The president’s perspective on the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good seems to have shifted, despite initially labeling them as ‘agitators’.
Good and Pretti were shot and killed by federal agents in separate incidents last month in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
On January 7, Good was shot while driving away from ICE officers conducting raids in her area. Pretti was participating in an ICE protest on January 24 when he was brought to the ground by officers and shot. The medical examiner later ruled Pretti’s death a homicide.
Donald Trump initially seemed to fault Pretti and Good for the ensuing violence, but he now appears to have adopted a more compassionate viewpoint.
In a conversation with NBC News, Trump expressed his dissatisfaction with the situation.
“[Pretti] was not an angel and [Good] was not an angel,” Trump stated. “You know, you look at some tapes from back, but still, I’m not happy with what happened there. Nobody could be happy and ICE wasn’t happy either.”
The president added: “It should have not happened. It was very sad to me, a very sad incident. I think they were both sad.
“And you know who feels worse about it than anybody? The people of ICE.”
Following Good’s death, Trump posted on Truth Social, commenting on the footage of the moments before the shooting: “The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing, and resisting, who then violently, wilfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.”
He added, “We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate.”
Addressing Pretti’s shooting, Trump claimed he had been wielding a gun, a claim which witnesses have since disputed.
He wrote online: “This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go – What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers? The Mayor and the Governor called them off?
“It is stated that many of these Police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to protect themselves — Not an easy thing to do!”
In another comment, he referred to Pretti as an ‘agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist’.
Trump remarked on footage showing Pretti in a confrontation with ICE in the days before his death: “Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the tail light broke off in pieces.”
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