Weekly Wrap | Atrocity in the Twin Cities, Trump's ‘Mission Accomplished’ Moment & Remembering Jan. 6

Welcome to Weekly Wrap, Lincoln Square’s roundup of the live interviews and shows you may have missed this week. Here’s a quick rundown to get you caught up.

Trump Built This System: ICE Just Killed an American Citizen | The Tim & April Show

Just a week into the new year and we’re already dealing with tragedy. Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by ICE officers in Minneapolis, and the country rightfully lost it. Tim Whitaker & April Ajoy are back with this episode of The Tim & April Show to reflect on where we are as a country in the wake of this atrocity.

Tim Whitaker: We have to zoom out for a minute – and April, I know you and I are kind of late to the party, because we grew up in a very evangelical conservative world – but this is how America has always acted, right? For the Black community… they’re like “yeah, this has been happening to us for centuries.” It’s state sanctioned violence. That’s what this is, to enforce white supremacy and empire, and it’s hard to stop. And white people can get in the way of that and become a target very quickly as well, as we’re finding out here. And it’s so frustrating.

I’m not sure if anger is even the right word for me, but it’s just so discouraging that 80% of our former faith tradition voted for this. Trump was super clear on the plan before he ran for president. He wants to get these so-called bad, evil immigrants, the ones that are poisoning the blood of society, of our country. Mass deportations. What did we think was going to happen when you have rent-a-cops who aren’t even fully trained – given a gun – who obviously have to hold some kind of racial prejudice in their heart to even start doing ICE jobs, what do we think is going to happen?

When you’re sending the federal military or federal agents to states without their permission, without their approval, to run amok in neighborhoods – they have no accountability. This is authoritarianism. I think what’s wild is that if you and I were often taught as white evangelicals in that world, to be afraid of tyranny, to be afraid of authoritarianism, to be afraid of the federal government that is going to encroach states’ rights. And now we’re watching those same people vote for policies and the regime that is doing the very thing they tried to warn us of.

See more of the discussion here.

Hegseth Attacks a War Hero, Walz Steps Aside, and America Remembers January 6th | The Strategy Session with Author James Fallows

It’s all in the title. We are living through unprecedented times with horrific federal leadership putting pressure on the future of some at the state level. Tim Walz announced he won’t seek re-election and the regime is attacking war heroes. James Fallows joined Stuart Stevens on this episode of The Strategy Session to discuss.

Stuart Stevens: James, it’s obviously January 6th. Reading this piece you wrote about Governor Walz, you made a point that it’s one of these things, that there used to be considered an advantage in American politics to understand how government works and be good at it.

I’d love to get your thoughts on that and how is it that we’ve lost that conversation, at least on the Republican side because I don’t think we have on the Democratic side.

James Fallows: Stuart, it’s a real pleasure to be connected with you again. You know how much I admire your work and your forthrightness and your adventuresomeness and your literary flair. I’ll say two back story elements to this recent mention of Governor Walz on the occasion of his saying that he’s not going to run for a third term in Minnesota.

One is, as you mentioned, I worked for Jimmy Carter back at the dawn of time, and I started working for his campaign in 1976 for the reason many young people work for presidential campaigns at the beginning, which is most candidates are going to lose. So the people who work for them are mainly young people. I didn’t have a job at the time. I just finished at the Washington Monthly where Charlie Peters was the editor. I was just kind of freelancing and they needed somebody to churn stuff out for the Carter campaign.

So, I worked in the campaign and then the White House for a couple years. But part of the reasons that Jimmy Carter had the fastest ascent ever in public life from 1% name recognition to the presidency within one year – part of it was the chaos of that time with Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate and all the rest. Part of it was he talked about getting things done in government and budgeting and the things he’d done in Georgia in environmentalism and in housing, with race relations and all the rest.

So that was one back story that has made me think about governors and governments that think they can do things. The story of Governor Walz, who I met a couple times over the past three of four years, is that he was originally trained, apart from being a farmer, as a geographer and a geography specialist.

See more of the discussion here.

Jocelyn Benson on her 2026 Michigan Governor Run and What Democrats Must Do in the Midterms

As Secretary of State for Michigan she has battled with Trump over elections and voting rights. Now, Jocelyn Benson is running for Governor of Michigan. She sat down with Lincoln Square Executive Editor Susan J. Demas to discuss her candidacy and what Democrats have a chance to pull off in the midterms.

Susan J. Demas: Millions of people are facing skyrocketing healthcare costs this year with Republican members of Congress refusing to extend ACA subsidies – I understand that you will soon be unveiling your own healthcare plan. So, tell us what you could do at the state level to help people with these costs.

Jocelyn Benson: I start from the position that every Michigander has a right to affordable and quality healthcare. Our job at the state level is to recognize a responsibility to make it as seamless as possible for every resident to be able to afford access to care and access it in a quality way. In a fair way. No matter where they live in our state.

And right now, in this moment, thousands are at risk of losing their coverage because of Medicaid costs and hospital closures and rising premiums and skyrocketing drug prices. And I hear this everywhere I go in the state. Far too many families are one catastrophic injury or illness away from bankruptcy. It keeps people up at night.

In my view, it’s something that we can address at the state level. If we don’t, it’s life or death. Illnesses will go untreated. Hospitals will close, especially in rural areas. So we have a moral obligation and responsibility to do this. And we do it by making sure, among other things, that we’re pushing for a healthcare system that puts people first, not profits. And empowers Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services to actually enable efficient, accountable, and fair healthcare coverage.

See more of the discussion here.

Is Venezuela Trump’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ Moment? | Two Joes Podcast

We all remember the photos of then-President George W. Bush on an aircraft carrier declaring, “Mission Accomplished” after the invasion of Iraq. Now, we have another Republican president targeting an oil rich country. Lincoln Square’s Two Joes, Trippi and Klein, sat down to discuss.

Joe Klein: I think that brings us to our quote of the week: “My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

We all remember that, or some of us do. That was already 23 years ago. So, there are people in their mid-30s who would have been 10 years old when that happened. But, as we know, major combat operations hadn’t ended. In fact, the war in Iraq was just beginning. The next three years (2004-2006), were terrible years. And it wasn’t until General Petraeus took over in 2007 with his surge strategy that we began to get a bit of a handle on it.

And that’s where we’re sitting right now. It isn’t even May 1st, 2003 yet with the situation in Venezuela. And here’s what we know: nothing. We don’t know anything. We know that Nicolas Maduro is in New York. We have no idea who’s actually going to be running that country. We have no idea how things are going to progress.

I should say that the way the military looks at these things, when it comes to going to war in foreign countries, they have a four phase program. The first phase is to stop the bloodshed. The second is to launch troops on the ground. The third phase is to destroy the enemy. And the fourth phase is to establish stability.

Donald Trump has a two-stage strategy. It is phase one: attack. Phase two is who knows what the hell happens next – which is where we are right now. I remember back in Iraq at this point, everybody was tremendously impressed by the skill of the U.S. military getting to Baghdad. I had an Israeli security expert, that’s the euphemism we’ll use, who I asked the day before the war: how’s it going to be? And he said, “well, it’ll take you three weeks to get to Baghdad. But I have a question, what on earth are you going to do when you get there? Who’s going to run that country? You’re not actually thinking of running that country, are you?”

But we were. And I remember having incessant phase four conversations with members of the U.S. military. “How are we going to secure this place?” “How are we going to stabilize it so we can get the hell out of here?” Now we have Venezuela, a country that is three times the size of Iraq.

See more of the discussion here.

Minneapolis is not Safer | Michael Fanone & Maya May

Michael Fanone and Maya May return from the holiday break to cover the devastating topic everyone is talking about – the shooting of Renee Nicole Good and ICE operations in Minnesota. The shooting wasn’t self-defense – just pure abuse of authority.

Maya May: Here’s the thing, we have the right to film the police. They’ve been trying to build this narrative and trying to tell people that we are not allowed to film, that just filming in itself is an obstruction of justice, which it is not. We have the right to film and we have the right to film at a safe distance.

But we’ve talked on the show before about use of force and escalation of force – and there are rules. There are parameters around it. Can you shed some light on, in particular, what DHS says? Parameters for this use of deadly force?

Michael Fanone: I went through this morning and pulled up the use of force continuum, or the use of force policy with regards to federal agents. I encourage everyone to go on DOJ’s website, DHS’s website, and review it.

The first two points that are highlighted there – and I’m going to read them for you (prohibited uses of force) – Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent an escapee or the escape of a fleeing suspect. If you watch the video, this woman was clearly driving away from the agents at the moment the first shot was fired.

Second, firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles. You can’t just shoot into a vehicle. Specifically, firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless the person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle.

An example of that, if the person in the vehicle is shooting at the officer, the officer may shoot back at that suspect to neutralize that specific threat. If there’s four people in the car and only one of them is using deadly force against the officer, the officer may in turn only use appropriate force against that specific individual, not to stop the car from moving.

And it keeps going.

See more of the discussion here.

The Many Facets of Trump’s Decline | Behind the Numbers with Rick & Andrew Wilson

The Wilson boys are back after a short break and ready to get into the numbers. It’s been a week since Trump invaded Venezuela and in a normal world, this would have led to intense hearings, outrage, and more – but then Minneapolis happened. Trump’s numbers are plummeting even more and Rick & Andrew Wilson are here to discuss.

Andrew Wilson: I’ve got to wonder, what the Trump administration is going to do should this case against Maduro go sideways. I mean, no prosecution is a sure thing, and it’s going to take a long time.

Rick Wilson: They’re not going to get a quick conviction. They’re not going to get an immediate turnover on it. And the thing I find ironic is that this is the same circuit where Trump said, “this is the most corrupt court system in America! They’re all evil!” But here’s the thing, Maduro has a lot of lines of defense to play with here. He’s got a lot of money. He’s going to lawyer the fuck up. And they’re going to start dragging this thing out.

Andrew Wilson: They hadn’t even read him his rights or given him the indictment documents on the first appearance in court, so this is going to take a really long time.

Rick Wilson: It’s going to be a long haul for the administration on this, and they won’t get a quick kill. They won’t get a quick result. Suddenly we took out Maduro and he’s in prison. Look, he’s in the MCC in New York, which is a pretty shitty place to be. If I was him, I’d be very careful not to get Epstein’d.

But Trump’s not in a great spot on this in part because the reaction of the public has already been lukewarm at best. The number that he’s got here, the 35% number, at the end of the Vietnam War, about 35% of Americans still supported the intervention.

See more of the discussion here.

Trump Declares Himself ‘Emperor of the Americas’ | Simon Rosenberg & Stuart Stevens LIVE

Founder of the New Democratic Network, Simon Rosenberg sat down with Lincoln Square’s Stuart Stevens to discuss Stuart’s recent trip to Ukraine and the comparisons between the struggle for democracy there and here in the United States.

Simon Rosenberg: This has been a bit of a dark week in American politics. I know you were in Ukraine recently, we saw a dramatic escalation there this week. Any reflections?

Stuart Stevens: I was in Kyiv in October. The first thing that struck me, as it has many people, was the way that Kyiv at that time didn’t seem like a besieged city. It was a thriving and European city of several million people. If you go on the outskirts – you know, I like to go on these long runs. You’d be running in a neighborhood and there would be two houses and they’re not there anymore, and it wasn’t because they were urban renewal – it was because they were hit by a drone.

I was meeting with an extraordinary Supreme Court Justice, who along with other justices and lawyers, have taken a lot of anti-drone and anti-machine gun positions. This guy would take off his robe and get in the car to go watch drones come down – his house had gotten blown up a couple weeks before. But, still, Kyiv did not seem under siege. We stayed at the Hyatt where the spa was next to the bomb shelter.

This was not Stalingrad. I think what’s inevitable is that Russians have engaged in scorched earth as a deliberate tactic of the military. With no opposing force – when you have the United States with a president who can’t say who invaded who, who was elected by the Russians – I think this is inevitable and will only escalate.

See more of the discussion here.

We Must ‘Ruthlessly Prosecute’ the Trump Regime | It’s the Democracy, Stupid with Edwin Eisendrath & Charlotte Clymer

How should we be holding MAGA to account for helping Trump? What are the comparisons of illegal actions in Iraq and Venezuela? And how do we deal with the senseless shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis? Charlotte Clymer joins Edwin Eisendrath on this episode of It’s the Democracy, Stupid.

Charlotte Clymer: There’s always this chasm of reception when it comes to violence inflicted by our military. What happened off the coast of Venezuela – to those fishing boats – was horrific, unethical, immoral on every level, no doubt. And I think that it’s easy for Americans to hear this and be able to tune it out as an out-of-sight/out-of-mind kind of thing.

It’s much harder for American citizens to ignore, basically agents of the state, murdering people in the streets. And if you’re asking me, do I think there’s a possibility that there will be military troops killing unarmed people in American streets? Yes. Yes, I do. There’s a possibility of that.

Edwin Eisendrath: The American military existed for our defense, now it exists to go to war. The thinking is ‘It’s produced to go to war, so let’s go to war’. And the President of the United States says the purpose for this war is to take the oil for ‘me, personally’ to decide how that money gets spent. I mean, what part of this would a JAG (Judge Advocate General) officer say this is legal?

See more of the discussion here.