Kristi Noem Blames Stephen Miller for Alex Pretti Smear Campaign

The Department of Homeland appears to have found a new scapegoat on behalf of federal agents who brutally killed a U.S. citizen in broad daylight: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has reportedly started blaming Miller for her decision to label Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minnesota over the weekend, as a “domestic terrorist.”

Although Noem’s Cabinet position means she outranks Miller, the ghoulish presidential adviser is an architect of the Trump administration’s lethal immigration policy, and his power extends over DHS functions.

In a meeting with Donald Trump Monday—which notably excluded Miller—Noem made sure to emphasize that in the aftermath of the shooting, she’d been taking her directions from Miller and the president, a source told Axios.

“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” Noem told a person who relayed her remarks to Axios.

Some in the White House are blaming Customs and Border Protection for furnishing Trump administration officials with an incident report offering scant details, leading them to believe Pretti had “brandished” a weapon. Once Miller heard that a gun had been involved, he immediately started to formulate a narrative in which Pretti intended to massacre federal agents, one source told Axios.

Minutes after DHS published a statement Saturday claiming Pretti was an “armed suspect” who “violently resisted” federal officers’ attempts to disarm him, Miller posted the baseless claim that Pretti was a “would-be assassin” who’d attempted to murder federal law enforcement officers. Noem then repeated this language in her press conference later that day.

Footage of the arrest indicated that federal agents were not aware that Pretti was armed when they started beating him and that Pretti was already disarmed with his arms pinned above his head when he was shot at least 10 times.

It seems that Miller may be hoping to backtrack on his callous lies, and he has suddenly changed his story on Alex Pretti’s killing after Trump’s inner circle began to turn on him.

The MAGA movement—and even some sitting Republican congressmen—are blaming progressive Somali Representative Ilhan Omar for the spray attack she experienced at a town hall on Tuesday night.

Representative Randy Fine clearly stated it was Omar’s fault, even when prodded to say otherwise.

“Obviously we often disagree with her politics, but this is not acceptable at any level,” a NewsMax host said while asking for Fine’s reaction, expressing a basic level of empathy that MAGA seems unable to access.

“Look, I want Ilhan Omar to be deported and denaturalized, but I don’t want her to be attacked or hurt,” Fine said, mispronouncing her first name as “Elon.” “But I also blame Ilhan Omar for what happened.”

GOP Representative Ron Johnson went on a nonsensical rant about what would happen if the attacker was an undocumented immigrant (he wasn’t).

“Let’s talk about how crazy this is. Had that been a Republican member of Congress, had that been an illegal immigrant spraying something at a Republican member of Congress—in Minneapolis what would probably happen is they would release that illegal immigrant, and then frustrate ICE’s attempt to apprehend and deport that individual,” Johnson said, rambling on about some hypothetical scenario rather than acknowledging that his colleague was doing the same job he’s supposed to do: talking to constituents.

“We want criminals off the street. We want people that are criminals who came to this country illegally, we want them out of the country. Democrats … created this mess. Now they’re doing everything they can to frustrate DHS, ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, in their effort to clean up the Democrat-created mess,” he continued.

These claims are based entirely on speculation and preexisting racist hatred for Omar fomented by Trump, who on Tuesday evening suggested that Omar “probably had herself sprayed.” MAGA quickly followed suit.

“Nobody cares about your staged victim propaganda. Please go back to Somalia,” MAGA sycophant Laura Loomer wrote, in response to Omar announcing that she was OK after the attack. “We are getting really tired of people like you taking up space in our country.”

All of these comments come after President Trump himself gave them their messaging, claiming that Omar sprayed herself without even watching the video.

“No. I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud. I really don’t think about that. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,” the president told ABC’s Rachel Scott on Tuesday. “I haven’t seen [the video]. No, no. I hope I don’t have to bother.”

The FBI is carrying out a search warrant at an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, related to the 2020 election.

The search is taking place at the Fulton County Elections Hub & Operations Center, the FBI said Wednesday. A spokesperson in the Atlanta office said the bureau was conducting “court-ordered activity” at the election office, without providing additional details.

The building has served as storage space for election equipment, as well as office space for multiple Fulton County agencies, since it opened in 2023. Atlanta TV station WSB-TV reports that the FBI is seeking to take custody of Fulton County election ballots from the 2020 election.

The Justice Department sued the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections last month, claiming that the office hadn’t complied with a subpoena demanding “used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.”

Trump and his supporters continue to claim that he won the 2020 presidential election and that it was stolen from him, alleging widespread fraud in places like Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis pursued a criminal investigation against Trump and 18 allies over the attempt to overthrow election results in her state, but she was disqualified from the case in 2024 over conflict of interest concerns, and the case was dismissed last year.

This story has been updated.

Nicki Minaj, the once-iconic rapper turned MAGA pawn, went onstage at President Trump’s “Trump Accounts” event on Wednesday to deliver a message that was as brief as it was bizarre.

“I’d like to ask you to come up, Nicki, come on up.… She’s been such a great supporter, and a great supporter of Trump Accounts,” the president proclaimed. “And I said, ‘I’m gonna let my nails grow, because I love those nails. I’m gonna let those nails grow.’ She’s so good. She’s been MAGA, what can I say?”

Minaj eventually made it onstage, wearing a large white fur coat.

“Hello! I don’t know what to say, but I will say that I am probably the president’s number one fan,” said Minaj, with Trump and Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary flanking her as the microphone blocked most of her face. “And that’s not going to change. And the hate, or what people have to say—it does not affect me at all. It actually motivates me to support him more, and it’s gonna motivate all of us to support him more.

“We’re not gonna let them get away with bullying him, and the smear campaigns, it’s not going to work, OK?” she continued. “He has a lot of force behind him, and God is protecting him. Amen?” She then left the stage, as Trump invited more and more people onstage to speak in awkward, 30-second intervals.

Minaj was allegedly supposed to be there to announce a massive investment into the so-called “Trump Accounts,” a sort of warped trust-fund situation in which kids born in zip codes under the median-income threshold between 2025 and 2028 get a $1,000 federal contribution that tracks to the U.S. stock index and will become available when they turn 18. But Minaj made no mention of it.

This is at least the third public appearance Minaj has made in support of the Trump administration and the larger MAGA movement. Last November, she joined Ambassador Mike Waltz to spread misinformed claims of “Christian genocide” in Nigeria. In December, she joined Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, at the Turning Point USA Conference, stating they were all “the cool kids.” And now there’s this weird little moment.

Donald Trump’s state of mind left the prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, very concerned after they met earlier this month.

Fico told European Union leaders at a summit last week that he was worried about Trump’s “psychological state,” saying that the president came across as “dangerous” during a meeting the pair had on January 17 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Fico made the comments last Thursday at an emergency EU summit over Trump’s threats to annex Greenland.

Diplomats present at the meeting confirmed Fico’s comments to Politico, but said they didn’t know what Trump said that alarmed Fico. The Slovakian leader is a staunch supporter of Trump, praising him for his stances on the Russia-Ukraine war and telling Americans at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year that “your president is doing Europe a great service.”

Fico denied Politico’s report in an X post Wednesday morning, saying that “no one heard anything, no one saw anything, there are no witnesses, but nothing prevented the POLITICO portal from coming up with lies.” The White House has also denied the report, calling it “absolutely total fake news.”

But the report, which Politico confirmed with diplomats from four different EU countries as well as a senior EU official, is corroborated by multiple instances of Trump’s cognitive decline. He forgot the word for Alzheimer’s in a recent interview while explaining his family history with the disease. Trump mixed up Iceland and Greenland in his Davos speech last week, and one of his former lawyers, Ty Cobb, thinks that his “dementia and the cognitive decline are palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians.” It’s obvious that the president is getting worse every day.