The Weekender, our weekly show for Patreon members, opens with fallout from Alex Peretti’s murder and the sudden sidelining of Bovino, with Tom Homan stepping in and the administration pretending this is accountability instead of damage control. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down why this shakeup changes nothing, why ICE is still operating like a lawless occupying force, and why Democrats are offering cosmetic fixes while people are being abducted in the streets.
They dig into the broader picture, from Kristi Noem’s political trouble to the FBI raid on Georgia election offices, and why the renewed obsession with 2020 looks a lot like groundwork for controlling future elections. The conversation circles back to the same question: if institutions won’t stop this, where does real resistance come from.
They cool things down at the end with what they’re reading and watching, including Oscar contenders, a brutal takedown of The Rip, and why some messy, ambitious movies stick in your head long after the credits roll.
Support the show by signing up to our Patreon and get access to the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Welcome to the weekender edition of the McCraig Podcast.
I'm Jared A. Sexton.
I got something going on in my sinuses, Nick.
That's not the best thing for a person.
It's not the best thing for a podcast.
It's bad news.
No, it's fine.
You're going to get through it.
We're going to get through it.
And, you know, it's the weather.
It's, it's everything.
I'm sorry to hear that you're going through it.
It's everything.
And thanks for putting up with me, everybody.
It's good to be back to the weekender.
I'll say that.
We got a whole bunch to talk to, talk to.
We got a whole bunch to talk about.
We're not talking to anybody.
Speak of it.
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Nick, since we talked, we recorded the Tuesday episode, of course, on Monday.
A lot has happened following the brutal, brutal public murder of Alex Predi.
Since then, the backlash has led to a few dominoes sort of moving more different, more of the same.
Greg Bovino has been sidelined, has been taken out of Minneapolis.
Borders are Tom Holman has come in.
We'll talk more about that in a second.
Christy Noam is under fire with Congress as much as anybody could be under fire with Congress.
We'll talk in a little bit about the shutdown and what the Democrats are calling for.
But before we get to any of that, Nick, what do you make about this shakeup with Bovino and Tom Homan?
Well, you know, it's like, is this one of those moments where like Trump actually has a moment of clarity and realizes, oh, we, you know, because on the margins, if he were to do a few things like get rid of Noam, get rid of Bovino, he might actually engender some goodwill for all of this.
But we know my worry is that the guy replacing Bovino in Holman is worse, arguably, than him.
And anybody they do find to permanently replace that will be worse because who else is willing to do this job the way that the administration's laid it out, the way Stephen Miller has laid it out?
So it's really concerning.
Bovino, for what it sounds like, he's retiring.
I think that they're putting him out the pasture here, which is good.
Good riddance.
The guy should never get another paycheck from anybody again.
Yeah.
I hope Bovino is somehow or another haunted by his actions, this little motherfucking Nazi for the rest of his life.
What a disgusting little piece of shit.
I saw this, and I don't think it's clarity from Trump.
I think this is one of those situations where, hey, you murder a couple of people in cold blood in front of the world.
You can't even argue.
Like, even your propagandists can't even argue at that point.
Like, what are they trying to do?
What's the far right trying to do?
They're now saying, they're saying, oh, Predi, this was suicide by ICE.
Or, oh, look, he kicked out a taillight on a cruiser and that's why he deserved to die.
All this shit.
They can't even spin this.
Something had to happen.
And as a result, they send in Tom Holman, who, by the way, is, we'll listen to this clip here in a second of some of his statements from his press conference this morning.
We're recording this on Thursday, January 29th.
It's not like they're going to back away from this.
They moved out some of ICE, some of the Border Patrol.
They took down some of the numbers.
Before the dust had settled, Nick, they were still kidnapping people.
They were still breaking into people's houses.
They were still stealing children.
They were still brutalizing people.
This is as much of a PR move as they possibly can.
And this is where I tell people, and again, people are listening to the preview and I want to make sure that this gets said.
You cannot accept these scraps.
This is, you know what it is, Nick?
It's sort of like a remnant of a pastime, right?
What would happen in an administration if they went through a giant scandal?
They would offer up a sacrificial lamb.
Right.
And here, Bovino, because people hate him, is now the sacrificial lamb.
They're going to try this with home.
And people can't accept this.
I'm not telling people not to celebrate that the people have won a victory.
Absolutely, they have, but it's not the final victory.
It's not the victory of the war.
Perhaps they've won a small battle.
You can be happy about that, but do not take these diversionary PR tactics as something that tells you that it's all over.
Sure.
And there's also a sickness going on here from the right where like I made the mistake of dipping my toe proverbially in the soup of this pretty secondary video from the week before.
And it provides a justification.
It literally does for the right.
Like they literally feel like some other non-sequitur from a week before had any bearing on what happened when he was murdered.
Now, I started getting some of the weeds in my brain where I'm like, well, Jesus, did they remember him?
He's certainly kind of a memorable looking person.
And is that why they accosted him when the day they killed him?
Because he got into the situation to help that woman.
Yeah, right.
I don't think they were hunting him.
No, I know, but I'm starting to wonder if it's like, oh, hey, here's the guy.
Now let's get him.
Let's show him.
And then it devolves from there and they shoot him.
But either way, it doesn't matter.
Like it doesn't have any connection to the fact that they murdered him after disarming him on the ground.
So that was an interesting interaction.
I just want to say, by the way, I'm surprised that these right-wing chugs can speak for deep-throating boots.
Like for all the years, Nick, I've spent so much time watching the right.
And can we finally, can we bury and lay to rest the idea that any of these principles are real?
Right.
This idea, oh, he had a gun and therefore he deserved to be shot.
That was the entire basis of the right.
The entire basis was a tyrannical government must be fought off by patriots and brave men brandishing firearms.
And now they can't even do that.
Let's just the Jon Stewart, here's what they said last year.
Here's what they're saying now.
Let's just bury it.
Let's be done with it.
By the way, I was talking to my dad about this and we'll bring home in a second because he was watching the conference as well.
He's saying, you know, no solutions are really being offered here because they don't want a solution to what's going on in Minneapolis.
But it's like, you know, then you're supposed to say, well, what are we supposed to do?
Burying Tyranny Talk00:04:18
And this is making me think about our conversation from Monday or from Tuesday's show where, you know, we have had this situation happen in this country before on this soil.
Do you remember when that might have been, Jared?
I mean, we've had multiple situations like this.
Well, okay.
I would almost say that it hasn't been as tyrannical as this until there was a singular moment and it was probably around the, I don't know, let's call it 1776.
Well, that was a period of time.
And then afterwards, George Washington led the United States Army against a tax revolt later on.
Then later on, Nick, I mean, ask any leftist who got like put on a ship forcibly.
They got beat up, put on a ship and shipped off to the Soviet Union in the early 20th century.
So like, this is not the first time that we have had this sort of tyrannical role.
It just so happens that it's updated at a very crucial moment.
And is it safe to say back then in 1776 or 1775, we had people in this country saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's just do political process here and we'll eventually we'll get our independence.
We had people who said that, right?
Oh, sure.
And many of them moved to Canada because they wanted to like stay loyal to the British government.
Okay.
Okay, right.
Interesting.
Or, you know, there's just nice folk who don't want to ruffle feathers and they're too afraid to do anything else besides the status quo.
Absolutely.
But like if you're, if we're staring at it down the barrel of 20 to 30 years before we could ever get any semblance of the constitution back in order or having a democracy again, and you know, here's our choices, right?
Like, you know, and so I was a little bit concerned about what you were saying on the last show.
But if you think about it, like the choices are kind of bleak.
They're bleak.
I mean, listen, we're going to talk about ICE for a while in Minneapolis here for a minute and the Democrats' response, and it's not a response.
And then what are we going to talk about?
We're going to talk about the FBI raiding election offices in Georgia, right?
So like if you want to talk about elections, I don't have that in me anymore.
I can't have conversations about who's going to win a primary and who's going to win versus who.
And quite frankly, we're getting ready to listen to this Tom Holman statement during this press conference.
Like what you said, it is bleak.
It's bleak because we don't have time.
And if what you're getting ready to hear somehow or another makes you feel better, I don't know how to have a conversation with you.
I begged for the last two months on TV for the rhetoric to stop.
I said in March, if the rhetoric didn't stop, there's going to be bloodshed.
And there has been.
I wish I wasn't right.
I don't want to see anybody die.
Not officers, not members of the community.
They're not the targets of our operations.
For the people out there who don't like what ICE is doing, if you want certain laws reformed, then take it up with Congress.
Again, ICE is making this up.
They're enforcing laws enacted by Congress and signed by president.
The same laws have been on the books for the last six presidents I work for.
And by the way, he's given the entire game away there because we are going to talk in a bit about how the Democrats have absolutely been Quizlings and all this.
There's no political opposition to this.
And Nick, you said a while back, I remember it was maybe a year and a half ago, we did a Tucker Carlson segment.
And Tucker Carlson was interviewing somebody and he was talking about how, oh, you're going to make us abolish the Constitution and embrace a dictator.
This is the most gaslighting thing that I have heard forever, which is those two people are dead not because ICE murdered them in broad daylight and in cold blood.
They're dead because you have been standing up against ICE.
And if you keep talking about ICE and if you keep opposing ICE, more people are going to die.
It is just textbook abusive behavior.
It is absolutely repulsive.
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