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In our latest Two Brothers Talking conversation, Don Lemon and I had one of our most direct discussions yet about the Trump Administration, DHS, and the escalating chaos around ICE.
We started with the simplest reality: DHS has no credibility. After what we all watched play out in the killing of Renee Good, the administration has earned skepticism. Journalists need to treat the first version of events the DHS puts forward as disinformation until proven truthful.
From there, we zoomed out into what this moment is becoming: a fight over whether the government can operate with masks, secrecy, and propaganda, while threatening the use of federal power to crush dissent.
You can watch the full conversation above. Below are key takeaways from our talk.
DHS has no credibility
We began with Minnesota and the latest ICE shooting, and the Trump Administration’s now routine pattern.
They make a claim. They frame the victim as the threat. They try to lock in a narrative before evidence spreads. Then the story shifts and gets revised, sometimes repeatedly.
After Renee Good, there is no reason for journalists or the public to default to trust. I put it plainly: journalists should adopt disbelief before quotations. If the administration is proven right, great. But they have forfeited the benefit of the doubt.
Where is the transparency
One of the clearest questions is also the most basic.
Where is the body cam footage? Why are agents masked? Why is the public expected to accept sweeping claims without evidence, especially from an agency that has already been caught fabricating narratives?
If the administration wants credibility, it has to operate like a government in a democracy, not like a propaganda machine.
Trump is manufacturing a “chaos” pretext
We read Trump’s own words, including his threats to invoke the Insurrection Act.
This is not just rhetoric. It is a repeated authoritarian impulse, one he explored in 2020 and was rebuffed by officials who still cared about guardrails. That is not the administration he has now.
The Insurrection Act talk is about normalizing federal force in the streets, grabbing power, and testing how far he can go. It also has a political purpose: trying to force Democrats into the same stale frame of “crime and chaos,” even as fewer Americans buy the act.
The real question is what pushback looks like
The most important part of this conversation was not legal theory. It was about resistance.
If a president pushes into a city with federal force, how does a democracy respond in practice? What does it take to create enough resistance that the crackdown becomes politically, morally, and logistically impossible?
We made the point that keeps hanging over all of this: the appetite for resistance exists, but it is disorganized. The civil rights era was defined by sustained, coordinated campaigns. Not a few weekends of outrage. Not isolated moments. Sustained pressure.
Comfort is the enemy
We ended up in a deeper place, talking about why Americans have to become comfortable with discomfort.
I invoked MLK’s courage as a reminder of what sustained resistance actually requires, and why sacrifice cannot remain theoretical.
This administration is betting that people will stay overwhelmed, stay isolated, and stay comfortable enough to tolerate the intolerable. That is why organizing matters. That is why speaking plainly matters. And that is why propaganda has to be confronted immediately.
Watch the full conversation, and if you haven’t already, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to support this work.
In other news, I'm honored to announce that I'll be the keynote speaker at Wisconsin's 46th annual MLK Day celebration this Monday, January 19, in the Capitol Rotunda.
I’ll be talking about how America desperately needs the kind of moral leadership that Dr. King embodied. I'll be live on PBS Wisconsin and Wisconsin Public Radio. Tune in on Monday around 1 pm ET to catch the celebration and my speech. I’ll make sure to post the full speech here on Substack if you can’t make the livestream.
Thanks as always for your support! It’s helped me land on increasingly larger stages to spread truth. I’ll keep at it.
