Trump Implies Alex Pretti Deserved What Happened to Him

For all his platitudes in the wake of Alex Pretti’s death, Donald Trump doesn’t seem to care about or respect the slain ICU nurse one bit.

In a Truth Social post late Thursday night, the president coldly referred to Pretti as an “agitator” and claimed that his “stock has gone way down.”

“Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist, Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces,” Trump wrote.

Pretti was identified in previously unseen footage Thursday, tying him to another clash with officers 11 days before ICE agents killed him. In the clip, he can be seen shouting, spitting, and kicking a government SUV before several agents tackled him to the ground.

CNN reported Tuesday that an earlier incident between Pretti and ICE agents had left him with a broken rib, though they cited an anonymous source and did not make mention of where or when it allegedly happened.

A representative for the family told the Minnesota Star Tribune Wednesday that they could not confirm if Pretti broke his rib interacting with officers, but recalled that a previous altercation between Pretti and federal agents had torn his clothes and left him in pain with unknown injuries, which the representative noted Pretti did not seek medical treatment for.

“It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control,” Trump continued. “The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

In just a few short weeks, Operation Metro Surge has conducted militarized raids across Minnesota, terrorizing residents and killing two U.S. citizens while carrying out Trump’s immigration agenda.

In defense of the plan, Trump and his allies have challenged the Second Amendment, suggesting that Pretti deserved to die for carrying a gun—despite the fact that he was licensed to do so. They also unsuccessfully tried to smear Pretti and the other victim, award-winning poet Renee Nicole Good, as “domestic terrorists” intent on killing federal officers.

But their deaths—and the ensuing smear campaign—were not received well by the American public. Instead, protests ensued across the country, demanding an immediate end to ICE’s brutality. People of all stripes flooded town halls and Republicans and Democrats alike vented their frustrations, booing at a recent Homeland Security funding package that provided ongoing support for ICE.

Trump initially appeared wary of the boiling tensions. Earlier this week, he tapped border czar Tom Homan to oversee the agency’s presence in Minnesota, replacing Customs and Border Protection chief Greg Bovino in the process. On Thursday, Homan told reporters that he was working on a “drawdown” plan to scale back the number of agents occupying the North Star State.

None of that appeared to matter by that evening, though, when a reporter asked Trump if the administration was finally going to scale back in Minnesota.

“No, no. Not at all,” Trump replied.

Nearly a dozen people close to the Trump administration skipped out on the world premiere of Melania Trump’s new documentary, Melania—even her own son. 

Multiple family members were no-shows at the first lady’s big night at the Kennedy Center Thursday, including Barron Trump, Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Tiffany Trump, and Ivanka Trump. Several Trump officials—including Vice President JD Vance—and high-profile conservative influencers who were invited to the premiere also skipped, as a hot mic on the black carpet captured a staff reaction to the absences. 

“Who didn’t show on the red carpet? Kari Lake, she didn’t show. Brett Baier, Kellyanne Conway, Riley Gaines, Benny Johnson … [Homeland Security Secretary Kristi] Noem didn’t show. Bondi didn’t show, weird,” staff said. They also noted that FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi weren’t there, although reports reveal they eventually showed up. 

So who actually showed up to watch this documentary? Nicki Minaj was there, as was Trump lawyer Alina Habba, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and second lady Usha Vance. Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Saudi royalty, and Mike Tyson stopped by a White House premiere of the documentary last weekend. 

The lack of enthusiasm from even the most loyal members of the Trump administration speaks to how useless and inopportune this documentary is. No one cares about Melania, not even the people who get paid to.  

Federal agents arrested two Black journalists—Don Lemon and independent Minnesota journalist Georgia Fort—and two Black activists on Thursday night. 

“At my direction, early this morning federal agents arrested Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy, in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote. “More details soon.”

Each person arrested was connected to an anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul earlier this month. It is unclear what they will be charged with, and it appears they are being targeted for their First Amendment rights. 

“Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards,” a statement from Lemon’s lawyer read. “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done … Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case. This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.” 

The Justice Department announced that they would “pursue charges” against Lemon just over a week ago. 

“Don Lemon himself has come out and said he knew exactly what was going to happen inside that facility,”  Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said on ‘The Benny Show’ earlier this month. “He went into the facility, and then he began — quote, unquote — ‘committing journalism,’ as if that’s sort of a shield from being a part, an embedded part, of a criminal conspiracy. It isn’t.”

Fort was detained in her home in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

“I wanted to alert the public that agents are at my door right now, they’re saying that they were able to go before a grand jury … and that they have a warrant for my arrest,” Fort said in a Facebook live video before being arrested.

“As a member of the press, I filmed the church protest a few weeks ago, and now I’m being arrested for that,” she added. “It’s hard to understand how we have a Constitution, constitutional rights, when we can just be arrested for being a member of the press.”

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve actually has a long history as an inflation hawk, not the most obvious choice for a president who keeps pushing for lower interest rates.

Trump announced on Truth Social Friday morning that Kevin Warsh, 55, will be his nominee to lead the central bank. “I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Kevin Warsh to be the CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM,” Trump wrote. “I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best. On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’ and he will never let you down.”

Warsh is a former Federal Reserve governor who worked as an economist for the White House during the George W. Bush administration. In April 2009, as unemployment skyrocketed during the Great Recession, Warsh was especially concerned about interest rates being lowered too much, seeing inflation as a greater risk.

“I continue to be more worried about upside risks to inflation than downside risks,” Warsh said during a Fed meeting at the time. During those years, he helped manage the financial crisis with then–Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, who was New York Fed president at the time and would later become treasury secretary under President Obama.

In recent months, Warsh has changed his tune and spoken favorably of lowering interest rates, which seems to have caught the eye of President Trump, who otherwise wouldn’t have made the seemingly conventional pick.

Trump has railed against Powell for not lowering interest rates enough, even pushing an unprecedented criminal investigation into the Fed. But amid that controversy, Warsh’s nomination will now go to the Senate Banking Committee, and after a public hearing, the Senate will vote on whether to confirm him.

Some Republican senators, such as Lisa Murkowski and Thom Tillis, have said they would hold up the president’s Fed nominations while the criminal investigation continues, echoed by leading Democrats.

“No Republican purporting to care about Fed independence should agree to move forward with this nomination until Trump drops his witch hunts of the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve and Governor Lisa Cook,” said Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the banking committee.

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are floating the possibility of a mass resignation in protest of the Justice Department’s response to the recent ICE killings of two U.S. citizens.

Prosecutors expressed their frustration to U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, Donald Trump’s appointee to lead the Minneapolis office, irate over the Justice Department’s retroactive smear campaign to justify the deaths of ICU nurse Alex Pretti and award-winning poet Renee Nicole Good. In an act of defiance, federal prosecutors in the state have reportedly told Rosen that they might resign en masse, leaving the office to crumble under the weight of the unattended workload, officials told The Washington Post Thursday.

It’s not an empty threat: At least one prosecutor in the office’s criminal division has already resigned, reported the Post.

But ICE’s time pillaging Minnesota is almost up.

Border czar Tom Homan, who recently took the reins of ICE and its sister agency, Customs and Border Protection, told reporters Thursday that he is working on a “drawdown” plan to scale back the number of agents occupying the North Star State.

He noted, however, that he is “not surrendering the president’s mission in immigration enforcement.”

But the way that federal agencies have gone about enacting that agenda has been nothing short of illegal. The chief federal district judge in the state declared in a legal memo Wednesday that ICE had violated 96 court orders since Operation Metro Surge began last month.

“ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz wrote.

In just a few short weeks, Operation Metro Surge has conducted militarized raids across Minnesota, terrorizing residents while carrying out what state officials have described as “unconstitutional stops and arrests, all under the guise of lawful immigration enforcement.”