This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 28 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
A moral scandal is eating away at the Trump administration.
Americans across the political spectrum are at the least uneasy — and, at the most, disgusted — watching agents of our government, paid with our tax dollars, grab people out of cars, use children as bait to get their parents and shoot and kill two Americans at point-blank range, as they exercised their constitutional rights.
People hate this. So now, the administration is in damage control and they are turning on one another.
There are bipartisan calls for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to step down. In response, Noem appears to be privately blaming Donald Trump and White House adviser Stephen Miller.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis is part of the core of Trumpism; it’s their vision for the country.
According to new reporting from Axios, Noem has said her first statement calling 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti a “terrorist” was driven by Miller.
That report caused Miller’s wife, podcaster Katie Miller, to come to his defense. She posted excerpts from the Axios piece that said her husband had been getting his information straight from Border Patrol.
But we are seeing this everywhere.
They have already tried to pin the blame on Greg Bovino, the now-former “commander at large” of the Border Patrol. He was stripped of that title, shipped out of Minneapolis and sent back on duty in California.
Shortly after Bovino left Minneapolis, an official spoke with MS NOW and contradicted his past statements about the two Border Patrol agents who fatally shot Pretti. Last week, Bovino said those agents were still working. However, the official told MS NOW that the two agents have now been placed on administrative leave pending some kind of investigation.
Even Miller suggested in a statement to news outlets on Tuesday that federal agents “may not have been following” proper protocol before Pretti was killed.
That comes just days after Miller claimed Pretti was an “assassin” who had “tried to murder federal agents.”
In its latest move, the Trump administration sent Attorney General Pam Bondi to Minneapolis, though there were apparently no press conferences, no cameras and no meetings with local officials. However, Bondi did meet with the handpicked U.S. attorney and posted that the federal authorities had arrested 16 “rioters” in Minnesota for allegedly assaulting law enforcement. She added, “We expect more arrests to come. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: NOTHING will stop President Trump and this Department of Justice from enforcing the law.” Bondi then proceeded to post photos of the people they arrested, showing them restrained by police who faced away from the camera to shield their identities. Experts have said that’s a violation of Justice Department rules, and it is also obviously propaganda that endangers the safety of the people they arrested. The administration is clearly in damage control. But even as they try to wriggle out of the blame for their project of arrests, assaults and mass deportations by secret police, they are trying to maintain the project itself. It is exactly what Trump promised the country when he ran. We all saw the attendees at the Republican National Committee proudly holding up signs, declaring “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” What is unfolding in Minneapolis is part of the core of Trumpism; it’s their vision for the country. It is an authoritarian state, with secret police who use force and intimidation to cut immigrants out of the national fabric, and leaders who smear anyone who resists as a “domestic terrorist.” As it turns out, Americans hate it. What we have seen in Minneapolis, in response to all of the Trump administration’s efforts, is that the people there are more resolved than ever to protect one another from the government. Allison Detzel contributed.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press). Recommended
