Unsurprisingly, the weekend’s loudest story splashed onto the front pages again this morning, about the peaceful Minneapolis nurse who was minding his own business and innocently playing with his bear horn and practicing his wrestling techniques when he was suddenly and unexpectedly murdered by ICE agents for no reason. The New York Times ran this morning’s top-of-page story under the headline, “How the Trump Administration Rushed to Judgment in Minneapolis Shooting.”
To be clear, the Times’s story was not referring to the Athens, Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, who was abducted by an illegal immigrant while she was jogging and then raped, murdered, and stuffed in the bushes. The Times isn’t concerned about that nurse, nor did it run days of multi-story coverage about her. Don’t be silly.
No, it was a completely different nurse who was, in an ironic twist on Laken’s story, shot while defending illegal alien criminals from federal agents. Even more ironically, Mr. Pretti used a very different standard for avoiding risks during covid:
Had he followed his own ‘safety-first’ covid advice, he might still be here today to help agonize over all the different video angles of the incident that the media has been obsessing over.
This is already a widely discussed story, so I won’t dwell on the details. Plus, I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there when Pretti was shot while federal agents were dealing with his “peaceful arrest-resisting.” It seems self-evident that going to violent, chaotic protests, shouting obscenities, blowing bear horns in agents’ faces, interfering when they tried to subdue another protester, carrying a semi-auto with extra magazines, and wrestling with officers in a high-adrenaline encounter carries known risks of an unfortunate misunderstanding and tragic outcome.
Nurse Pretti stayed home to avoid the risk of a mild viral infection, but he practically sprinted to a tumultuous street protest, armed, and grappled with law enforcement. Make it make sense.
🔥 The blame-game is off and running. The Times and Democrats claim the shooting was unjustified. But, if millions of people carefully flyspecking the incident frame-by-frame, from multiple angles and videos, can’t even agree whether Pretti touched his gun or tried to reach his holster, how on Earth are officers involved in the scrum expected to tell in the heat of the moment and in a split second?
The fact that this debate has raged for so long without any clarity is evidence of ambiguity, which must accrue in the officers’ favor. We can’t ask citizens to enforce laws and then hold them to impossible standards. If anyone is at fault, it is the Minnesota authorities, whose inept decisions created the high-risk conditions leading straight to the shooting.
Think about it. There have been no police shootings in jurisdictions like Florida that cooperate with federal authorities, instead of undermining them. This chart, which shows ICE arrests as a proportion of illegal immigrant population, tells the whole story:
The apparent outlier, the District of Columbia, is under federal control, so it should be considered a red state for the chart’s purposes. Put simply, the chart proves that blue states are resisting immigration enforcement. They refuse simple cooperation, such as handing over aliens from their jails, prisons, and hospitals. So ICE must go into those communities to find the aliens. Meanwhile, activists track ICE and organize insta-riots, which leads to more demonstrations and more chances for ugly encounters like the Pretti shooting.
I’m sorry Mr. Pretti lost his life due to his poor choices. But considering the risks these states and protesters are obviously creating for themselves and others, it’s a miracle there have only been two deaths so far.
🔥 It’s also worth noting that the streets of Minneapolis (-17 degrees) were calm until just after Operation Metro Surge began in response to the Quality Learing fraud. Are the protests a cover up? Yesterday, President Trump posted this:
He immediately followed that post with an even longer one, “formally” demanding that blue states begin cooperating with immigration enforcement:
Also yesterday —and the timing cannot be ignored— CBS reported, “Bondi seeks Minnesota voter rolls, welfare data to “help bring back law and order” in wake of shootings.” Yesterday (Sunday!), in the wake of the ugly Pretti shooting, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired off a 3-page letter to Minnesota’s Coach-in-Chief, Tim Walz, setting terms for a mutual climb down. CBS didn’t bother linking the letter. (But here it is!)
She wants three things. Bondi’s letter first demanded that the state “share all of Minnesota’s records on Medicaid and Food and Nutrition Service programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program data … to efficiently investigate fraud and ensure that Minnesota’s welfare funds are being used to help those in need, not enrich fraudsters.”
For some reason, CBS’s story didn’t mention Bondi’s first demand, relating to the fraud, till later down the story. But it seems significant that fraud was her first issue.
Second, “repeal the sanctuary policies that have led to so much crime and violence in your state” and cooperate with ICE, including allowing access to local jails and honoring federal detention requests. Third, “allow the DOJ to access voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law.”
Seems simple enough. Bondi offered some more advice. “Do not obstruct federal immigration enforcement,” Bondi advised. “Do not allow rioters to take over the streets and houses of worship; do not hinder federal officials from investigating financial fraud and violations of election laws.” She optimistically concluded, “I am confident that these simple steps will help bring back law and order to Minnesota and improve the lives of Americans.”
Haha! Too optimistic! Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon shot back with a statement last night saying, “The answer to Attorney General Bondi’s request is no.” Alrighty then.
So where are we? It seems like the unstoppable force is colliding with the immovable object— Tim Walz’s granite noggin. It’s hard to predict where this ends up, but it isn’t Trump’s first rodeo with Minneapolis. Somehow, I doubt it’s a coincidence that this frozen showdown is happening there. Somewhere, George Floyd’s ghost is shaking his head.
