It’s been five days since federal immigration officers shot and killed intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street in broad daylight. The deadly incident, however, was not the first altercation between the victim and federal agents.
Footage emerged Wednesday that showed another confrontation, which occurred 11 days before Pretti was killed. The video shows the Minnesota nurse in a tense run-in with different federal agents in which he kicked the taillight of one of their SUVs.
It also showed agents exiting their vehicle and pushing Pretti to the ground.
A lawyer for the Pretti family said in a statement, “A week before Alex was gunned down in the street — despite posing no threat to anyone — he was violently assaulted [by federal agents]. Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex’s killing.”
Evidently, Donald Trump doesn’t quite see it that way. As Newsweek summarized:
Although he did not comment directly on the video, Trump shared the footage on his Truth Social platform late Wednesday night, then later shared a screenshot appearing to show an X post saying ‘such a peaceful protester’ in response to the video. Another post in the screengrab described Pretti as a ‘domestic terrorist.’
The president’s online item didn’t include text that he wrote personally, but he did amplify the content.
One of the problems with this is that the line is simply untrue. Kicking a federal vehicle’s taillight is certainly an act of civil disobedience, but it does not a terrorist make. Indeed, The New York Times noted that the administration has been using the “domestic terrorist” label as a “cudgel against political adversaries,” in a way that doesn’t “match legal reality.”
The other problem is political: Trump didn’t exactly do his team any favors with his latest online antics.
In the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s slaying, the administration’s political operation kicked into high gear. The White House’s Stephen Miller, for example, said the victim was a “domestic terrorist” and a “would-be assassin.” Gregory Bovino, who helped lead Border Patrol operations in Minnesota, told the public that Pretti intended to “massacre” law enforcement personnel. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem peddled a variety of absurd lies, including her bizarre insistence that the victim was “brandishing” a weapon.
When this proved to be a political disaster, the White House tried to give the impression that it was shifting gears. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt put some distance between the president and the rhetoric used by prominent members of his team. Trump held a couple of polite conversations with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and, after rejecting some of Miller’s phrasing, told Fox News that he wanted to “de-escalate a little bit.” On Wednesday morning, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared on CNBC and boasted about the president having “brought down the temperature on the situation.”
Roughly 12 hours later, Trump was back on his social media platform pushing a message that the victim was a “domestic terrorist.” To the extent that it ever existed in a meaningful way in the first place, it would seem the “de-escalation” phase is over.
