The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 30 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here. A clip on Trumpworld sinking into finger-pointing is here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
There’s been a shift in media coverage of Donald Trump and ICE. What’s happening now is being treated as a real political crisis for the president. He’s treating it like one. He just demoted Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino and basically put him in a box. And Republicans are admitting to reporters that they’re in real trouble. Yet meanwhile, MAGA media figures are not just demanding that Trump continue on his current course—they’re demanding that he escalate the cruelty and brutality and carry out more atrocities against Americans. It’s now very clear that the Trump coalition is getting badly splintered by these ICE horrors. So how should Dems exploit this moment? We’re checking in with Jennifer Rubin, editor in chief of The Contrarian, who has a new piece arguing that Dems have a very rare opportunity that they mustn’t squander. Jen, good to see you.
Jennifer Rubin: Good to see you too.
Sargent: So here’s a sampling of headlines on Trump and immigration right now. Politico: “The GOP is losing one of its best issues.” New York Times: “On immigration, the GOP finds itself in a shocking place—on defense.” CNN: “Trump is scared of the politics of ICE and it’s showing.”
Jen, not long ago, we were still being told that Trump and the GOP are “strong” on immigration and that Democrats don’t dare engage on it. Funny how quickly this turned around, isn’t it?
Rubin: It really is. You and I, a lifetime ago—which was, I think, last summer when they were invading Los Angeles—told them that this was not a popular thing. People don’t like brutality. They don’t like these extreme measures. People may have voted to get rid of the, quote, “worst of the worst,” end quote, but they didn’t vote to get rid of grandma. They didn’t vote to have a five-year-old taken into custody, and they sure didn’t vote to have people murdered on the street.
So I think they have come around. But in fairness, Trump also overplayed his hand again and again. And that’s what he does. That is the big advantage that we have, is that he doesn’t know when to stop. He can’t stop himself. And as you pointed out, there’s some in his base that want him to double down again.
Sargent: Well, we’re going to get into a lot of that, but first let’s go through some of these Republicans who are sounding the alarm. Per Politico, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt says what Trump is doing inside the border seems to be “not working.” New Jersey Republican Jose Arango, from a heavily Latino area, says, “We’re losing in the public relations campaign.” House Republican Glenn Grothman suggests that the latest ICE shooting is murder. And Texas Governor Greg Abbott, of all people, says it’s time to “recalibrate.”
Jen, Republicans are violating Trump’s first commandment, which is that you always portray Trump as formidable and dominant and never admit Trump is on the losing side of anything. What happened here with these Republicans?
Rubin: They are in panic. The elected Republicans—whether it’s Rand Paul, who now admits that Kristi Noem is a “despicable liar,” or whether it’s city mayors or governors or, frankly, members of Congress—are now running in the other direction. They see the polls, which are horrific. They saw what happened in 2025 in the election and they understand they have blown it.
According to Chris Murphy, whom I spoke to earlier today, his colleagues report that this past weekend they received the largest number of calls to their offices ever. And that’s considering healthcare, that’s considering COVID, a zillion other issues over the past decade or so. This has really touched a nerve and they are running scared.
Sargent: Yeah, I think you get at something important here, which still, I think, eludes a lot of people: that this is actually a really incendiary cultural moment as well. It’s extremely rare for low-information voters to pick up on what’s going on in politics. Like, most normal people—unlike you and me—don’t want anything to do with this shit. They can’t stand it. You and me, we love it, right? Because we’re crazy—but they aren’t.
And yet they are hearing all about this stuff day in and day out. They’re seeing videos of it. They’re seeing videos of Kristi Noem lie about it. They’re seeing videos of Stephen Miller call murder victims a “domestic terrorist” and worse. This is penetrating into information spaces where low-information voters hang out. And that, I think, has got people in a panic.
Rubin: Absolutely. We see reports that it’s in the gamer community. When you have people like Martha Stewart and Bruce Springsteen both coming out with—in one case, a statement and the other case, an anthem—then you know something is going on. It is a long time before politics gets into the popular culture, but you have now, I think, a phenomenon that is frightful for the GOP.
They have always thought they control the culture wars, but in fact, they control it in a very narrow stratum of their own base. And when it gets out to the population at large—when what Richard Nixon called the “silent majority” hear about this stuff—they don’t like it. There was just a poll out today from Pew. Trump’s approval ratings on everything from the economy to immigration are in the toilet.
And these people for the first time understand it is not in their interest to be tied to Trump at the hip. We can bemoan the fact that it took this long. We can bemoan the fact that they’re not motivated by morality or by the Constitution. But at some point, it does break through. And I think what we saw this week was a demonstration of what you and I have always known: politicians follow, they do not lead.
And when you have the entire country in an uproar, and when you have, as you say, these low-information voters suddenly activated, then and only then do Republicans get a clue. And so I think we are at this inflection point. And the question is what we do with it.
Sargent: Well, let’s talk about what MAGA media is doing right now, because they’re lurching violently in the other direction. They’re demanding more brutality. Media Matters had a good roundup. Here’s white supremacist Nick Fuentes talking about murder victim Alex Pretti.
Nick Fuentes (voiceover): You feel bad about this race trader? If you’re out there throwing yourself in front of ICE to die for these dirt bags, let them. Let them. One less asshole in the world. One less traitor in the world.
Sargent: Here’s Megyn Kelly.
Megyn Kelly (voiceover): I know I’m supposed to feel sorry for Alex Preti, but I don’t. I don’t. Do you know why I wasn’t shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations.
Sargent: Here’s Matt Walsh.
Matt Walsh (voiceover): The first conclusion is that Alex Pretti was part of an organized campaign to legally obstruct law enforcement operations on behalf of open borders communists who want to destroy the country. He was a domestic terrorist.
Sargent: Here’s Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon (voiceover): President Trump, you’ve got that’s a opening salvo that you should now invoke the Insurrection Act and flood the zone with troops, either federalized National Guard or good old bring in go to Fort Bragg where Todd Wood is and bring in the good old 82nd Airborne.
Sargent: So, Jen. There’s lots more like that. They actively want Trump to escalate. They want him to kill more liberals and more Democrats. Is there any other way to read that?
Rubin: No. It seems like just yesterday, by the way, anyone who said a harsh word about Charlie Kirk was fired, set upon by the media horde, and all the rest. Remember when we were hearing that the left is responsible for all of this vitriol and all of this violence? I guess we were right—it’s really projection on their part.
It is very interesting that even within the right-wing media space, you see a splintering. You have those characters, but you also have characters like Laura Ingraham, who suddenly reminds herself that she doesn’t really like DHS, which was this hodgepodge of entities, bureaus, ordinary and unordinary entities that were created and thrown together during the aftermath of 9/11.
So on one hand, Fox now sounds semi-normal at times as they’re panicked on behalf of Donald Trump. You have the bomb-throwers, literally and figuratively, who are egging this on. And by the way, we haven’t talked much about the Second Amendment crowd. Trump, of course, has made the mistake of very visibly throwing one of his key constituents under the bus. And that is the Second Amendment crowd.
We’ve gone from lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse to indicating—arguing—that Alex Pretti was a legitimate target because he had a licensed firearm in a state that permits concealed carrying.
Sargent: Right. If you lawfully carry a gun and you show up at a protest, God, you’re asking for it.
Rubin: Exactly. Well, you—you and I have not been in favor of concealed-carry laws for exactly this reason, but this is the world they created and now they don’t like it. Well, I think it’s this sort of infighting that will eventually destroy—I don’t even say the Republican Party, because the Republican Party doesn’t exist anymore, but the MAGA movement.
And the aim should be to exploit these divides, to widen the gap and get them pointing fingers at each other. You now have Kristi Noem pointing the finger at Stephen Miller, Stephen Miller backtracking and saying, “Well, maybe these people didn’t follow protocol after all.” [In doing this, Miller is in effect blaming Noem, since she runs DHS, and CBP is under DHS]. This is what we want. It’s usually that the finger-pointing is on the Democratic side. Republicans are notorious for being lockstep in unanimity with one another, but this is one of those instances where they won’t be. And Democrats have to exploit it. They have to push and push and push.
Sargent: Let’s talk about the nature of the schism here. I think it’s clear right now that those far-right voices represent real constituencies in the Trump coalition. And I think we need to be clear about this point: they want a violent race war. That’s what they mean when they say that stuff.
But these other Republicans who represent swing territory—or suburban or exurban areas—they want Trump’s crackdown to proceed without too much obvious violence. “Keep it clean, guys.” And without too much white nationalism making swing voters uncomfortable. That’s the split. What do you make of it?
Rubin: I think that’s right. And that’s the difference between Kristi Noem—slash—Stephen Miller on one side and Tom Homan on the other. Tom Homan is just as much of a white nationalist as the others, but he knows better than to say these things out loud after the murder of two individuals.
So I think we shouldn’t kid ourselves that there are any moderate Republicans left, or any multicultural Republicans, or anyone on their side who really believes in democratic pluralism—but they are absolutely panicked for exactly this reason. All those people whose quotes you read care about ratings. They don’t care about getting elected. And that’s the difference.
Even people who are in, quote, “safe districts” understand that if you have a shift in the electorate as big as what we are seeing, there will be people who are swept out of power who they never imagined would be. We are talking about congressmen who never had competitive races; we are talking about senators who never had competitive races—and they understand how bad this is for them. They don’t know how to compete other than in a closed-circuit universe where the media is all on their side, Republicans are all unified, and Democrats are either cowed or nonexistent. And once you get into competitive politics, lo and behold, many of them are now changing their tune.
Sargent: Well, so to your point about the need to exploit this moment to really exacerbate the split—which is a real one within MAGA—let’s talk about that. Beyond the sort of very short-term deal-making around funding DHS and restricting ICE and so forth, what can Democrats do to exacerbate the split?
I think maybe one thing would be to highlight the fact that Trump and Noem and Miller are fundamentally ethnonationalists, and that they’re trying to carry out an ethnonationalist purge with state violence, and then make Republicans defend that. That’s one thought. What do you think of that, and what else could Democrats do?
Rubin: I absolutely believe in that. And that’s one reason I think that it’s actually useful to impeach Kristi Noem—not because you’re going to get someone better, but you make Republicans defend her and make them go on record. Let’s see how Susan Collins is gonna vote. Let’s see how some of these swing Republicans in upstate New York are gonna vote.
Make them take the hard vote and defend the indefensible. So yes, I think part of it is tying it to personnel. And part of it, I think, is also making the case that Trump has set up a lawless, violent secret police. And the problem cannot be solved simply by putting controls on them. But you have to break up DHS, you have to redesign our immigration system, and you have to push for realistic border control—just like the Democrats and Republicans agreed to, if you remember, before the 2024 election.
And they can’t be afraid to call out this lawlessness, this violence, and to make them put themselves on the side of freedom. First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Second Amendment—my gosh—and to make the case that this is what Republicans used to tell us we should be afraid of. The government is going to come to your door. Tyranny is going to knock. Guess what? The tyranny is them. And the people who are going to protect you are not Republicans; they are the Democrats who do not think the state should be all-powerful.
So I think making this, yes, about immigration—yes, about what kind of country and what kind of morality we want—but also simply making this about tyranny finally may pierce through the consciousness. We have talked so many times about how it’s difficult for people to care about democracy. Well, I think they are beginning to see what tyranny looks like, and that’s where the conversation, I think, has to go.
Sargent: Well, the country really is awake to what’s happening. And you wrote in your piece that one of the critical things that has to happen right now is that Democrats have to figure out how to feed and sustain this mass movement—this big cultural moment that’s sweeping the country. What can Democrats do to keep that going?
Rubin: I think, first of all, they have to go to these places. They have to show what’s going on. They have to physically stand in these communities and support them. They have to tie the actions of ICE and the Border Patrol to the Republicans who voted for all this money for them. And I think they have to be aggressive, bold—even maximalist—in their demands.
It’s not enough to simply say, “We want judicial warrants when you go into somebody’s house.” How about no arrests, period, without specific warrants? And ICE should not be going after people who do not have criminal records. Push the advantage.
And what’s more, I think they have to begin to go into these communities and stand with the communities. One reason why Minnesota and Minneapolis were so successful is they had banded together—whether it’s the advocacy groups like Common Cause, whether it’s the moms who are going to these detention centers and giving clothing and coffee once these people are kicked out on the streets, whether it is the Native American community or teachers. They have to show common cause with these people and continue to put a human face on what has been going on.
What gets people motivated? The picture of a five-year-old in a bunny hat, quite frankly; the sight of Alex Pretti being beaten and executed in the street. We can bemoan the fact that it shouldn’t come to this, that we should have gotten the country much more riled up a long time ago. But the fact that they’re there now needs to make it an absolute priority for Democrats to stand by and alongside those people who are being victimized—and the victims are all of us. It’s not simply undocumented immigrants.
So I think a sense of solidarity, of unity, of going to these places, of making demands. And one thing I think that was wonderful that happened yesterday was this group of nine district attorneys. They have named themselves FAFO—a play on the slang phrase—but what they are doing is saying: “You know what? Absolute immunity is a canard. Even the Supremacy Clause does not entirely protect ICE and Border Patrol when they step so far out of bounds and they execute people. And we are going to go after them.”
That’s the kind of action that will get people to rise to the Democrats’ cause. Do not rely on the legal precedent that was in effect a year ago or two years ago. Push the envelope. That’s what Republicans do. Make the claims. Bring the cases. Bring the lawsuits. Demand that we get the evidence of this impropriety. And then people will understand that you are fighting for them and with them.
Sargent: I couldn’t agree more. I think at the most fundamental level, Democrats need to spend every second thinking about how to use every last lever of their power to defend the American people and American communities against this madness—against this paramilitary assault on them being mounted by the President of the United States and his conciliaries.
Jen Rubin, awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Rubin: It is great to talk to you, Greg. Keep doing this great job. I love talking to you and you bring on the best and the brightest to talk to your folks.
Sargent: You as well. We’re loving The Contrarian; you’re doing great work.