Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey:“Get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here.”
Republican elected officials and MAGA media personalities are rushing to defend the masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent who shot and killed an unarmed woman on Wednesday during one of the Trump administration’s evil immigration raids.
The rush to defend an obvious wrong is disturbing, especially because the excuses being made for the officer are so absurd and patently unjust. But it’s par for the course for President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, for whom cruelty is the point of their actions.
Related | DHS immigration spending makes it clear: The cruelty is the point
First, there's the lies about how the agent who killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good (formerly a Colorado resident) was correctly acting in self-defense, and that he was injured during the incident. Trump himself started the lie about the officer’s injuries on Wednesday, writing in a disgusting Truth Social post that “it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering at the hospital.”
Trump continued to spread that lie in an interview with The New York Times, telling reporters that the victim “ran him over.”
The officer was not injured, as multiple videos show him walking unharmed away from the scene after he shot Good multiple times.
When The New York Times reporters interviewing Trump told him that the officer was not run over, Trump demanded that his aides get the video to prove his point. After watching the video that debunked his lies, Trump pivoted to saying that the victim’s behavior was “terrible.”
“I watched the one woman screaming, the one woman in the car before she got shot. I heard was unbelievably bad, badly behaved,” Trump said. “You’re supposed to listen to law enforcement.”
Other Trump administration and MAGA figures then launched personal attacks on Good.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees ICE, gave a news conference on Wednesday evening in which she labeled Good as a domestic terrorist, even though there is no evidence to suggest she was anything other than a concerned American citizen who wanted to protect people from ICE's lawless and cruel roundups.
“It's very clear that this individual was harassing and impeding law enforcement operations. This officer followed his training, did exactly what he's been taught to do in that situation,” Noem said at a news conference. Cool, so ICE is being taught to shoot people in the head? Comforting.
Paul Sperry, a “reporter” with the right-wing RealClear Investigations, started to dig into Good’s history to find ways to justify her killing. He landed on the fact that Good once donated to Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“Federal records reveal Renee Nicole Macklin—the fatally shot protester whom an eyewitness said drove ‘the main car leading the protest’ to impede ICE agents (inclg clipping the agent who shot her) in Minneapolis today—was a supporter of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders,” Sperry wrote on X, suggesting that the one $2.70 contribution she made justifies being shot to death.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance tried to disparage Good as being a leftist, writing in a post on X, “Do you think this officer was wrong in defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over?”
Again, multiple videos show that Good was not trying to run the officer over, so the entire premise of Vance’s sick post is a lie. But what’s more, if Vance thinks being political is cause for being shot to death, then by his logic was Charlie Kirk's killing justified, too?
The character assassination after her literal assassination at the hands of a federal agent got even worse from there.
Fox News’ Jesse Watters used his show to point out that Good had pronouns in her bio and was a lesbian, which in Trump's America now is justification for being killed by federal agents.
Other Republicans said Good shouldn't have been at the ICE enforcement operation in the first place—as if now protesting is illegal in the United States.
“She never in a million years should have been there to begin with,” another RealClear Investigations “reporter” named Mark Hemingway wrote in a post on X.
Good was merely in a public place to observe the behavior of ICE agents—who have been lawlessly rounding people up and violently arresting them, then later lying about their conduct after people get hurt. Given how the Trump administration is blatantly lying about an incident that was caught on video, imagine what ICE would get away with if their actions weren't being observed.
Ultimately, the most popular justification for Good's life being snuffed is that she just should've complied with law enforcement.
“If you impede the actions of our law enforcement as they seek to repel foreign invaders from our country, you get what's coming to you. I do not feel bad for the woman that was involved,” Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) said in an appearance on Newsmax.
Setting aside how absolutely vile Fine’s comment is, video shows that ICE was giving Good conflicting orders.
“The video shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the driver of the vehicle turned her wheels to avoid the ICE agents who surrounded her, screamed profanity at her, and gave her conflicting orders. They escalated the situation, they put the public in danger, they killed her without justification, and they kept firing at her after her car had turned past them. Everyone should ask why the Trump Administration keeps lying about this—why they are telling you to disbelieve your own eyes,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) wrote in a post on X. “An American citizen in a peaceful neighborhood gunned down by masked agents sent there to make people afraid. The Vice President’s lies are despicable.”
What's more, even if she wasn't complying, agents are legally barred from using deadly force against someone simply for not complying with orders.
“It was an outright murder,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) told reporters. “This officer needs to not only be fired and suspended, but based on the video, he needs to be charged with murder.”
People gather for a vigil after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a motorist earlier in the day, on Jan. 7, in Minneapolis.
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