Donald Trump stayed up late after the premiere of his wife’s vanity documentary to post a screed against the Veterans Affairs nurse shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis.
“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,” the 79-year-old president wrote on Truth Social at 1:26 a.m. on Friday.
“It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances!”
The Daily Beast has contacted representatives for Pretti’s family for comment.
Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs ICU nurse, was shot multiple times by Customs and Border Patrol agents during a confrontation in Minneapolis on Saturday.
With MAGA unable to find justification for Pretti’s killing in footage from the incident itself—while Pretti legally had a gun, he did not brandish it while interacting with law enforcement—they instead seized upon footage taken 11 days earlier.
In the older footage, recorded on Jan. 13, Pretti can be seen yelling at federal agents and kicking out the taillight of their car.
“A week before Alex was gunned down in the street—despite posing no threat to anyone—he was violently assaulted by a group of ICE agents,” Steve Schleicher, an attorney for the Pretti family, told the Star Tribune in a statement.
Trump’s decision to use the term “insurrectionist,” in a carefully drafted and grammatically correct post, appeared to be a deliberate reminder to Minnesota authorities that he still has the power to invoke the Insurrection Act and flood the state with military units.
Trump had not previously commented on the new Alex Pretti video, instead reposting an X post from a supporter that sarcastically referred to Pretti as “such a peaceful protestor.”
Meanwhile, others in his orbit were quick to use the footage from the fatal encounter on Saturday to justify Pretti’s death.
Former New York mayor and close Trump ally Rudy Giuliani claimed that the video proved that Pretti and his “female activist accomplice” were “executing a classic ‘rearrest’” when Pretti was shot and killed.
Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly argued that the video indicated Pretti had been “itching for another confrontation with Border Patrol, whom he’d been stalking, harassing and terrorizing.”
Right-wing YouTuber and Trump sycophant Benny Johnson shared the video on his social media accounts with the headline ‘LEFTIST HOAX DESTROYED.’
“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,” he added.
The White House had previously sought to distance itself from the more extreme rhetoric used towards Pretti by members of Trump’s inner circle.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had previously described Pretti as a “domestic terrorist,” while top Trump aide Stephen Miller argued that he was a “would-be assassin.”
When asked by reporters about Noem’s description on Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “I have not heard the president characterize Mr Pretti in that way. However, I have heard the president say he wants to let the facts and the investigation lead itself.”
The president had also previously expressed a desire to “de-escalate” tensions in Minneapolis, where both Pretti and 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good have been killed by federal immigration agents this month.
Discussing his decision to replace hardline Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino with border czar Tom Homan on Tuesday, Trump told Fox News’ Will Cain, “We have Tom Homan there now. We put him in there, he’s great. And they met with the governor and the mayor and everybody else. And we’re going to de-escalate a little bit.”
