There is no doubt in MS NOW host Chris Hayes’s mind that the Trump administration is losing its fight in Minneapolis after the killing of VA nurse Alex Pretti.
“I think that there is a profound moral revulsion that has begun to kind of ripple through society outward and outward in these sort of circles that emanate from what we’ve seen in Minneapolis, both with Renée Good and with Mr. Pretti’s death,” Hayes, 46, said on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday.
“I think that we’re in a situation right now where people who’ve not been checked out are waking up to the kind of abject moral depravity that is what this administration is at this moment,” the All In host continued.
On Saturday, Border Patrol agents shot and killed Veterans’ Affairs ICU nurse Pretti, 37, while he was filming them. It is the second killing this month by immigration officers in Minneapolis, following the death of Good, 37, earlier this month.
For Hayes, the widespread video documentation from Minneapolis residents has reclaimed the narrative from an administration whose response he characterized as “sociopathic.”
“It took tremendous courage for the people who have recorded. That’s what Alex Pretti was doing when he was murdered—and I say that advisedly. It’s what the woman in the pink coat was doing. It’s what Renée Good’s wife did. And it’s taken incredible courage for people to do this. But it’s so vital that we have that documentation,” Hayes said.
Following the latest fatal shooting, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem alleged that Pretti “approached” Border Patrol agents seeking to “inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement“ and “brandished” his gun. That same day, Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller called Pretti a “would-be assassin.”
Videos taken at the scene showed Pretti neither unholstering nor brandishing his weapon before being disarmed and shot by federal officials.
The Emmy-winning news show host said that nonviolent resistance, like recording, has led to the Trump administration “unambiguously losing” in the Midwest city.
“They are unambiguously losing,” Hayes declared. “They are losing. And part of the tradition of nonviolent civil resistance and disobedience from Gandhi through King, through what we’ve seen on the streets of Minneapolis, is that in a fearless and disciplined fashion, refusing to give an inch to the regime, you expose its malevolence.”
Hayes said that the aim of this civil disobedience is to clarify the “moral truth” between the oppressors and the oppressed.
“It has cost two people their lives, and other people not going to school, and other people being tear gassed, and other people being thrown into detention. But this has been a tremendous political and moral victory, even if nothing happens up until this point, at the horrible, tragic cost of these two lives,” Hayes said.
For Hayes, congressional Democrats are now walking the path built by the protestors, after years of being on the wrong side of public opinion.
“I think the people are leading and they’re following,” he said. “What’s happened is that the courage and moral fortitude and organization and persistence of people from Los Angeles to Chicago to Memphis to now Minneapolis, has forced public opinion in the right direction that now the Democratic elected politicians can kind of file in behind that.”
