John Heilemann on Facial Recognition of Protesters in Minn.: ‘We Should Be Horrified to Learn About It, But We Shouldn’t Be Surprised’
RUSH EXCERPT:
HEILEMANN: "I mean, it would. Be surprising. Frankly. If. Given the other. Excesses that we’ve seen on display in Minneapolis, but I would say also in some of the other cities that ice and and DHS have rolled into over the course of the past year, it would be surprising, given those excesses, if, if, if the if the people at DHS, if Kash Patel, who’s talked about about hacking into people’s signal accounts to try to identify people who were supporters of the protests in Minneapolis, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see that, you know, I mean, if you’re what you’ve seen, what happened with renee. Good. And Alex, the idea that that that a government that was capable of doing those kinds of things wouldn’t also engage in a thoroughgoing effort to try to, on the down low, identify those people who they call, as Donald Trump said today about Alex, or possible insurrectionists, people who are are troublemakers. People who are, are, are, are enemies of the state. Effectively, this all goes hand in hand. It’s not you know, we’re not we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that. We should be horrified to learn about it, but we shouldn’t be surprised to learn about it. And I think that there are a lot there’s been a lot of discussion over the last few days about whether this is a turning point and whether we’ve reached across some kind of rubicon here. I think in many ways it is. And and we have. But one of the ways that that that this particular element of the story makes clear is that the turning point here or the rubicon has been crossed. Is it? It’s becoming quite evident that there are there are two sides here and and one side. It’s time to choose for people. People are having to make choices now that have extraordinary, extraordinarily high stakes for their personal liberty, for their continue to, to, to, to life, liberty, forget the pursuit of happiness, just continuing to to live the kind of life that we’ve all grown accustomed to here and have probably taken for granted for far too long. But you’re on one side or the other. You’re on the side of freedom, or you’re on the side of tyranny. This is tyranny. And and the lines that are being drawn both in the streets but also in the cloud, are pretty bright now. And everyone needs to realize that that’s the moment. The moment of truth is, is, is coming. Because this, as bad as it is in Minneapolis, everything we know about Trump and this administration, everything we know, suggests that this is just a dress rehearsal for whatever comes next. And and everything that’s led up to this was a dress rehearsal for this. And now this is a dress rehearsal for what comes next. This is coming to a theater near you. Get ready."
