White House Refuses to Back Stephen Miller’s Smear Against Alex Pretti

The White House appears to be distancing itself from comments deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller made about Alex Pretti, the Minnesota nurse shot and killed by Border Patrol agents over the weekend.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked Monday about Miller’s comment on X immediately after the shooting, in which he summarized the incident as: “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.” Miller’s tweet was reposted by official administration accounts, including @TrumpWarRoom and @RapidResponse47.

NBC News’s Gabe Gutierrez asked Leavitt why Miller, a White House official, would jump to conclusions before an investigation.

“Well, look, this has obviously been a very fluid and fast-moving situation throughout the weekend. As for President Trump, whom I speak for, he has said that he wants to let the investigation continue and let the facts lead in this case,” Leavitt replied.

Leavitt went on to avoid defending Miller’s comments two more times. Mary Bruce, the White House correspondent for ABC News, pointed out that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also called Pretti a domestic terrorist in addition to Miller, and asked if President Trump agreed with that assessment. Again, Leavitt deflected, saying that she hadn’t heard Trump describe Pretti “in that way.”

When Bruce asked if Trump was alarmed to hear top administration officials “describe Pretti in that way,” Leavitt ignored the question and moved on.

But the next reporter, Agence France-Presse’s Danny Kemp, then asked Leavitt, “Will Stephen Miller be apologizing to the family of Alex Pretti for calling him ‘an assassin’ trying to murder federal agents, despite the fact that, as you say, this is still under investigation?”

Leavitt pointedly didn’t answer his question.

“Again, this incident remains under investigation and nobody here at the White House, including the President of the United States, wants to see Americans hurt or killed and losing their lives in American streets,” the press secretary replied.

On three different occasions, Leavitt, a spokesperson for the president, refused to defend Miller, who has pushed for aggressive immigration enforcement and argued against backing down in the face of criticism, going against others in the administration according to The Wall Street Journal. Instead, as criticism begins to mount from Republicans both nationally and inside Minnesota, the president appears to be trying to avoid any negative labeling of Pretti. Miller’s perspective may be losing support from the White House as it inspires a national backlash.

In the wake of yet another citizen being shot and killed in broad daylight by Donald Trump’s roving militia, the White House is now attempting to deflect blame by accusing Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar of fraud.

Trump announced the so-called investigation on Truth Social Monday morning, claiming that there was no way the Democratic lawmaker could have so much money. “The DOJ and Congress are looking at ‘Congresswoman’ Illhan Omar, who left Somalia with NOTHING, and is now reportedly worth more than 44 Million Dollars,” he wrote. “Time will tell all.”

This accusation is coming from the same man who raked in at least $1.4 billion in the last year alone—at the American people’s expense.

Omar wasted no time in dismissing Trump’s desperate finger-pointing.

“Sorry, Trump, your support is collapsing and you’re panicking. Right on cue, you’re deflecting from your failures with lies and conspiracy theories about me. Years of ‘investigations’ have found nothing,” she wrote on X. “Get your goons out of Minnesota.”

Speaking at a White House press briefing later Monday, Karoline Leavitt doubled down on Trump’s baseless allegations.

“The president raised a good question over the weekend, with respect to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who now has a net worth within the millions, and one must ask themselves why and how is that possible? Is she connected to the fraud rings we’ve seen taking place within her state, and her own district?” the press secretary said. “It’s a question the American people are raising, and the president believes it’s one worth answering.”

Following the second deadly shooting by federal immigration officers just this month, the only question the American people are really asking is: When will you be out of a job, Karoline?

Leavitt also repeated Trump’s claim that the widespread backlash to ICE’s wanton violence in Minnesota was merely a “cover up” for fraud. This absurd allegation is yet another example of the Trump administration attempting to hijack the language that describes its own actions, as the apparent cover-up of the senseless killing of Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Patrol agents is already underway.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s blackmail letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz after the killing of protester Alex Pretti may force the Trump administration to end its violent immigration crackdown in the state.

On Saturday, hours after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, Bondi demanded that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz give the Trump administration full access to the state’s Medicaid and SNAP records so that her office could “efficiently investigate fraud.” Bondi also demanded Walz end the sanctuary state policy and hand over all state voter registration records to Trump. Walz refused.

Now a federal judge is weighing this letter as evidence that the administration is using the presence of armed federal agents as coercion to achieve policy goals.

“They are not letting the courts work this stuff out. What they’re trying to get in court ... they’re trying to get that same thing by putting 3,000 heavily armed agents on the streets of Minnesota,” lawyers representing the state argued in court Monday. “The president of the United States said in the middle of this chaos and violence in the streets … he said, ‘Minnesota, your day of retribution is here.’ That is crazy. How can that not violate legal sovereignty?”

Judge Katherine Menendez expressed her own concerns about the federal operation, noting that Bondi’s letter to Walz clearly detailed a policy-based exchange: fewer federal agents for concessions on MAGA policy.

“Is the executive trying to achieve a goal through force that it can’t achieve through the courts?” Menendez asked DOJ lawyers.

“Have no idea if this suit will be successful but would be objectively hilarious if the federal government lost because Trump made Bondi write a mean letter admitting that this was all extortion,” one user wrote on X.

The case, Minnesota v. Noem, is still pending.

Democrats that voted in favor of the Department of Homeland Security’s latest funding package were hit by a maelstrom of public fury over the weekend, forcing some lawmakers to do a complete 180 on their decisions—albeit too late.

Not even 48 hours after seven Democrats banded together to help pass DHS’s $64.4 billion funding bill, ICE agents killed another U.S. citizen in Minnesota: 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti. His death summoned mass outrage, partially directed at the liberals who afforded the violent agencies more dough.

In an email to his campaign list Monday, New York Representative Tom Suozzi said that he had underestimated the significance of his vote, claiming he did not realize that the funding vote would be interpreted as a “referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis.”

“I hear the anger from many of my constituents, and I take responsibility for that,” Suozzi wrote. “I have long been critical of ICE’s unlawful behavior and I must do a better job demonstrating that.

“The senseless and tragic murder of Alex Pretti underscores what happens when untrained federal agents operate without accountability,” he continued. “President Trump must immediately end ‘Operation Metro Surge’ and ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis that has sown chaos, led to tragedy, and undermined experienced local law enforcement.”

The other Democrats who voted in support of the bill were Representatives Henry Cuellar (Texas), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Laura Gillen (New York), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington), Jared Golden (Maine), and Don Davis (North Carolina).

Ahead of the vote, Suozzi claimed that the bill—which would continue to fund ICE operations—was a better alternative than another government shutdown.

Some of the other lawmakers also called out ICE while trying to excuse their vote. In a video statement, Gonzalez said that the last week in Washington was one of the toughest of his career, and pledged to ask for a “thorough and independent investigation” into the myriad abuses perpetrated by ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents.

“Let me make it clear, [my vote] was not to fund ICE,” Gonzalez said. “But what I was voting for was to ensure that our agencies here in south Texas were funded.”

Gillen was similarly moved by Pretti’s untimely death, though she did not retract her support for the bill. Posting on X, Gillen claimed that Pretti’s death “at the hands of ICE” warranted the immediate impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Under her leadership, ICE has targeted U.S. citizens and children and killed Americans,” Gillen wrote. “She is not focused on safety or border security; she’s focused on chaos and self-promotion, undermining local law enforcement and stoking violence as a result. The American people deserve better.”

After months of denials, President Trump has finally admitted that he has been falling asleep during Cabinet meetings.

In an interview with New York magazine published Monday, Trump said that he closed his eyes during those meetings because they were “boring as hell.”

“I’m going around a room, and I’ve got 28 guys—the last one was three and a half hours. I have to sit back and listen, and I move my hand so that people will know I’m listening. I’m hearing every word, and I can’t wait to get out,” Trump said.

It’s a stark admission in an article about Trump’s health that the president agreed to in an attempt to quash negative reports about his age and his visibly declining mental and physical fitness. The president previously claimed to be “resting” or “blinking” his eyes, despite having fallen asleep multiple times in full view of the press and public: in the middle of his own military parade, while meeting foreign leaders, and four different times in the month of December.

Much of the article is Trump telling doctors, staffers, and members of his Cabinet to brag to writer Ben Terris about how healthy and energetic he is. At one point during his interview, he turned to his physicians from Walter Reed hospital and asked, “Real fast. Is my health perfect?”

“Your health is excellent, sir,” said Colonel James Jones, a physician’s assistant with a Ph.D. in health science.

The president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, said that Trump “can work harder and he has a better memory and he has more stamina and has more energy than a normal mortal. The headline of your story should be ‘The Superhuman President.’”

Sycophancy aside, it’s quite obvious that Trump’s health is declining, as the article points out, with bruising repeatedly showing up on his hands, his own admission that he takes a massive dose of aspirin each day, and the fact that he had trouble remembering the name of Alzheimer’s disease. But don’t worry, Trump doesn’t think about Alzheimer’s at all because, as he says, “I don’t have it.”