Trump’s playbook falters in crisis response to Minneapolis shooting
The Trump administration has blamed the death of an American citizen at the hands of immigration agents in Minnesota on the victim within hours of their killing for the second time this month, calling the late Alex Jeffrey Pretti an “assassin” and “domestic terrorist” without opening an independent investigation.
The crisis response from President Trump’s top Homeland Security officials followed a familiar playbook from an administration eager to project grit and resolve, particularly on immigration, in the face of inconvenient facts. Despite their efforts, damage from the incident continued to reverberate Sunday, creating political jeopardy for the president.
Videos that emerged of Pretti’s killing enraged the public. Government lines justifying the use of lethal force prompted blowback among staunch Republican supporters and conservative groups. Negotiations in Congress to thwart another shutdown were upended over Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding. And a Trump-appointed judge blocked the administration from attempting to destroy evidence in the case, lending weight to fears of a cover-up.
It is new terrain for Trump, whose handling of immigration had been a rare bright spot in polling of his job performance throughout his first year back in office. Now, for the first time, surveys show a plurality of Americans disapprove of the administration’s enforcement tactics, with one in three Republicans expressing concern they have grown too harsh.
Pretti, 37, an intensive care nurse at a hospital for veterans in Minneapolis, was shot 10 times at close range by two ICE agents. Multiple videos of the incident appear to show Pretti attempting to aid a fellow civilian who had been pushed by an ICE officer, before he himself was wrestled to the ground by agents.
He had been carrying a firearm that Minneapolis police said was lawfully purchased and registered. The videos that circulated on social media do not indicate that he had brandished, or was attempting to reach for, his weapon, despite Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accusing Pretti of attending the protest with the aim of committing violence.
Bill Essayli, the assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, warned that approaching law enforcement while armed created “a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.” But the administration’s decision to blame Pretti’s death on his decision to bear arms drew harsh rebuke from 2nd Amendment advocates across the Republican Party.
“Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens,” the National Rifle Assn. said in a statement.
Erick Erickson, a prominent conservative commentator, accused Noem and Greg Bovino, Trump’s head of the U.S. Border Patrol, of making matters “far worse by being unrestrained in how they proceed.”
“The President is a great marketer and PR guy,” Erickson wrote on X. “While those around him may not realize it, I’m pretty sure he understands another dead American with his team rushing to undermine second amendment arguments and define the dead guy with a lot of facts still unknown is a bad look.”
The general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term said he was “enraged and embarrassed” by the agency’s “lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty,” and called for the president’s impeachment and removal.
“People have had enough,” Brian O’Hara, Minneapolis’ police chief, told CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year, last year, recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone. And now this is the second American citizen that’s been killed, it’s the third shooting within three weeks.”
Earlier this month, Renee Nicole Good, also 37 and a mother of three, was shot to death by an ICE agent while driving her car, shortly after dropping her son off at school. Just as in Pretti’s case, Noem and other senior administration officials justified the incident within hours of her death by impugning the victim’s motives without producing substantive evidence.
The aggressive response comes as the administration has faced accusations of misrepresenting other facts to the public.
After the president confused Greenland with the separate island nation of Iceland four times in a speech last week in Switzerland, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, flatly denied he had made the mix-up.
And on the same trip, Trump dismissed the role of NATO’s allies in the war in Afghanistan, where partner nations lost more than 1,000 soldiers over the course of the war, falsely claiming they “stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.” The remark has infuriated some of Washington’s closest allies.
Only when Noem was questioned by a conservative reporter on Fox News about the circumstances of Pretti’s death did she suggest error may have been at fault.
“This happened in seconds,” Noem said, asked whether Pretti had been shot and killed after being disarmed of a weapon he hadn’t brandished in the first place. “They clearly feared for their lives and took action to defend themselves.”
