Donald Trump said he feels “terrible” about the recent deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, but he feels worse about Good because her parents are “tremendous Trump people.”
The president appeared for a sit-down interview on The Will Cain Show on Fox News on Tuesday night. Will Cain quickly brought up the events in Minneapolis, where an ICE takeover of the city has resulted in federal agents shooting and killing two U.S. citizens. “We’re going to de-escalate a little bit,” Trump acknowledged while simultaneously saying the polling numbers in Minnesota are “doing better than they’ve done in many years.”
“The entire country is talking about what happened this past week in Minnesota,” Cain said, adding that everyone has seen the video of Pretti’s murder and has an opinion. “I’m curious what you thought when you first saw that video,” he added.
“I think the whole thing is terrible,” Trump replied. “I don’t like the fact that he was carrying a gun… It’s pretty unusual. But nobody knows when they saw the gun, how they saw the gun, everything else. Bottom line, it was terrible.”
He continued, referencing Good’s death. “Both of them were terrible. The other was terrible too. And I’m not sure about his parents, but I know her parents were big Trump fans. Makes me feel bad anyway. But I guess you could say even worse, they were tremendous Trump people, Trump fans. The daughter was, I don’t know if you could say radicalized. Maybe radicalized. I don’t know. But you hate to see that.”
Trump previously addressed Good’s death during a press conference at the White House, during which he also mentioned her parents being Trump fans.
“They’re gonna make mistakes sometimes,” he said of ICE. “ICE is gonna be too rough with somebody. You know, they’re dealing with rough people. They’re gonna make a mistake sometimes. It can happen. We feel terrible. I felt horribly when I was told that the young woman had the tragedy. But when I learned her father is a — I hope he still is, but I don’t know — was a tremendous Trump fan. He was all for Trump. Loved Trump.”
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He added, “And, you know, it’s terrible. It’s so sad. It just happens.”
Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot in the head by a masked ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month. The tragedy occurred one day after thousands of federal agents were deployed to Minnesota for a 30-day immigration enforcement “surge.” The agent has since been identified as Jonathan Ross. In the aftermath of the shooting, Trump administration officials claimed that Good was a “domestic terrorist” who had attempted to harm agents with her vehicle.
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed on Saturday in Minneapolis by a group of immigration agents. The killing was captured on video by multiple bystanders. In the footage, Pretti can be seen filming officers with his cell phone, and is pepper sprayed after attempting to assist a woman who was shoved to the ground by immigration agents. About half a dozen agents are seen wrestling Pretti to the ground, striking him in the head. Two agents then shoot at him a total of 10 times in the span of a few seconds, appearing to continue to fire even after he collapses.
The Department of Homeland Security and administration officials moved quickly to present Pretti — even before he had been positively identified — as a would-be domestic terrorist. Following massive public backlash, including from Republicans, the government has slowly shifted the narrative to blame Pretti for carrying a gun to a protest.
Yesterday, Trump sent Border Czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to meet with Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. According to Walz’s office, the officials “agreed on the need for an ongoing dialogue and will continue working toward those goals.” Homan wrote on X, “While we don’t agree on everything, these meetings were a productive starting point, and I look forward to more conversations with key stakeholders in the days ahead.”
From Rolling Stone US
