texas and Florida. So, Chey. we can debate how to patrol the border, and I think it's a legitimate debate. But everyone can see that Donald Trump is sending these tactics into places that he considers his opponents, not the places where the most undocumented are. Well, you know, politics, you know, you have left and right. But in life and morality and ethics, you have a right and a wrong. What Donald Trump did in Minnesota was just plain wrong. Sending masked men into the streets without warrants, racially profiling people, bringing out grandfathers in their underwear in the snow, harassing, humiliating, and frightening people, that is just plain wrong. And sometimes in life you just have to stand up for what is right and not worry about the political consequences of it. You know, now is not the time, you know, to be Mr. Spock. Now is the time to be Captain Kirk, to be someone who goes into emotion, who speaks to our emotions and speaks with a certain moral clarity. That was something that has really been missing in America over the last year or so. But I think we saw some of that in the streets of Minnesota. Che and Oru, as we look at these protests and some of the measurable government reaction, really appreciate both of your time. Thank you very much. A related story coming up, Jeff Bezos spent millions through Amazon on this Melania film. But today, the headlines are about him gutting the Washington Post, firing journalists as he cozies up to the administration. We have that story. And another state punching back against these efforts to seize ballots with MAGA threats about the next election. We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November. Let's put you on notice again. ICE is going to be around the polls in the 2026 midterm elections. Meanwhile, many artists are speaking out. We have the best-selling novelist Don Winslow, who's also been very clear in his activism and public remarks against Donald Trump. He joins me later tonight. But next, with so much going on, we have not forgot about the ongoing reports' new material on these Epstein files, including a Wall Street Journal Exposé. We have the details when we return in 90 seconds.

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Journalists and experts still pouring over the millions of new Epstein files released under the law that Congress forced through over Donald Trump's many objections across the first year of his second term. We're learning new details about how Epstein courted power from elite institutions to top moguls, even doctors, lawyers, tech leaders. It was an array of individuals that gives greater insight into the web he weaved and maybe how he helped himself stay on the lamb for so long. The Wall Street Journal reports, unquote, Flirty emails and chummy photos that show an intricately spun web of influence. And then Epstein, who was a big name dropper and kind of a con man one-upper, would invoke his connections to then amass the wealthy and powerful friends, which may have helped protect him. Now, these interactions come after Epstein served time for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Peter Otia, who's really known as a longevity influencer, one of these sort of medical guru's self-proclaimed. He's in the files hundreds of times through 2019, including meetings with Epstein. There's a major businessman, someone who's more behind the scenes, but known to all kinds of folks in media and the Olympics. Casey Wasserman, chair of the 28 games, exchanging what sounded like suggestive emails with Ghislaine Maxwell. He has spoken out about that and regretted it. Or take the newly tapped Melania director, Brett Ratner, who already was in trouble and sort of put out of Hollywood for sexual misconduct allegations. He's seen in images with unidentified women. He said one was his former fiancé, but he is in the files. Epstein also kept ties with Silicon Valley's elite. Again, this was in a decade, the Guardian notes, after his publicly known prison stand, the first one. In 2018, he was still going to dinners where you would see Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, the Google founders, Page and Bryn. His conviction, I should say his conviction as a sex offender had, according to the Guardian, quote, little effect on his ability to move among those billionaire elites. The Democrat who led the successful effort to get these files out discussing the results. I mean, you have some of the most wealthy individuals, tech leaders, finance leaders, politicians, all implicated in some way, having emails about wanting to go to Epstein's island, knowing that Epstein was a pedophile. It's frankly one of the largest scandals in my view in our country's history, and there is a demand for elite accountability. Ro Khanna discussing the problem and the call for elite accountability. There are many layers to this. Some people have defended popping up in the files by saying that they or their institutions didn't know everything. And best we can tell that's true, although as we mentioned, after a certain point in time, it was clear Epstein had that prior criminal offense. But even those institutions are still a part of the problem, even if there's no evidence that they were, for example, themselves actively going to the island. That's important if we legally and otherwise want to get to the bottom of all this, because Epstein was cultivating these relationships on purpose.

We talk about the billionaire class and how money works. This is one of the problems that if you care about these victims and what happened and you want to prevent it next time, we need to root out from the bottom. So there's a lot of charity and money that flies around in America. Politico reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars and donations to, yes, a worthy cause, Mount Sinai, but how that was misused by Epstein to peddle influence with corresponds with a surgeon there who then did visit Epstein's island. The doctor saying at one point for Epstein, anything is possible. Now, Mount Sinai might be able to use the money, but they have to understand they were also probably being used. Other files show Epstein benefiting from a direct line to their ER list, last minute medical appointments, discussions on procuring ambulances for his private island. This is a broad and expansive web. And the misuse of money to gain access is part of the problem because you have people who take the money because they say, well, this university or hospital needs it. But then you had Mr. Epstein walking around invoking those associations to continue to build his web. A web that best we can tell has still prevented a complete accountability and investigation of all of the individuals involved. We turn to that question and what we're learning from these accounts with Mali Zhang Fast. Next.

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Millions of Epstein files out. We are still making sense of them. We're joined by Molly Jong-Fast, contributing to opinion by the New York Times. Molly, I was careful to mention that there's a spectrum here, and there are some people where there has to be a full investigation to what they were doing on the island, why they wanted to go. And then there are these institutions where no one's saying shut down hospitals, but they got pulled in because of the money game. And so... one of the reasons this has fascinated and upset so many people for so many years is the perception that it's not on the level and all these people circle around these money and power systems. And sadly, it seems that Epstein was able to exploit that. Yeah. And in fact, it's funny because when you look at the Howard Lutnick's story, he actually donated money, $75,000 in Howard Lutnick's name. That's what we found from the emails. I mean, what's so... hard about this whole dump is that there is information that is totally, you know, credible emails and we know exist and are real. And then there are things like tip sheets. And then there are things like draft indictments. I mean, I think the 2007 draft indictment from Florida, which has 20 Jane Does, including multiple women who are 14 and 15 years old, is. probably one of the most damning pieces of evidence in this whole thing. So let's key it on that because one of the reasons that... normally the government doesn't release material like this is that it can be misinterpret. Tip sheets involve writing down what one person could anonymously phone in. So they're at the credibility level legally of like the bathroom stall in middle school or a Reddit page, zero credibility. The draft indictment you mentioned is high credibility and we would never normally see that because the normal rules say secrecy first to protect. Right. Here, it was so bad, Congress, as we know, said exception. This is the exception. And the indictment you mentioned was prepared all the way back under Bush, DOJ in 2007. It listed a series of, quote, sex crimes that he was accused of. we have this, committed against more than a dozen teenage girls over six years, and it was not filed. Now, legally, I want to be clear, those are accusations, not proven. Right. But unlike the tip line, it suggests that some prosecutors back then thought they had enough to bring this, and then something changed. They were pushed back while Epstein had hired all these Republican lawyers. Yeah. And he, and he, and. Ultimately, he gets what this Alex Acosta deal, which is really a sweetheart deal. And I think what's so appalling about this story, and there are a number of parts that are appalling, right? There's what you see in the emails are people trading favors, people using each other for things that are mundane. And then there are these catastrophic crimes against women. But I think what is the most upsetting about the whole thing is that this happened under five different administrations.

Republican, Democrat. The FBI did not believe women, and they did not believe more than a thousand of that. Exactly. And the circles of power were from Epstein. They were deliberately bipartisan. It's accurate to say some of the biggest recent mistakes. were under Republican administrations. Right. And Trump certainly has not cleared the suspicion with his behavior. Yeah. Having said that, a top Obama-era lawyer was closely linked to Epstein. You see him doing outreach to others. He was very aware that he wasn't planning to try to stay out of prison only depending on the election. For sure. His evil plan, I think fair to say, was. to have all of this built up. He'd had his brush with the law and have it built up in both parties, et cetera. Then you look at the other leads not followed. We've shown this inner circle map again. Very important if you care about justice and the victims and not something we'd normally see. This only came out in the new release. And what you see here, and we'll leave it up for a moment, is you have Epstein. You have some individuals redacted, for example, being a, quote, girlfriend employee, lower right. That person, if that's an accurate description, shouldn't be probably liable for his heinous crimes. But then you have these other individuals on the upper left that we know are still being reviewed by Congress, but these are people that then DOJ was looking at. And then you have Maxwell, who was charged in lower left. You have Brunel, who is all over these emails. We've reviewed some of them. And like Epstein, a different government in Europe has said that he died. in prison awaiting trial. And so there's just a lot of open questions here. There really are a lot of open questions. And it seems like what the FBI did to these women, ignoring them for years and years and years decades, really, can only be made right by hearings and prosecutions and real full accountability here because. What we want for these women is a justice and some kind of ability to sleep at night to know that the people who did this to them because they know, and we've heard them speak, that they know there are a list of men that they can identify. So some kind of justice, but also like larger government accountability, this should never happen again. There should never be a sex crime that has thousands of women for decades and decades with zero accountability. And the emails also show that some individuals were clearly in the know of some. level of sex crimes. In many places, prostitution is a type of sex crime. In some places, it's lawful sex work. These are jurisdictional distinctions, but some people seem very aware of that. Others, as I mentioned, Mount Sinai Hospital says, oh, here's another donor. And that may be the lens they have, although I showed some of the special treatment. How does that matter, do you think, going forward as people decide, oh, who do you want to?

you know, socialize with or do deals with because there's a narrative that, oh, he was this incredible con man with all these ties. And then there's another narrative that he was actually a known... you know, sicko, sex trafficker, pervert, or Pym. And that was precisely why some of these men wanted to go visit. Yeah, I mean, he was a registered sex offender. Even though he got a sweetheart deal, if you looked at the sex offender map, he was on there. So these people saying that they didn't know, it is really pretty appalling. I do think that these women deserve hearings. And. And that the government should prosecute the people who they think are involved in this. And clearly they have more information than we do. And there's still a lot we haven't seen, you know, bank records. I wonder why we haven't seen all of that. Well, and you make an important point at the end here, which is. there may be reasons why certain people didn't want this to come out for their personal embarrassment. Donald Trump, everyone can see how he's acted. There's also the problem with all coverups that because multiple administrations let this slide, you got a heck a lot of people, Bali, who probably say, well, we don't want to go back and revisit why both the Biden, DOJ, and the Trump first term DOJ didn't pick up these leads. And I think the country looks at that and says, we don't care about your political defenses, whatever party. This is a massive. clearly massive international crime syndicate, and it's odd that only two people have been pursued. Molly, thank you. We're going to stay on this story, as I mentioned, even amid everything else happening. Jeff Bezos gutting the staff there at the Washington Post today, even as he plows money into the Melania film. We have that story, and Georgia election officials fighting back against the FBI, as Banner reveals a new plot to potentially suppress the vote.

Can Donald Trump just send the FBI in to seize ballots for an old election? He lost to Joe Biden because he doesn't like it. Georgia officials are testing that. They are taking Trump to court, demanding the FBI return the ballots they just seized. The body cam video shows a chaotic scene and raises questions about whether the detailed warrant even had the facts right. County's motion asked for documents relating to that warrant to be released, which could reveal the government's justification and whether that even passes legal muster. Because if it's just Donald Trump being mad that he lost to Joe Biden, well, that's not probable cause for an FBI raid. Local leaders vow to fight. We will fight using all resources against those who seek to take over our elections. Our Constitution itself is at stake in this fight. Donald Trump got a lot of attention with the FBI in round one. But because this still involves the courts, there are many rounds ahead. The president also claiming that he might try to illegally nationalize elections, which he cannot do, as even Republicans noted this week. But this is part of a wider effort. Some of it is real. because you have the FBI taking the ballots, some of it may be involved to intimidate or suppress in advance. Here's Trump White House veteran and former convict Steve Bannon. We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November. Let's put you on notice again. ICE is going to be around the polls in the 2026 midterm elections. Misusing federal resources or agents to suppress the vote or menace people is flatly illegal and violates federal law. Whether Steve Bannon actually thinks he has reason to believe they're doing that, which could make him a witness in such a case in the future, or he's just talking to intimidate, remains to be seen. We're going to fit in a break when we come back. A novelist turned Trump critic who's making a lot of waves. Don Winslow next.

Major news at one of the biggest news outlets in the country. Jeff Bezos is Washington Post, cutting 300 jobs. That's about a third of the staff, many journalists. It's seen widely as a blow to a legendary news brand. That's how the AP, sometimes competitor put it. Critics say the billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, who originally claimed this was his way to support journalism, that democracy dies in darkness, they warned under Trump's first term, has shifted alliances for business reasons that he wants to curry favor with the Trump administration in many ways. We can see them together. I should say we can see them at a space facility greeting Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth. Jeff Bezos and Pete Hegseth together recently. Military awarding big contracts. Jeff Bezos has Amazon, though. Spent an unusual sum for a so-called documentary, $40 million, although Melania later said it's not a documentary. And they spent nearly the same budget, $35 million more just to market it. Cuts to the post threaten a key guardrail, journalism. If you think about the two key newspapers, which, by the way, so many other outlets on the Internet and television rely on, we frequently use reporting from the Times and the Post, and we have the Post reporters on. Well, about a third of the staff no longer available, whether that means a third or more of their hard-hitting journalism, which often could be about the Trump administration is now gone, is what we will see. This is a blow at a time where Trump is on attack against the press. He also closed the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center. Dozens of artists had canceled appearances, many protesting Trump. He threatened to go after Trevor Noah for a Grammy's weekend performance that was not tough on the administration. Noah was assiduously nonpartisan. I could tell you, I was there watching the whole thing. Some of the artists did speak out against ICE, but again, that is still First Amendment protected speech, while the DOJ's arrested two journalists last week, including Don Lemon. We are seeing a broader clash. CEOs, elites, other institutions going wobbly, while South Park that you see here, artists and journalists all continuing to exercise their First Amendment rights. Here was the heat from South Park. Listen, buddy, you just need to relax. All this protesting makes me look back. Just take a rest. Well, no, we're not going to give it a rest. All the people here in South Park want some goddamn answers. All right, then I'm going to sue your whole town. You got that? I'm joined now by an individual at the intersection of all of this. Don Winslow is, of course, a best-selling author and novelist. He has had many made into movies that people know. He has a new book out tonight, which you can check out, the final score. Stephen King hailing it as the best crime fiction he's read in 20 years. So an artist widely, of course, acclaimed for your art, your work, your novel, your writing.

And yet you've also for years, not just recently, been outspoken at time devoting your work on politics and specifically activism against Trump to, as you said, full time at one point. So you're a perfect guest tonight. Your thoughts on this attack gutting of the Washington Post and where we stand on First Amendment expression right now. Well, obviously it's sad. These are some of the greatest journalists and writers in the entire world. And I certainly hope that they can move on and get quality outlets for their work. It's so troubling the entire attack on free expression, you know, between the attempt to intimidate reporters. I'm experiencing it myself right now, not living in my home because of credible death threats and we had to cancel. a book tour. Those books, the sales of those books are what fund the activism and the videos that we've put out. And so it's an attempt to shut all of that down. But this is authoritarian 101, isn't it, Ari? It's, you know, it's right out of the first pages. Try to suppress free expression. Try to suppress the media. Right. And history shows many dictators prove unpopular. And rather than trying to be more popular by doing things for the general public, this is the playbook. There's sort of a sad echo to history that way. We hear this term storyteller a lot. You're a renowned storyteller, as mentioned, in books people read and movies that have been made. Here was a clip of one of the videos you made in telling the story of this era of Trump. Donald Trump came down an escalator on June 16, 2015, and dragged our country into an unrecognizable hell.

What do you think is important about conveying what's happened in its starkness, in its truth, without being, I guess, so... extreme or critical that you lose people. You know, when you're telling a story, what they call it, the unreliable narrator, right? Most people want to feel like, okay, I can trust this, but wow, they're saying it's the worst thing ever. How do you view that? Well, we need to have faith in our own eyes, don't we? We need to stand up and say, we saw what we saw. We heard what we heard. Listen, I've been all the, you know, a fanatic, crazy Trump derangement syndrome since 2015. But when are we going to start believing these guys what they say they're going to do? Days before January 6th, Steve Bannon was proclaiming this was going to happen. And what's happened after January 6th? Nothing. The man who tried to overthrow the government of the United States is now in charge of the government of the United States. But what's, I think, really important right now, Ari, you know, is that the Steve Bannon-Trump playbook is to set fires, set a new fire every day. Bannett's come right out and said this, you know this, Ari, so that we're all running around, putting out these fires. But while we're putting out these fires, we're ignoring the inferno. And that's the story that you had before I came on, which is the attempt to affect the midterm elections. That's the gigantic inferno. If we allow them to bring in their stormtroopers and intimidate voters and steal votes and take ballots, we're going to become a banana republic. We're going to lose it. And as someone who values the written word and reporting, I know that you do. What do you think about having crossed the Rubicon? Not in the first term, not in the first four years, not in the first four and a half years. It's now in the fifth year total of Trump where he's got around to picking up journalists, arresting them, holding them in a prison cell as they await their booking. That's now in America. Is that breaking through to people? What do you say to that? This is not the country we grew up in. It is not the country my dad fought for on Guadalcanal when he was an 18-year-old Marine. This is simply wrong. And we have to stand up people like you and me and everybody and say, this is wrong. We will not have it. Yeah. Yeah. I know you're more passionate to some degree or at least especially important to you to talk about this. I will ask you, though, about the book before you get out of here that King loves. It's called The Final Score. What's in store for people there? Why do you think it's still good for people to read books? Listen, I think it's always good for people to read. It's always good for people to read stories. I think that a lot of this book is about decisions.

decisions that people have to make. And once they've made that decision, they have to ask themselves, who am I now? Who am I going to be? I think that that's a reflection of where we are as a country. We made a decision. I think it was the wrong one. I know it was the wrong one. And now we have to look and think, who are we now? Who are we going to be? Who do we want to be? Yeah, I think that's so well put. And again, that's the civic spirit. When people say this isn't quote who we are, this is also a country of action. So people who are feeling that way have to then decide how they want to inscribe that into their action in life. I know you've done that a lot, Don Winslow. Thank you for being here. Thanks for watching to be with Ari Melbert. Some things are better when they're kept simple, like simply lemonade made with real lemons and cane sugar, giving you a fresh, all-natural taste that shines through in every sip. It's the kind of drink that turns an everyday moment into something a little more special, bright, refreshing, and crafted for people who appreciate the real thing. Visit the chill juice aisle in your local grocery store today and say yes to Simple.