President Donald Trump has avoided leaping to the defense of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the latest fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.
Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was beaten and shot by Customs and Border Protection officers on Saturday after coming to the aid of a fellow protester demonstrating against their presence on the city’s streets.
When fellow activist Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent earlier this month, Trump endorsed the version of events presented by Noem and the DHS, who claimed that Good was a “domestic terrorist” intent on injuring their officials with her car, despite video evidence raising serious doubts about their narrative.
When asked by The Wall Street Journal about Pretti’s killing by CBP forces, which his secretary insisted was a “defensive” measure because the victim was armed with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun, the president said only: “We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination.”
Pressed over the course of a five-minute phone interview Sunday, Trump said: “I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it. But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”
The president claimed Pretti was carrying a “very dangerous gun, a dangerous and unpredictable gun” when he was shot, adding: “It’s a gun that goes off when people don’t know it.”
Asked when his 3,000-strong federal forces would leave Minnesota, he answered: “At some point we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job… We’ll leave a different group of people there for the financial fraud.”
Trump was referring to the welfare-fraud scandal in the state as a justification for the immigration enforcement surge. “It’s the biggest fraud anyone has seen,” he told the WSJ. “We actually think California is going to be much bigger.”
But there was no defense of Noem from the president, who is facing calls to resign and threats of impeachment from the Democratic governors of New York and California, Kathy Hochul and Gavin Newsom, among others, as outrage grows over her handling of the administration’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Trump also largely avoided the subject on Truth Social Sunday, beyond praising allies for their appearances on Fox News to discuss the tragedy and calling on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to “formally cooperate with the Trump Administration to enforce our Nation’s Laws, rather than resist and stoke the flames of Division, Chaos, and Violence.”
The president otherwise preferred to complain about changes to NFL broadcasting and issued a lengthy post about his under-construction $400m White House ballroom, for which he demolished the East Wing, saying it would be “devastating” if the project were halted by a lawsuit filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in December.
“Making such a large gift to the U.S.A. was thought to be, by almost everyone, ‘A WONDERFUL THING TO DO’ – But no, as usual, I got sued, this time by the Radical Left National (No!)Trust for Historic Preservation, a group that couldn’t care less about our Country!” the president huffed.
