On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains how MAGA’s “phalanx of investigative creators” could lead to ICE at polling locations
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From the March 24, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deadline: White House
ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): You see my point about the socialization that begins to happen when you are accustomed to seeing these guys in their uniforms basically everywhere you go.
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): That's right. And that is a big -- and that is what Bannon is trying to say is that they are trying, and there's an important thing sort of tie in here with the question you just had with Michael, because one, they're trying to make it much more acceptable and normal. And that's not only going to be in these big displays like we saw in Minnesota where it's scary and they're coming in with masks and it's overwhelming force. It's a normal part of life. And if they're picking a few people off the line, and that's one of the things that they've been saying in talk radio as they continue to pull Bannon's thread, is that they're getting used to sniffing out individuals that are suspicious on these lines. It's practice in training.
MENENDEZ: Sounds a lot like racial profiling.
CARUSONE: It sure does. And this is all part of it, that it starts to become even more normal and acceptable in places you don't expect. But in the lead up to your question with Michael, one of the things you said is that ICE was sent in a response to viral videos. Now, let's play this out. There is a entire phalanx of investigative creators just like that Nick Shirley guy that are about to be deployed around election misinformation. So, now what happens when you have a video that sort of totally based off of nonsense gets uplifted in the right-wing media, makes its way to Fox News. It's a new big story.
Then Trump has a pretext to sort of send these now figures that have been socialized to be more present into these areas where these videos prop up. That's the scenario that we're playing out. It's not just going to be out of nowhere. Right now, it's the crisis at airports because of TSA and it seems dispersed, but it'll be much more targeted and focused as we get closer and closer to the election. That's the real threat. And so when it's more normal, it's going to be hard to mount a kind of resistance to just their sheer presence alone.