Welcome back to Washington Secrets. Your lunchtime reading today includes the inside story of why Donald Trump backed down in Minneapolis and the lurid details of a former governor’s lunchtime conversation.
President Donald Trump’s border policy has been one of the greatest successes of his first year back in power.
But by Monday morning, senior figures knew that the means were in danger of overshadowing the ends.
Chaos on the streets of Minneapolis, where a protester was shot dead Saturday, was only adding to recent polls that showed people were in favor of the border crackdown but wary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and their tactics.
“The government is on the losing end of the info war, and that’s never a good place to be,” a senior administration official told Secrets.
“It’s hard to keep the two sides separated. And when there are clashes like we are seeing, then it is the government that comes off worst.”
That analysis was at the core of what came next. The White House backed down, reassigning officers, including Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino and his great coat, and moving to take the heat out of a growing crisis.
The fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, triggered a public backlash, rumblings among senior Republicans, and a fresh spotlight on the administration’s hard-line stance on immigration.
Complicating matters was the fact that Pretti was carrying a handgun, bringing in Second Amendment groups usually sympathetic to Trump.
None of that mattered to Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, who labeled the dead man “an assassin,” accusing him of trying to “murder federal agents.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said he bore the hallmarks of “domestic terrorism.”
The familiar deny-and-attack playbook, however, was out of step with what the public could see with its own eyes on every TV channel.
The first hint of a shift came from the president himself, often the best diviner of public sentiment.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Sunday evening, Trump would not be drawn on whether the officer who killed Pretti had done the right thing.
Instead, he said, “We’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination.”
Then came the de-escalation.
On Monday morning, Trump spoke with Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), someone he had previously blamed for inciting street clashes.
He backed off the attacks and instead agreed to send Tom Homan to oversee the immigration enforcement operation.
Had he been watching Fox & Friends? Three times, host Brian Kilmeade had floated the idea of sending the no-nonsense border czar to Minnesota to calm things down.
The truth was dawning. When Fox News, gun groups, and liberal protesters are against you, then there is no way out except backward.
“Chaos on the streets is good for no one,” an adviser said, “not least a president elected to improve security.”
It was left to Karoline Leavitt, his press secretary, to put a gloss on the whole thing during a White House briefing.
“The president has said, you know, we have to review it and … this investigation needs to continue, and he’s letting the facts on the investigation lead itself,” she said.
There aren’t many things that can force Trump to back down, but when it came to the info war in Minnesota, he concluded that it was a news cycle he could not win by brute force.
Now it is up to Homan to broker a deal with local leaders, including Walz. At the top of his list, Secrets is told, is gaining access to Minnesota’s prisons and jails to secure inmates wanted for deportation.
The moves will placate Republicans on the Hill as well as the New York Post, Trump’s favorite newspaper. “It’s time to de-escalate in Minneapolis, Mr. President,” it said in a Monday editorial.
But not so much the firebrand wing of the MAGA movement. “No de-escalation,” Steve Bannon said at the end of his WarRoom show. “Finish what we started.”
Yet the view from cooler heads in the administration is that Trump recognized a no-win situation.
“The Democrats won’t want to give anything up because it’s working really really well for them,” the senior official said. “The more people that are arrested and hurt then the better it is for their politicians.”
TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION FOOTING COMES UNSTUCK AS MINNESOTA SHOOTING TURNS INTO ‘OPERATION CLUSTERF***’
Power lunch or frat session?
Everyone was having a late lunch at The Palm in Washington on Friday, or so it seemed to Secrets. There was a Trump adviser and senior official in one corner, trying to remain anonymous. Less anonymous was the former governor who convened a brain trust at the big table.
They lingered late into the afternoon and covered all the big topics.
Oncology: “Michael Douglas … that’s how he got cancer.”
Entomology: “It’s like the human centipede.”
High finance: something to do with Jamie Dimon’s wife that is unprintable in a newsletter of this caliber.
It’s hard to know if it was a strategy meeting or a fraternity reunion, even though almost every word was audible to nearby diners. And to Secrets, who was wooing a high-level source at the next table.
Lunchtime reading
How Did Tucker Carlson Get This Way? How Did America? What ultimately shifted Carlson’s trajectory was his move into TV. In Jason Zengerle’s telling, when Carlson joined the debate show Crossfire as its resident conservative in 2001, he found it impossible to maintain either nuance or his contrarian instincts. Instead, he became the sneering partisan hack the show’s format demanded.
The Beckhams’ very public family meltdown: They put their births and marriages in the spotlight, selling tabloid photos and making Netflix documentaries. Would their estrangement be any different?
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