Donald Trump has attempted to blame Democrats for the brutal public killings of two American citizens this month by his immigration officers.
On Saturday, Veterans Affairs nurse Alex Pretti was shot dead in Minneapolis, just three weeks after an ICE agent killed Renee Good in the same area.
Hours after Pretti, 37, was killed, Trump held a screening of Amazon’s upcoming Melania documentary at the White House, attended by CEOs including Apple’s Tim Cook.
Trump, 79, took to his Truth Social account on Sunday for two lengthy posts, clocking in at almost 530 words combined, that slammed former President Joe Biden, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not playing ball with the Republican-sanctioned ICE raids.
Neither of them mentioned Pretti or Good by name, just a footnote that added, “tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos.”
Sticking to his usual script of “Crooked” Biden signing off on “Tens of Millions of Illegal Aliens” entering the U.S., Trump insisted the problem was a political one.
He claimed Republican run states of Texas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana had arrested “150,245 Criminal Illegal Aliens” in the past year “with ZERO protest, riots, chaos.”
“Meanwhile, Democrat run Sanctuary Cities and States are REFUSING to cooperate with ICE, and they are actually encouraging Leftwing Agitators to unlawfully obstruct their operations to arrest the Worst of the Worst People!,” Trump claimed.
“By doing this, Democrats are putting Illegal Alien Criminals over Taxpaying, Law-Abiding Citizens, and they have created dangerous circumstances for EVERYONE involved. Tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos.”
His solution was for Walz, Frey and “EVERY Democrat Governor and Mayor” in the U.S. “to formally cooperate with the Trump Administration to enforce our Nation’s Laws, rather than resist and stoke the flames of Division, Chaos, and Violence.”
The Daily Beast has contacted reps for Biden, Walz, and Frey for comment.
Also on Sunday, Trump twice avoided direct questions about whether the agent who fatally shot Pretti had done the right thing and said his administration would investigate the death, which was caught on camera.
“We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal.
The president had posted a photo, reportedly of a gun legally owned by Pretti, on Truth Social on Saturday, without mentioning the ICU nurse had been killed by ICE agents.
“I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it,” Trump told the WSJ. “But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”
Trump said the weapon, which the DHS said was a 9mm semiautomatic handgun, was a “very dangerous gun, a dangerous and unpredictable gun. It’s a gun that goes off when people don’t know it.”
Footage of the incident from several angles appears to show that Pretti was not carrying the weapon when confronted by a group of ICE officers during a protest. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the nurse a “terrorist” but deflected questions about his weapon.
Speaking to the WSJ, Trump did admit ICE officers will leave Minneapolis, but did not offer an exact date for the withdrawal.
“At some point we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job,” he said, adding, “We’ll leave a different group of people there for the financial fraud.”
