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See what history looks like before the doors officially open. Melania arrives exclusively in theaters January 30th, 2026. Welcome back to the Brian Kilmead Show. I'm Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead. Joining us now, Rich Lowry.
He's the editor of National Review. You can find him on exit, Rich Lowry. That's super easy. Rich, welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. How are you?
Good. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Super interesting piece that she wrote. And I learned I'm a history buff, so I learned from this, and it's entitled.
If you want to check it out, National Review, Tim Walsh, ICE, and Thomas Jefferson's Very Worst Idea. And it's something called the Kentucky Resolutions. And they also did something the same in Virginia. Just, I've never, like I said, I'm a history buff, never heard of the Kentucky Resolutions. Just tell people what the Kentucky Resolutions were.
Yeah, sure.
So this is 1790s. We we think things are divided now. They were as divided and more divided right at the beginning of the Republic. Jefferson and Adams, they they hated each other. John Adams and the Federalists passed something called the Acts, which the Jefferson side considered repressive and unconstitutional.
So Jefferson, allied with James Madison at the time, they get together and like, what can we do? How can states resist this?
So Jefferson drafts what becomes the Kentucky resolutions. Madison drafts what becomes the Virginia resolution. And what Justin posits is that basically states can just nullify federal laws if they don't like. And this is a very bad idea. Even at the time, people are saying, no, this isn't how it works.
And over time, this idea has been totally discredited. You had a secession crisis in 1830 that Andrew Jackson put down. We got the Civil War. We got the Supreme Court for decades and decades saying there's a supremacy clause in the Constitution. When there's a conflict between federal law and state law, federal law prevails.
So that's how things stand. But here you have Waltz and Fry basically wanting to revive a soft, de facto version of nullification. They don't like the way federal laws are being enforced by federal agents, so they think they should be able to stop them and say no. And I just think that's outrageous.
Well, it is outrageous because as I was reading your piece, I'm reading this, and you know, every state has a natural right to nullify their own authority, all assumptions of power by others within their limits. And I'm reading all this, I'm like, okay, that's fine. But the people that that Minnesota welcomes in as illegal because we're a sanctuary state. They don't stay in Minnesota. That's number one.
They travel around. There's not like we have a border around Minnesota to keep them in. That's number one. But number two, Minnesota gets federal funds to take care of these people, their kids in school, in the hospitals, and all sorts of other, you know, hidden fees and charges that people don't see, right? And then they wonder why their taxes are going up.
So you have all of that. And so it really isn't just a state's rights issue unless you say we're not going to put our hand out and we're not going to have any federal funding whatsoever and we're going to be an island unto ourselves. And they don't do that. Yeah, so look, there's a lot of leeway in our system for states to have different policy. They can have their, you know, they have their own income taxes, they have their own police forces, etc.
All that is appropriate and important under our constitutional order, but states aren't their own countries with their own borders, and they don't get to set their own immigration policy. And there was a Supreme Court case in 2012 where Arizona passed a bunch of statutes that would just help them enforce federal laws. It was consistent with federal law. And the Supreme Court struck down most of it and said, no, this is entirely a federal responsibility. You can't mess with it.
So you had Arizona wanting to help, and the Supreme Court saying no.
Now you have Minnesota resisting.
So that's even more outrageous and out of bounds.
So the sad thing is they might prevail. I was going to ask you, because you say there's some chance that they may get away with it. How?
Well, just Trump will decide, this is too politically painful. The images of these shootings have been bad. The politics are bad ahead of the elections. I'm just going to go home. And in that instance, You know, Minneapolis wins.
And Jacob Frye, I think, one, he's just ideologically opposed to immigration enforcement. But two, you know, that that statement, which was sort of tough after his meeting with Oman, I think he smells blood in the water. He's a, you know, maybe I can just get everything I want without making any significant concessions. And I think that, unfortunately, that's a possibility. You you mean you mean that Wallace and Fry can get everything they want?
Yes, well, they they want ICE to go, and there's some chance that Trump concluded politics are too difficult, we are going to go. I think that'd be bad. I think the odds are against him doing that, but it's at least a possibility. Yeah.
So, mm.
So here's To me, I agree with you. I think that's a totally losing proposition because he loses his base, right? The people, and it's an 80-20 issue. Immigration is an 80-20 issue. And I think, and I don't see Trump doing that.
I just don't see him walking away with nothing. That's not Trump. He's the master negotiator. To me, he does not walk away with nothing and let them win because this is totally manufactured. We all know this.
All of this outrage, et cetera, is totally manufactured. And they're panicking because there's an investigation into both Walsh and Fry and Ilhan Omar and all of the fraud going on in Minnesota right now.
So to me, Trump has them on the ropes, and I don't see him walking away and risking losing his base going into the midterms. Yeah, so he's he's making asks and they're entirely entirely reasonable asks. And it seems though maybe Waltz is more inclined to uh to play ball than Fry is and maybe that's more important. I don't know. I don't know the interpl interplay between the two.
But supporting Illegal alien criminals who have committed other crimes besides immigration crime. That is an 80-20 issue. But the optics of what's been happening in Minnesota just haven't played well. I support it. I support what ICE does.
I support them very strongly. And I think what's happened, the resistance in the street, is totally outrageous. And look, I don't think Predi should have been shot. I think it's a terrible tragedy, but he wasn't a protester. If he was a protester, he'd be alive today.
If he was a protester, he would have stood on the sidewalk with a sign or stood on the sidewalk and chanted. That's not what he's doing. He's intervening. And we've had reports of a prior incident, what it just a week prior, where it supposedly got a rib broken because he was fighting with ICE agents. That's not what protesters do.
No, this has been a networked, organized, Semi-insurgency, low-level insurgency, and I think it's terrible. I think it should be defeated, but I'm just saying I think there's a chance these people are going to get what they want.
Well, I think that that will be very, very unpopular with Trump's base. And I'm sure I have faith that he is something up his sleeve to make sure that this doesn't happen. I just had a conversation with Griff Jenkins, and I asked him this question. I'm going to ask you because it kind of dovetails with this. Why is the left so good at controlling the narrative?
And they will go so far as to sacrifice lives. They knew they're urging these people, they've been urging these people to put their lives on the line because you're literally fighting Hitler. You're defeating the Nazis. And they get these people who were so brainwashed. I don't know what's wrong with them.
And maybe we can ask that question too, to literally put their lives on the line. You've got a kid and everything else, but you're going to put your life on the line or you're Alex Predty and I'm not going to listen to these people because I'm a stormtrooper. You know, like I'm fighting the bad guy. They'll sacrifice people's lives and get away with it. And none of these people are going to be held accountable for anything that they do for the destruction.
They never are held accountable. Ever.
So, how come they're so good at this? Why does the right keep letting this go unpunished and let them do this?
Well, I think that the right is better at combating narratives than it has been in the past. There's so many new sources of information and news, whether it's websites or just really good X accounts. But you're right. If mainstream, the legacy media has a big role to play in it. If you just, when occasionally people in Idaho with beards and rifles, and they're saying, We're creating our autonomous zone because the federal government is overreaching, those people never get sympathetic coverage in the media, right?
But the Westwingers do it. And wow, they're great heroes, right? They're fighting for justice. And, you know, they didn't treat Ashley Babbitt. I don't want to litigate January 6th, but they didn't treat Ashley Babbitt as a martyr such that it totally discredited what the Capitol Police were trying to do.
And that's what they're kind of doing here, right? That ICE is put in these terrible situations. These were shootings that didn't need to happen. But you understood why they happened. Certainly, the first one, more than the second one, but you can see why these tragedies happened.
And then they just, but they say it's all DHS's fault and just proves they need to go home. Instead of saying, well, proves, don't harass them, right? Comply with their orders, but they never conclude that.
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No, and I I think it helps that, you know, they have the media in their pockets. There is a a video on X of a you know, a citizen journalist and he was just in Philadelphia with the marchers, you know, trying to ask them questions and they they started to beat him up. And there was a local news station there, and he's like, Hey, aren't you guys filming this? Aren't you guys getting this? And what they wound up putting, it walked away from him.
And what they wound up putting on the air was the peaceful protests. You know, so it helps when you have that arm of the resistance to, you know, since we're going to make comparisons to Nazis, since that's what they love to do. You know, they had their own media source, their own messaging as well, and they were very good at it too.
So it's just so, so frustrating. I want to talk to you very, just switch gears here quickly to talk about the impending. Partial shutdown. If we don't get this funding passed by 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning, The government is on the brink of a partial shutdown yet again, which seems to be there all the time.
And once again, the Democrats are the ones they want to totally defund DHS.
Now, this doesn't make any sense to me because ICE is totally funded in the Big Beautiful bill until 2029.
So I'm not quite sure what they're going to get if they get to defund DHS because ICE is still fully funded.
So is this just optics?
Well, they also are making a demand. Bill Malugin was posting about this earlier, that all ICE arrests involve judicial warrants, which would really gum up the works. It's not the way it's ever worked in the past, it's not the way it's supposed to work.
So I think they're probably going to push into a partial shutdown. They didn't pay much of a price for the first one, even though it was totally their fault. And I think they're worked into such a lather that even if they didn't calculate they could win, they probably want to do it anyway.
So I think that's where we're headed. But, you know, it's interesting again because as we've been talking, you know, of course, they pay no price for anything that they do, right? They don't. They get away with everything that they want to do. And you're right, the judicial warrants is the poison pill, according to Bill Asaley, right?
He said it would effectively provide amnesty to illegal immigrants who have not yet been convicted of a federal felony.
So you have to kill someone or rape someone or do whatever. And then we have to go into the cities to find them, arrest them.
So it's de facto. What drives me crazy is the Republicans don't hit them with your protecting pedophiles. I don't understand. They are so. Easy to throw.
They will so easily throw that label, oh, Chumsapedo. Like they throw it everywhere, but yet they're literally the ones protecting pedophiles. And the right doesn't. Don't market that and doesn't seize on that point. And it drives me, drives me crazy.
And they are so willing to sacrifice Americans, you know, keeping pedophiles in neighborhoods and rapists and everything else. But there are some services that are going to shut down that are going to hurt people. We're going to have the air traffic controllers again, working without pay, right? We're going to have, well, the IRS is going to be partially shut down, which I think is a win all the way around. You know, so there are things that are going to hurt Americans, and they're just so willing to do it.
But the Republicans, for whatever reason, don't paint them with the brush, I don't think. Yeah, well, there's that very stark video two weeks ago or so, I'm sure you saw it, of the DHS guy, a young guy, seemed Latino, like he was a Latino, in a truck, pulls up to these protesters, says, you know what you're protesting right now? We're trying to arrest a sex offender, and you're trying to obstruct it. It's insane.
So I think they should play that in an endless loop because that guy has a real credible voice, and it does get to the point of a lot of what's going on. They're trying to arrest bad people. And, you know, even if they don't haven't committed violent crimes, something like 10 million came in in the Biden years. They have no right to be here. They never should have been welcomed here.
They got to go too. And I think that that's why what we've seen is so sweeping. You got to really, you can't just do the violent offenders. You really want the numbers to go down. And you need people to self-deport.
And they've had some success over that, with that over the last year. Yeah, no, absolutely. And just one little fun thing. Spencer Pratt was on Fox. Friends this morning, and he says he's going to be running for, I believe, governor.
And I'm curious about the area. I don't know everything. I may be running for mayor, but he says, you know, I don't know everything.
So, and I don't have a ton of. experience But he said he's still going to he's going to throw his hat in the ring because of what he went through with the wildfires. Do you think are we at the point where we'd say it's almost better to have someone who doesn't doesn't come out through the political system run for a position? Yeah, so it's um you know, it's it's unlikely to uh succeed, but After what Trump did in 15 and 16, you can't discount anything. Right.
Anything can happen. And if you're the right kind of outsider with the right message, you can, I was going to say catch fire. I won't say that. You know, you can succeed in a way no one expects.
So unlikely, but you just never know. Yeah, you don't know. Yeah, he's running for mayor, by the way. I just wanted to check. I thought it was mayor, but I wasn't 100% sure.
And he's got name recognition, which for a lot of people, name recognition is so valuable, which is why Congress doesn't want term limits.
So I guess he can't do worse at this point in the game is the way I look at it. Like he can't do worse. And are you better off with someone who's lived through this than you are with someone who was, I think, believe that Mayor Bass was out of the country when that happened? Yeah, she was. And look, also, it's just, I think it's really important in these blue areas for sensible people to hold up the flag.
You know, even if you're not going to. Win, just being out there and making the case and making it competitive is important. Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you so much, Rich Lowry. Really appreciate your time.
And thank you for joining me on the Brian Kilmey Show. Have a great rest of your week. Thank you.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.
