“You can’t compare apples and oranges.”
Sure you can: Apples are red (sometimes green), have a nonspherical shape with a stem at the top, and you can bite right through the skin. Oranges are (checks notes) orange, more spherical, and have a skin you cannot digest. Oranges grow south, are juicier, and have a sweet-tangy-acidic taste; apples can grow much farther north, with a crispier, crunchier flavor profile.
There: I just compared apples and oranges.
It’s actually harder to compare apples with apples, because (checks notes) they’re both apples. Comparing different things is surprisingly easy.
But eventually, the comparison falls apart.
Eventually, all comparisons do.
That’s the set-up for today’s VIP column, because I can’t help but compare two events that occurred 26 years apart: Elián González, the six-year-old Cuban boy who was seized at gunpoint by federal immigration agents in 2000, and the ICE killings of 2026.
Admittedly, it’s an imperfect comparison. For starters, Elián was a blameless little kid. He never brandished a weapon or interfered in a federal investigation. He didn’t do a damn thing wrong.
His mother sacrificed her own life, so her son could grow up in America.
Still, we all remember how the Clinton administration authorized 100+ federal agents to break into Elián’s home in the middle of the night. (Nobody ever gave them permission to enter.) Immigration agents pepper-sprayed and maced family members who got in the way. And then they took the little boy — with their weapons drawn — creating this iconic photo:
I’m old enough to remember on Easter Saturday, April 22, 2000, heavily armed federal agents seized six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint from a closet in his uncle's Miami home where he had been hiding. Reno & Holder defied a court order & sent him back anyway. pic.twitter.com/GVNvwLQ4Tv
— T (@Rifleman4WVU) January 23, 2026
As we discussed in our recent PR breakdown:
The parallels are obvious: Armed federal agents enforcing immigration law, booting “illegals” out of the country. A “states’ rights” versus “federal rights” legal dispute. Photos and videos that swayed public opinion.
Of course, 26 years ago, the same left-wing lunatics who are currently tearing apart downtown Minneapolis, battling ICE agents, and insisting that all illegal aliens ought to stay in our country for as long as they want were singing a very different tune: 64% of Democrats supported kicking a six-year-old little boy out of the country!
(Of course, since Cuba is a “socialist paradise,” I’m sure they thought they were doing Elián a favor. Why stay in racist America when Castro’s colorblind utopia awaits? Maybe he could get one of those high-paying Cuban tech jobs we keep on hearing about, eh?)
It’s stunning how much the Democratic Party has changed on immigration over the last 26 years! And given the ferocity of its anti-ICE fervor, it’s highly probable that:
- Democrats will shut down the government (again), this time on Jan. 30, to prevent further funding of ICE.
- The 2028 Democratic Party platform will call for the abolition of ICE and the elimination of all border enforcements. This will be endorsed and espoused by the 2028 nominee, because pro-ICE Democrats will be excised from the party.
- Should the Democrats win the White House in 2028, they’ll remove ALL the Trump-era rules and regulations that stopped illegal immigration, opening America’s borders to the whole world.
Number 3 is by far the worst. When all is said and done, we may even lose net-ground: If someone like AOC wins, the Dems won’t waste time. On her first day in office, the illegals will be incentivized to come on over while the gettin’ is good, and the Dems will let so many in, the damage will never be undone.
If the Democrats win, the pendulum is gonna swing back to the pro-illegal immigration side with a vengeance!
But the good news is, there’s still an opportunity for us to do something about it.
PRediction: The time may be right for a grand bargain on illegal immigration. If Trump’s current ICE policy isn’t sustainable for PR reasons (the next 10 days will be critical), the White House will need an “out” that’s also a political winner.
Which is why this article caught my eye:
It’s an obvious PR play, because there’s no way Gov. Walz would ever agree to Bondi’s terms. (Not that I’m complaining: As PR plays go, it’s one of Bondi’s better ones.) It’s also unclear if this is something Bondi did on her own, or if this was at the direct behest of the president.
As reported by Fox 9, here were Bondi’s terms:
- Walz’s office must share state records on Medicaid and Food and Nutrition Service programs, including SNAP, with the federal government.
- Repeal sanctuary policies that have led to crime in Minnesota. All state corrections facilities must cooperate with ICE, honor immigration detainers and permit ICE to interview detainees in custody to determine immigration status.
- Allow the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to access Minnesota’s voter rolls to confirm the state’s voter registration policies comply with federal law.
What Bondi has here, folks, is the beginning of an excellent idea.
But this shouldn’t just be for Minn.; ICE is a national issue and deserves a national solution. And with another government shutdown on the horizon, Trump will be negotiating with Democrats anyway.
It’s time for the Art of the Deal.
PRojections: As far as negotiations go, President Trump, obviously, will try to get as much as he can; so will the Dems. But there’s one blood-red line that Republicans ABSOLUTELY CANNOT budge from:
All provisions within the agreement must be tied to maintaining our current illegal immigration rate.
That means, if we agree to remove ICE from cities and stop aggressively deporting “noncriminal illegals” (i.e. other than the crime of being here illegally), it must ALWAYS be conditional on our border staying secure.
We need to get it in writing — and keep it in perpetuity. It CANNOT end with Trump’s term.
Other than that, I’m relatively indifferent about the other terms. (And depending on what/how Trump negotiates, there might even be opportunities to build on Trump’s historic 2024 gains with Latinos and other minorities.) The top objective was ALWAYS closing the border, because that’s the one thing that makes everything else possible. If we get that, all else is gravy; I trust Trump to carve as big a piece of pie as he can.
The GOP must now prioritize making border security permanent, because anything the Democrats can undue, they will undue.
Wouldn’t that be a wacky curveball? The Dems think they have Trump on the ropes with the PR backlash of a second ICE fatality, plus the threat of another government shutdown. But what their base is demanding most of all is to get ICE off the streets ASAP.
Trump can give them that!
Sen. Schumer (D-N.Y.) could walk out of the Oval Office with a yuuuuge win! Why, he’d be a hero!
All the Dems have to do is cave on the border — and codify the agreement in such a way to make it permanent.
PRaise: To the brave people of Iran, who took to the streets, demonstrated peacefully, and showed left-wing “hashtag warriors” what REAL courage looks like.
And they paid a tragic price for it, too: Estimates are now putting the fatality list at 36,500.
For comparison’s sake, the Palestinian death toll in the Gaza War was approximately 70,000. And that was called a “genocide” — even though Gaza’s population actually increased because of the Palestinians’ sky-high birthrate.
It’s something we’ve lampooned before:
[A]t any given time in Gaza, there are about 60,000 pregnant women. United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) spokeswoman Tess Ingram claimed that 20,000 Palestinian babies were born over the first 105 days, with a Gazan baby born every 10 minutes. After 720+ days, that’s approximately 140,000 new Gazans.
This is the only “genocide” in world history where the birthrate is DOUBLE the deathrate!
Hey liberals: Does this mean Iran committed HALF a genocide?
I dunno. Seems to me that leftists ought to be marching at least half as much against the Ayatollahs as they did against those evil, dastardly “genocidal” Jews.
Or do Palestinian lives matter more than Iranian lives?
PRedators: Oh, Ted, Ted, Ted. It’s like clockwork: Every damn time there’s a natural disaster in Texas, Ted Cruz steps in the stinky brown stuff. He has an uncanny ability for taking sunny vacations whenever Texas gets slammed with a storm.
It looked like it might happen again with Snowstorm 2026, but Sen. Cruz made a point to return home.
So all is good, right?
Wrong: This time he got in trouble while staying in the state. Turns out he was secretly recorded trashing Trump’s tariffs — and saying some very unpleasant things about Vice President JD Vance.
Axios: Exclusive: In Secret Recordings, Cruz Trashes Trump Tariffs, Vance
Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican eyeing a 2028 White House run, torched Vice President Vance and ridiculed President Trump's tariff policy during private meetings with donors, according to recordings obtained by Axios.
[…]
During his talks, Cruz cast Vance as a pawn of conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson. Cruz has accused Carlson of promoting antisemitism and an anti-Israel foreign policy in their well-publicized spats.
Cruz on tariffs:
Cruz says he told Trump: "Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people's 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10–20% at the supermarket, we're going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath."
"You're going to lose the House, you're going to lose the Senate, you're going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week."
Trump's response, according to Cruz: "F**k you, Ted."
Cruz on Vance:
Cruz repeatedly brings up Vance in the recordings, tying him to Carlson and accusing him of advancing the podcaster's anti-interventionist foreign policy.
"Tucker created JD. JD is Tucker's protégé, and they are one and the same," Cruz says.
Between the lines: Cruz has been waging a months-long campaign against Carlson on social media. But he has refrained from publicly linking Carlson and Vance, who are friends.
At one point in the recordings, Cruz alleges that Vance and Carlson pushed for the ousting of former national security adviser Mike Waltz because Waltz supported bombing Iran — a position Trump ultimately embraced.
Waltz "supported being vigorous against Iran and bombing Iran — and Tucker and JD took Mike out," Cruz tells the donors.
Vance has said he supported the bombings of Iran's nuclear sites last June.
Cruz also says Vance and Carlson were behind the appointment of Army veteran Daniel Davis, a sharp critic of U.S. support for Israel, to a top national intelligence position.
The senator called Davis "a guy who viciously hates Israel," and said he helped get Davis quickly removed from the job.
Sen. Cruz doesn’t need to tear JD Vance down to build himself up. It comes across as unclassy, unhelpful, and undignified.
Besides, talking smack in DC is like holding in the NFL: Yeah, OF COURSE everyone does it — but it’s still a bad look when you’re caught.
That’s the Ted Cruz story: Another storm, another SNAFU.
