MAGA Ramps Up Victim-Blaming After New Video of Alex Pretti Emerges

MAGA is using a new clip of an earlier interaction between Alex Pretti and federal agents in Minnesota to justify him being shot 10 times while defenseless.

In the video that emerged Wednesday evening, Pretti is seen yelling at agents in an SUV before kicking the vehicle’s taillight as it begins to drive away. Then four agents get out of the vehicle and tackle him to the ground before releasing him. It is unclear what happened immediately before and after the clip. Eleven days later, he was killed.

President Trump posted the video of Pretti on Truth Social without comment. Donald Trump Jr. posted the clip as well, with the caption “just a peaceful legal observer?!?!?”

“LEFTIST HOAX DESTROYED. New video shows Alex Pretti violently attacking federal officers and destroying federal law enforcement vehicles. His firearm is fully visible in the footage,” right-wing commentator Benny Johnson wrote. “This video PROVES that Alex Pretti was not an ‘innocent bystander’ or ‘legal observer.’ He was a violent agitator and psychopath hellbent on attacking federal law enforcement. Another left wing hoax destroyed.”

Disgraced former New York City Mayor and Trump stooge Rudy Giuliani used the clip to suggest that “[Pretti] and his female activist accomplice seemed to be executing a classic ‘rearrest,’ they were trained to do, when he got himself shot.?” It is unclear what Giuliani is even talking about, as it is clear from the video of Pretti’s killing that he was protecting a woman from agents while being pepper-sprayed in the face.

“Alex Pretti was itching for another confrontation with Border Patrol, whom he’d been stalking, harassing and terrorizing,” Megyn Kelly chimed, lying through her keyboard. “HE had been victimizing THEM. His felonies are on tape. He was reckless, and it cost him his life. Find another poster boy, illegal-loving Leftists.”

The pathetic argument quickly received a lot of blowback.

“Federal agents shot him ten times after disarming him, Megyn,” liberal podcaster Jon Favreau responded. “If you’d like to live in a country where the punishment for kicking a taillight is a public execution, you’re free to leave America. No one is buying your bullshit. You’ve lost the country on this one. Go juice your audience numbers with some other rage bait.”

It’s hard to fathom just how morally bankrupt you have to be to use a video of Pretti kicking a car—just days after agents murdered Renee Good—to determine that he’s a “violent agitator and psychopath” who deserved those 10 bullets. These are the same people who think January 6 insurrectionist Ashley Babbitt is some kind of martyr. And don’t ever forget—the Trump administration’s first response to Pretti’s killing was to slander him as a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”

An FBI operation to capture former Olympian turned suspected cocaine trafficker Ryan Wedding in Mexico has shaken relations between the U.S. and its southern neighbor.

Last week, the U.S. deployed the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team to Mexico to capture Wedding, who once was protected by the powerful Sinaloa cartel. But that was supposed to be kept secret, especially since Mexican law prohibits foreign law enforcement officers from being physically present in operations on Mexican soil, let alone take part in raids and arrests.

On Friday, however, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the joint operation publicly on X. “Our FBI HRT teams executed with precision, discipline, and total professionalism alongside our Mexican partners to bring Ryan James Wedding back to face justice,” he wrote, sending shock waves through Mexico.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum scrambled to perform damage control, as foreign intervention in Mexico is politically toxic. She said that there was no U.S. involvement in the operation and that U.S. agents in Mexico are limited by law.

“I’m not going to get into a debate with the FBI director, nor do I want there to be a conflict,” Sheinbaum said at a press conference Tuesday. “What they, the U.S. authorities, told the Mexican authorities is that it was a voluntary surrender.” She pointed to a picture Wedding posted to his Instagram account at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico announcing that he was turning himself in.

Wedding’s lawyer Anthony Colombo disputes that account, saying that Wedding was handcuffed by FBI agents and transported to California.

“He was arrested, he didn’t surrender,” Colombo told The Wall Street Journal, adding, “If the U.S. government is unilaterally going into a sovereign country and apprehending somebody, you can understand the concern that sovereign entity might have.”

Tensions between Mexico and the U.S. are high, considering Trump’s threats to levy tariffs and take military actions against the country, ostensibly to combat drug trafficking. Mexico has sought to placate Trump in some ways, increasing border security, placing tariffs on Chinese goods, and sending drug lords on planes to U.S. custody without the normal extradition process, possibly breaking laws.

Patel’s rash decision to post about Wedding’s arrest online doesn’t help the situation right now. It opens Sheinbaum up to political attacks in Mexico and makes the U.S.-Mexico relationship even shakier. Under Trump, though, American law enforcement is playing fast and loose with not just the law but diplomatic relations.

The president’s decision to wield U.S. troops against American cities has cost taxpayers a pretty penny.

A report published Wednesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the numerous deployments cost Americans nearly $500 million over the last year.

Since June, the Trump administration has dispatched National Guard personnel or active-duty Marine Corps personnel to six cities across the country: Los Angeles, Washington, Memphis, Portland, Chicago, and New Orleans. All but New Orleans, which saw troops deployed at the tail end of the year, were included in the CBO estimation.

“The factors CBO used to estimate the costs of deployments in 2025 suggest that continuing the ongoing deployments at their size as of the end of 2025 would cost $93 million per month,” the office said in a statement. “More generally, deploying 1,000 National Guard personnel to a U.S. city in 2026 would cost $18 million to $21 million per month, depending mainly on the city’s cost of living.”

Donald Trump deployed thousands of National Guard members over 2025 to “protect federal government personnel and property.” Ultimately, he exclusively targeted Democratic cities for what he described as fostering a crime-riddled hellscape, though the data he used to justify such claims were often outdated or just plain incorrect.

Red states—Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, South Carolina, and Ohio—lent significant assistance, sending hundreds of their respective National Guard members to assist in his occupations.

To tally up the total cost, the CBO examined military pay, benefits, and health care, as well as the costs for lodging the active-duty personnel while they were away from their home stations.

Food costs were also calculated, as were transportation costs “to move personnel from their home stations to their deployments and back again, as well as costs to transport personnel between their lodging and their assigned location each day.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi has started sharing the names and photographs of protesters arrested in Minneapolis—in violation of Department of Justice rules.

Bondi took to X Wednesday to share the names and photographs of 16 protesters who had been arrested for allegedly assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal law enforcement agents. “We expect more arrests to come,” she warned.

DOJ policy expressly prohibits releasing mug shots of defendants charged with federal crimes, unless releasing their photo would serve a “legitimate law enforcement function.” Not only did Bondi’s posts fail to serve a clear law enforcement function, they were blatantly intended to have a chilling effect on protesters’ expression of their First Amendment rights.

Notably, these protesters have only been arrested—not convicted. And somehow, the public still hasn’t been told the names of the federal agents who shot and killed Alex Pretti.

Among those Bondi posted about was Nasra Ahmed, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen who said she was wrongly detained by ICE for two days, that one federal agent called her a racial slur, and that she suffered a concussion after officers pushed her to the ground.

Bondi’s escalating antics come as immigration agents have repeatedly failed to provide sufficient evidence that demonstrators in Minnesota have committed actual crimes, such as assault, when trying to obtain warrants for arrest.

There is mounting evidence that suggests federal law enforcement has lost the plot on what protesters “impeding” their work actually looks like. Federal agents have aggressively approached citizen ICE watchers simply monitoring their operations, threatening to arrest them—or worse. And former FBI agents have complained of watching ICE officers in Minnesota arrest protesters who appear to be using their First Amendment rights to taunt or yell at federal officers, according to MS NOW.

There’s also evidence that federal agents don’t know what assault looks like—or that they don’t care. Last year, when ICE pursued felony assault charges against anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles, inaccurate and misleading testimonies from law enforcement officers unraveled multiple cases.

Local officials in Springfield, Ohio—the subject of Vice President JD Vance’s racist smears about Haitian immigrants—are bracing for a 30-day ICE surge. 

In a message obtained by the Springfield News-Sun, Springfield City School District Superintendent Bob Hill said that local officials had discussed the likelihood that federal immigration authorities could descend on the city sometime after Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants expires on February 3.

“Federal authorities signaled an enforcement window of at least 30 days,” Hill’s message said. “A federal list of individual removal orders has been identified in Springfield as an initial focal point for enforcement activity, with discretion to detain additional individuals encountered who lack lawful status.”

Hill specified that there was no evidence that immigration enforcement would take place on school property. However, as we have seen in Minneapolis and elsewhere, immigration enforcement directly affects school-age children, who can either be left stranded or detained alongside their relatives. 

In a city such as Springfield, which has seen an influx of new Haitian residents in the past few years, this is especially true. Pam Shay, director of federal programs at Springfield City Schools, claimed that immigrant students count for anywhere between 5 and 40 percent of the population of an individual district building. She also said that approximately 20 percent of the district’s 1,400 students were admitted after 2021, and do not have citizenship documents. 

The meeting of state leaders and emergency management officials that prompted Hill’s message was reportedly hosted by Governor Bob DeWine. However, the governor’s spokesperson, Dan Tierney, said there had been no “formal communication” of ICE’s plans for the city, and he could not verify whether the governor had warned administrators about the enforcement window or the list. 

Once TPS expires, many Haitian immigrants will be stripped of their legal status, unless they sought alternative protections, such as asylum. However, there have been numerous reports that immigration judges are routinely dismissing asylum cases and the asylum-seekers are then taken into ICE custody for expedited removal. 

Advocates in Springfield who warned about the impending immigration enforcement when TPS expires were instructed by government officials to help Haitian immigrants “self-deport” to a “third country.”  

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Vance elevated racist lies that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs, using incendiary rhetoric to drum up votes. President Donald Trump then echoed these lies during a presidential debate, and vowed to enact aggressive immigration enforcement in Springfield. Trump had initially attempted to end TPS in September, but a federal judge extended the deadline until February.

The blowback is not slowing down for Representative Tom Suozzi, in the wake of his vote to continue funding ICE.

Several strategically placed activists appeared at an event in Suozzi’s district Tuesday night, wielding a diaper, kneepads, and some harsh words for the Long Island Democrat.

“I wanted to get something for you: This is an adult diaper for when you pee yourself in front of Donald Trump,” said a man associated with the group Climate Defiance as he approached the dais. “You can wear this, it’s really nice. You’re the type of leader we need right now, someone who soils himself when the fascists are at our door.”

As the man was escorted away, another member popped up out of the audience.

“Sorry, I didn’t know we were doing gifts,” the second activist said. “I have some kneepads for you, you can use these while you blow Donald Trump. Alternatively you can get off your knees and you can stand up to him literally and figuratively. Abolish ICE, defund them. You do not show any moral courage. You are funding the gestapo.”

As that activist was shuffled away, yet another voice rose up, walking across the stage with a microphone before he was ultimately dragged out of the room by a small crowd.

“I just would like to say one thing,” the third man said. “As a Jewish man, I have never felt safer than when there is a mass gestapo in the street. So, thank you Congressman Tom Suozzi for funding ICE.

“I think the only way we can fight antisemitism is to align ourselves with white supremacists,” he snarked. “I know he apologized, but I just want to reiterate that nobody could have predicted that ICE would have been killing innocent people.”

Suozzi was one of seven liberal lawmakers who voted in support of the Department of Homeland Security’s $64.4 billion funding bill last week. At the time, Suozzi argued that the bill—and by extension, his vote—was not intended to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Not even 48 hours later, ICE agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, renewing a public fury that ultimately forced Suozzi to publicly defend his decision.

In an email to his campaign list Monday, 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.”

A group of local, elected prosecutors from around the country is launching an effort to hold federal agents liable for abuses of power. They’re calling it the Fight Against Federal Overeach, or “FAFO” for short. The name FAFO turns “fuck around and find out,” a term Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to make happen at his emergency military summit last fall, against the Trump administration.

A press release on Wednesday noted that the group would be particularly focused on states undergoing an influx of federal agents.

“The coalition launches amid growing concerns about warrantless entries, unlawful detentions, and coercive enforcement tactics by federal agents, and it’s intended to ensure that constitutional limits on federal power are actively enforced through lawful institutions,” the statement read. “The coalition will share strategies and best practices among prosecutors, provide regular public updates on efforts to rein in unlawful federal conduct and educate the public on what paths are legally available, and coordinate on accountability efforts across jurisdictions.”

FAFO’s founding members are a group of district attorneys including Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, Austin, Texas’s José Garza, and Pima County, Arizona’s Laura Conover, among others.

The launch comes as federal immigration agents in the past year have descended upon Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tennessee; Los Angeles; and Minneapolis, where Minnesotans watched agents gun down two of their neighbors—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—in broad daylight. Aside from the killing, these deployments have been marked by door-to-door raids, detained toddlers, and maimed protesters. While it’s unclear how likely FAFO is to succeed in charging a federal agent with abuse of power, this one of the most pointed statements from local, legal leadership to date.

“No agency and no officer is above the law,” Krasner said in the statement. “When federal agents exceed their lawful authority, local prosecutors have both the power and the duty to act. The project exists to ensure that accountability is real, coordinated, and enforced through lawful institutions.”

The FAFO coalition will convene in February to discuss tactics and next steps.

Rock and roll legend Bruce Springsteen released a protest song Wednesday condemning the violence occurring at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol in Minneapolis.

The song, titled “Streets of Minneapolis,” denounces “Trump’s federal thugs,” the administration’s attempts to cover up the killings and raids they’ve conducted, and ICE’s ongoing presence in the city.

“I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis,” Springsteen said in a statement posted to Instagram. “It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free.”

The song also took aim at active participants within the Trump administration, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller, who have unsuccessfully tried to smear Pretti’s and Good’s name in the aftermath of their deaths in order to salvage Trump’s immigration agenda.

“Their claim was self defense, sir / Just don’t believe your eyes / It’s our blood and bones / And these whistles and phones / Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies,” Springsteen sings on the new track.

Springsteen has been a vocal critic of the president for years. Since Trump’s second inauguration, the “Born in the USA” singer has accused the president and his allies of “rolling back historic civil rights legislation,” abandoning longtime U.S. allies to side with dictators, “defunding American universities,” and “taking sadistic pleasure” in inflicting pain on “loyal American workers.”

Before ICE agents killed Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked in Veterans Affairs, Springsteen appeared at the Light of Day benefit in Red Bank, New Jersey, with a similar fury.

“If you believe in the power of law and that no one stands above it,” Springsteen said on January 17, “if you stand against heavily armed masked federal troops invading an American city, using gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens, if you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest, then send a message to this president, as the mayor of the city said: ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

This story has been updated.

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.”