On January 15, Donald Trump woke up with a threat at 8:04 a.m.: “If Minnesota’s corrupt politicians do not obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists who attack ICE patriots who are just trying to do their job, I will enforce the anti-insurrection law.”
Eight days had passed since Renee Good was murdered on the streets of Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents. And there were nine left to die from 10 point-blank shots by CBP agents, nurse Alex Pretti.
Between one death and another, Donald Trump and his Administration continued to step on the repressive accelerator in Minneapolis. Border Patrol Chief Commander Greg Bovino walked around Minneapolis as if he were in a to the salon of the old West: he knew he was protected by his boss, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, and the president himself, who did not stop threatening the local and state authorities of Minnesota, as well as the Somali community and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
So much so, that both Bovino, Noem and the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, replicated the story of Renee Good’s murder after the shooting of Alex Pretti: “He was a domestic terrorist” and “threatened the lives of the agents.”
In a statement to the Washington Post, Miller stated that the initial information he received about the shooting from the Department of Homeland Security was based on reports from Customs and Border Protection (CBP). That is, Miller blamed Noem’s team.
With Renee Good, they also said that she was a lesbian, as if that were another ingredient that justified her murder.
But the videos quickly cast doubt on the Trump Administration’s version, and the White House Press Secretary herself, Karoline Leavitt, separated Trump from his team’s claims.
That was the first sign that the crisis was taking its toll on a Trump who wants to appear unbeatable, but who 48 hours after Pretti’s murder already knew that the most ultra position had a very short journey.
Noem requested a meeting with Trump on Monday night, after the president announced that Homan would take over operations in Minnesota. The meeting lasted several hours and discussed Minneapolis, according to one of the sources. Separately, Lewandowski and Homan, who had had disagreements in the past, spoke and agreed to work together, the same source added.
Trump had already made a decision: to send his border czar, Tom Homan, as fond of a strong hand as Bovino, but with a fuss less typical of Europe in the 1930s. Bovino was relieved – and, at the same time, the Department of Homeland Security – in what MAGA commentator Steve Bannon described as a “retirement.”
“This is a turning point: If you give in now, you give in forever. If you kneel now, you kneel forever,” Bannon, a former Trump adviser, added on his show Wednesday: “I don’t care how many people I have to deport. I don’t care at all.”
The MAGA world was beginning to read Trump’s moves as a step backwards. Thus, Homan, in his appearance in Minneapolis last Thursday, tried to navigate between the left hand – “we are going to make improvements”, “the agents have to focus on the objectives” and “we are making a plan to reduce the deployment” – and the right hand – “this is not a retreat from Trump’s policies”, “the de-escalation will depend on local and state collaboration”–.
And in that zigzag, on Tuesday there was the attack on congresswoman Ilhan Omarthe person most insulted and hated by Donald Trump. Homan, who did not make a single gesture in his appearance towards Renee Good and Alex Pretti, accused the anti-ICE narrative of encouraging violent acts against agents. But he did not make the same reflection about the attack on Omar.
What’s more, the US president affirmed that it was Omar herself who plotted the attack. Speaking to ABC, Trump said he had not seen the video of the attack and added: “I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fake. Knowing her, she probably got herself sprayed on purpose.”
In a Cabinet meeting this Thursday, Donald Trump avoided giving the floor to Kristi Noem, who is in the middle of criticism for having attacked Pretti contrary to what is evidenced by all the published videos of the murder. And Noem is facing major opposition in Congress, with her department’s funding questioned by Democrats, who are calling for her resignation or censure.
In reality, the US president did subscribe to the theory that Pretti was “a gunman” willing to “cause as much damage as possible”, something that the videos evidently deny. But he stopped short of describing Pretti as a “terrorist.” And this Friday he once again belittled the nurse murdered last Saturday because of a video from a few weeks ago in which he is seen kicking an ICE car, as if that attack on a vehicle weeks ago was worth ten point-blank shots: at 1:26 in the morning he published a Truth Social in which he said: “Alex Pretti, agitator and even instigator of riots, has seen his reputation plummet after the publication of a video in which “He appears screaming and spitting in the face of an ICE agent who remained very calm and collected, and then furiously kicks a new and very expensive official vehicle, with such violence that the taillight shattered. It was a display of aggression and uncontrolled rage, in plain sight of everyone.”
But that aggressive reaction from days ago has nothing to do with the action of the two agents who murdered Pretti, to the point that the Department of Justice has opened a federal civil rights investigation into his death. “We are examining everything that may shed light on what happened that day and in the days and weeks leading up to it,” said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche this Friday.
Blanche did not explain why the Justice Department decided to open an investigation into Pretti’s death, but said a similar investigation is not warranted in the Jan. 7 death of Renee Good, who was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis.
Blance has simply said that the Civil Rights Division does not investigate all officer-involved shootings, and that there must be circumstances and facts that “justify an investigation.”
The Department of Homeland Security also said Friday that the FBI will lead the federal investigation, but did not say whether the FBI would share information and evidence with Minnesota state investigators, who have so far been excluded from the federal investigation in another sign of Donald Trump’s authoritarian rule.
Asked this Friday if he believed that the clashes between protesters and federal agents in Minnesota were the prelude to a kind of civil war, following a hint from Governor Tim Walz, Donald Trump said: “They are insurrectionists and agitators, and they are paid, and it shows for many reasons. First of all, they are professionals. And we know, or almost know, who is financing all of this. They are paid insurrectionists, paid troublemakers. But I was elected by a landslide victory. I was elected by “Law and order. I was elected for a strong border. And I can only say, and we will say it very clearly: elections have consequences. People want law and order, and we have a silent majority that does not go out and riot, but they like what we are doing.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
