Multiple Minneapolis Murders

 

Outrage makes coherent writing a challenge. I’ll try.

Hell-bent on defending ICE when Renee Good was murdered, Trump and MAGA could claim her killer feared for his life because, for an instant, he was stupidly in front of her car. They could pretend that when he shot her to death, standing to the side, he was still endangered, because... I don’t know. Something.

But the latest Minneapolis murder, by Border Patrol agents (why are they there?) led by Nazi cosplayer Greg Bovino, affords no such rationale. The first shot into Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who cared for critically ill veterans, came from behind, after another attacker had removed his licensed and holstered gun, which, unlike the lies told by Trump, Miller, Vance, Noem, Bovino, and more, he had pointed at no one, nor even touched. As he was executed, Alex Pretti was held down by several so-called officers, subdued, blinded by pepper spray.

We know the videos. Alex Pretti was holding a camera, not a weapon. When a non-violent woman was pushed to the ground by Trump’s thugs, he went to help her, and was taken down by several what-to-call-thems. He threatened no one. The gunmen who pumped eleven bullets into him, the kind Trump hires, might be professional killers, but they’re the opposite of professional law enforcement. Many are actual criminals. Others are just horrible humans. 

It’s so egregious, one might wonder if the assassination was intentional, because Trump and his Svengali, Stephen Miller, wanted to incite violence, enough to rationalize Trump’s dream of mowing down people who dare oppose him. I’m no conspiracist, but this was so out of bounds that who knows? Admirably, Minnesotans have refused the bait.

Everything Trump and his mouthpieces have said, even as multiple videos showed the truth, have been outrageous lies, told by people who know they’re lying but do it anyway. The lies and smears came so fast it was as if a script was pre-prepared. He was there “to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” He was “a domestic terrorist and an assassin.” No one should believe a single word coming from any of them. Ever again.

Republicans defend the right of all Americans to be armed with all weapons at all times in all places under all circumstances. Wasn’t there a time when self-described patriots were buying up military-style weapons and so much ammo that there were nationwide shortages? Wasn’t it to protect themselves from a repressive government bent on rounding up and killing Americans? In fairness, that was when our president was a black man. But, unless memory fails, unlike Trump, President Barack Obama never called for the death of his political opponents or hired death squads. Now that America is living their fever dream, where are those brave men?

If Alex Pretti having a gun meant, ipso facto, as stated by Trump’s hench, that he intended mayhem, would I be a hero, encountering one of those compensatory microphallics in Walmart, slung with an AR-15 and bandoleers containing enough rounds to erase everyone in the store, if I killed him?

Like fiscal responsibility, law and order, and free speech, the right to bear arms turns out to be just another cynical Republican talking point. Bovino tried to legitimize the murder because Alex Pretti “possessed” a weapon. Possessed! He even showed a picture of it. Will independent investigators be allowed to check the registration?

The implication: anyone legally carrying is a deserving target. It’s a bit of a departure from Republican doctrine, but there’s nothing about Trumpism that conforms to long-gone conservatism. Trumpism has devolved into fascism. 

So committed was Trump to moral leadership that he spent the next days touting his monstrosity of a ballroom and hosting billionaire suck-ups for a private screening of a fawning movie about his third wife.

After the execution of Alex Pretti, not even the most Trumpofoxified can deny that Trump and his chosen atrocities lied about what we all saw. They consider their supporters submissive idiots and figure they can dilute votes from those who aren’t. In Trump’s America, citizens are murdered without cause or consequence. Constitutionally protected protest is domestic terrorism. Like the First, the Second Amendment is situational, applying only to his followers. Like Kyle Rittenhouse.

Until Trump is gone, voting for any Republican signifies approval of the brutality behind the murders in Minneapolis and of the mendacious people he hired to oversee it. No matter one’s political leanings, this cruel lawlessness must be stopped. No exaggeration: The times demand choosing between standing with or against America. Assuming it’ll still be allowed, only massive voting can end Trumpic tyranny. Despite a few words of “concern,” Congressional Republicans won’t.

The murders in Minneapolis should fill the hearts of every American with outrage, dialed to 11/3/2026. If so, Republicans would lose both Houses in a tsunami of repudiation.

Meanwhile, don’t leave home without a camera phone.

Yeah, I guess the outrage got to me.

Blinded By The Right

 

Calling elected Republicans cowards gives them undeserved credit. It implies that, seeing what Trump and his brutality-loving private army known as ICE are doing, plus his lawlessness and egotistical imperialism, they know it’s wrong but are afraid to say so.

No.

By now, their silence and that of the misinformed people who elected them shows they love what they’re seeing. They’re not cowards. They’re collaborators. They’re participating in the undoing of America, furthering a totalitarian, white supremacist theocracy, a blitzkrieg against democracy begun well before Trump descended upon us. And, as Europe no longer trusts the US, the ceding of world economic and political power to China.

The votes are there. We shouldn’t have to wait till the November election. By voting to defund it, Congress could stop the excesses of ICE in a minute. It could reclaim its war powers and redirect its investigative ones. It could recall its Constitutional role in levying tariffs. All it would take is a handful of Republicans to rediscover their humanity and duty to the law, assuming they once existed. Except for chameleons like J.D. Vance and Lindsey Graham, people don’t change so completely, so fast. Amorality and disregard for the Constitution must have defined them from the beginning.

Surely they’ve seen what President de facto Stephen Miller told ICE agents after the murder in Minneapolis: “You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one – no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist – can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties... [I]f officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.” Translation: “Ignore local laws and officials. You won’t be prosecuted. The prosecuted will be anyone who tries to make you follow American law. I am the law. Trump (to a lesser extent) is the law. Not the courts, not a moldering piece of parchment.”

Unable to imagine the breadth and depth of the corruption and cravenness of Trumpism, the Founders failed us. A system that allows a single, psychically broken, self-deluding man-child to have his way, punishing those who don’t submit, including long-standing allies; a toddler having a tantrum over refused candy – that system is inadequate to the times.

So confident are they in unfailing support that Trump and his mobsters aren’t hiding their White Nationalist agenda. Trump’s Department of inJustice just rehired James Rodden, previously removed when his online posts were earthed, saying such thing as “America is a White nation,” “Migrants are all criminals,” and “All blacks are foreign to my people.” Welcome back, Jim.

The Department of Homeland inSecurity posted an ad seeking ICE applicants, featuring a cowboy under a stealth bomber in the sky. Its text reads, “We’ll have our home again,” from a WWII Nazi anthem loved by American white supremacists. 

Ubermenschette Kristi Noem gave a speech from a podium bearing the motto, “One of ours, all of yours.” Meaning: Kill one of us, we’ll kill all of you. In various forms, it’s been used by the world’s worst authoritarians. Nor is it accidental that Greg Bovino, Trump’s preening border security chief, dresses like an Obergruppenführer. At one time, they didn’t like being called neo-Nazis or white supremacists. Now, they’re broadcasting it, while MAGA and their Congressional representatives celebrate.

The story of America’s collapse, written by non-American journalists and historians, as ours will have been eliminated, will be one of willing acquiescence; of how, while there was still a chance to have prevented it, so-called conservatives, universities, bar associations, and not-yet sold-out media cowered, while elected Republicans and their MAGA horde welcomed it like the Second Coming. Preferring democracy, Congressional Democrats resisted, but weren’t in charge. The opportunity to protect it slipped away.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to ignore courts, refusing to release most of the Epstein files. But we don’t need to see them to know how damning they are to Trump. No criminal tries that hard to hide information that exonerates him. It’s a truism not even MAGA can deny.

Also, only a power-crazed, malignant narcissist would want to invade another country because he didn’t get a Nobel Prize. And ADMIT it! Trying to sound less insane at the World Economic Council, Trump, who lies, minimized the invasion part.

Finally, this: To many readers, the sarcasm of my previous column, which I assumed would be recognized three sentences in and in every succeeding paragraph, wasn’t. I heard from several, livid that I’d gone to the dark side. Even after reading, with reference to my blog, “keep these words in mind as your eyes deceive you,” or “’I’m not mad at you’ is classic professional agitation,” or “shame on anyone who reprints [Michele Goldberg’s comment]” after I’d reprinted it.

I meant to demonstrate, by parody, the gaslit, shameless lies issued daily by Trump and his coven. Evidently it was too cute. Apologies. It won’t happen again.

But, seriously, who doesn’t love Trump?

The Truth Is Out

 

Readers know I've never criticized Trump. I praise him. Always. Never have I mentioned him without placing the word "President" before his name, including now, because, as an American, I'm proud to call him that. This can be confirmed by scrolling through my blog, where I also publish my columns. If you do, keep these words in mind as your eyes deceive you. Trump is my hero. Nothing could be clearer.

What happened in Minneapolis is also clear, which is why Trump and his patriotic selectees have committed to recounting the facts, daily. The words of our Vice President, whose core values are solid as Gibraltar, are as true as mine: "This was an attack on law and order. This was an attack on the American people. The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace, and it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day." God bless him for saying it.

Kristi Noem got it right, too. In an act of shocking domestic terrorism, Renee Good accelerated her foreign-made SUV into a group of ICE agents. By definition, any movement from stationary is acceleration. It's factual. Disingenuously, Ms. Good turned her wheels away from the officers, confirming intent to deceive them. She possibly grazed the one who, as any of us would, then fired three shots into her head. It's training.

Although none of the available videos have shown it, we can be confident, because both Ms. Noem and Trump have repeatedly attested, that Renee Good drove right over one officer, sending him to the hospital where, for all we know, he's still recovering. Video of him walking away, rejoining the others, smiling, is fake. Who can doubt Trump's assurance that Renee was a professional agitator? "I'm not mad at you" is classic professional agitation. Plus, Trump never lies. There's plentiful online video of supporters attesting to that when asked.

The true facts surrounding the unprovoked, vicious attack on ICE agents, an attack on you and me, are important enough that Trump and Noem and Vance and Jesse Waters and definitely-not-closeted Lindsey Graham are obligated to continue repeating them until the significance of what they're saying is understood by everyone. The idea that we'd learn more from an investigation conducted by Minnesota authorities, who, Trump promises, are dishonest and untrustworthy, than from one done by the FBI under honest, trustworthy Kash Patel, is ludicrous. By handing responsibility to his fully independent Justice Department, Trump isn't suppressing evidence. He's seeking it in the best possible way.

Radical left lunatics lie that presidents are bound by laws, some of which, if you can believe it, are 250 years old. Laws that Trump acolyte Matt Walsh rightly called "fake," totally justifying Trump's response, asked in a New York Times interview if there are limits to his power: "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me." What real American doesn't admire that? It's not "malignant narcissism." It's Constitutional.

Trump's consistent morality and remarkable mind are seen in every decade of his life, as a student, a soldier, a businessman, and in his prizeworthy peace-seeking. For their selfless sacrifices, he and his family deserve even more than the billions they're making in the White House from investments. There's none more able to judge a man than the man himself. Like that impossibly arduous cognitive one, Trump passes the test. He's as honest a man as domestic terrorist Renee Good was a domestic terrorist woman.

Here's another outdated shibboleth: free speech is essential to democracy. Stephen Miller dragged that lefty falsehood into the light, crafting presidential orders refocusing federal law enforcement away from foreign terrorist threats and onto Americans who hold "anti-fascist ideas," like "extremism on migration, race, and gender" and "hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality." He added a well-deserved warning: "You will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you have broken the law, to take away your freedom." I'm glad those consequences don't all hinge on breaking the law. Trump, almost certainly having read the orders, signed them. Then, who better to enforce them than our highly-trained, respectful, disciplined ICE agents?

On notice now are insolent columnists like Michele Goldberg, who wrote in the failing New York Times after justice was brought to ICE-described "fking b*tch" Ms. Good, who, as Fox stars pointed out, was lesbian and used pronouns:

"All of us, citizens and immigrants alike, are being ruled by people who think life is a privilege bestowed by authority, and death is a fair penalty for disobedience."

Shame on her for publishing that. And shame on anyone who reprints it.

The Police State Comes To Minneapolis

              

            Made in the USSA - by Mr. Fish

The murder of Renee Good, that young mother in Minneapolis – and it WAS murder – ought to be the final awakening for even the most MAGAfied, the most propaganda-blinded Trump worshippers. Especially those who consider themselves patriots. Or Christian. Not just because of the horror of it, per se, or what is says about the thugs Trump – and it IS on Trump – is hiring to carry out his plan of intimidation and forced submission. As sad as it is to think of her young child now motherless, what’s even more portentous for the county Trump has made no longer great, are the government-sponsored lies that followed.

When Kristi Noem lied so brazenly about it, calling the woman a “domestic terrorist” who ran over the officer, which she clearly didn’t, even saying the murderous agent was hospitalized for injuries (Trump did, too), it doesn’t matter if she knew there was video of the assassination. If she did, she wouldn’t have cared. Like Trump, and Vance, and Bondi, and Patel, and Miller, and Bannon, and Fox “news,” and Newsmax, and Karoline Leavitt, and professional liars like Ted Cruz and most Congressional Republicans, she knows that decades of relentless indoctrination have, as intended, created millions of endumbed worshippers who permit getting away with whatever anti-democracy actions and lies they choose.

When reporters showed Trump the video that made a liar out of him, he retracted nothing. (tinyurl.com/sawtruth)

What American with even an ounce of decency could see what happened and not feel sick? Who could fail to acknowledge, finally, that what Trump and his rudderless political party are creating is a police state, modeled after every despotic government the world has seen. That’s NOT unwarranted hyperbole. It’s as clear as climate change and the Trump-enabled measles epidemic working its way through our county.

Trump just told the New York Times that the only thing restraining him is his “own morality,” not any law or body. This, from the most amoral man ever to occupy the White House.  

That submission to tyranny has characterized so much of human history is something to ponder and to fear. Why do so many of our species so readily submit to domination, happy to be released from responsibility? Whatever the explanation, it’s about to eliminate 250 years of democratic governance here.

There was a time when we could look at the rise of Hitler in Germany, for one example, and think we’re immune to it. That the greatness of America makes her better. That, unlike us, those Germans were uniquely prone to following dictatorial orders, willing to brutalize fellow humans, or, at least, to say nothing. If the Minnesota murder and our government’s response don’t put the lie to that myth and convince a majority of remaining Trump supporters of what’s happening, history’s repeat will become permanent.

The murder in Minnesota and brutalization by ICE and Trump’s weaponized National Guard in his hated Democrat-run cities everywhere, rounding up citizens and non-citizens alike, holding them in inhumane “detention” facilities or deporting them, in some cases to brutal gulags – these are only the most obvious examples of Trumpic totalitarianism. As is the acceptance of them by so-called conservatives.

Consider the takeover of news media by Trump’s billionaire pals, installing stooges to manage and control what we hear and read. Banning the teaching of history, censoring the words of history’s great thinkers. Even Plato. This is what governmental suppression looks like, the hallmarks of despotic autocracy, population control by thought police. Already enthralled, half the country doesn’t seem to care.

Like history’s worst dictators, Trump is creating and MAGA is rejoicing in a cult of personality. His visage hanging from the windows of government buildings, his name plastered above John F. Kennedy’s in the center for the arts about which Trump couldn’t care less. That awful, grandiose ballroomic paean to narcissism, the announced triumphal arch, which, if it gets built, will surely have his name on it, too.

Such self-created idolatry is typical of North Korea and Russia. In Italy, the architectural vestiges of Mussolini’s rule are everywhere, even including engraved years beginning at Day One of his takeover. I don’t wish il Duce’s fate on Trump, though. I want to see him live long enough to watch his self-adoring monuments torn down. If reason returns.

After Minneapolis, everyone can see we’re being lied to every day by Trump and the people he hired for their willingness to do it. Excuse my righteous indignation, but the death of that mother and the disgusting lies that have followed, the silence among so many Congressional Republicans, the acquiescence of MAGA, and the defense of it from what amounts to state media are too much to bear. If 2026 isn’t the year in which Trump’s and his collaborators’ attacks on American values are rejected by Republicans and MAGA, it’ll be beyond recovery.

El Jefe

 

On “Taxi,” the TV comedy starring Danny Devito, among others, and Christopher Lloyd, who played the brain-burned character Jim, there was an episode showing Jim as a brilliant student at Harvard, cajoled into trying a “special” brownie. One bite, and he morphed into the skew-faced idiot he was on the show.

For some reason, I thought of that after Trump announced his invasion of Venezuela. A taste of power, and he went mad. Because Trump was never a brilliant student anywhere, the analogy fails. Still, in his second term as “president,” he’s been nibbling power bit by bit, and finally swallowed it whole. Also, one who’s already mad can’t “go” mad. The analogy fails there, too. So never mind. Clearly, though, Trump is deliriously stoned on power.

The military operation was well-planned and brilliantly executed. How well thought out were the consequences and follow-up is suggested by the shallowness of Pete Hegseth resurrecting his Fox “news” and only qualification roots, crowing, “They effed around and found out.” The preening, testosteronical emanations that dominated the news conference all but made light of the seriousness of what happened. It confirmed, however, that it was never about drugs, obvious from the persisting lies that boats blown up and people killed by Trump were heading to the US bearing fentanyl.

Still more revelatory about the lack of long-term planning are contradictory statements, mostly from Trump and Secretary of State/National Security Advisor/Viceroy of Venezuela Marco Rubio. “We’re running the country,” quoth the Ravin’. “We’re working with their government,” says Marco. Which raises the question: what does it mean to “run” a country, a phrase Trump loves to spout referring to what he does to the US, and believes he’ll be doing to Venezuela. Here’s an experienced general, describing how failure derives from such chaos.

Running a country requires having people downstream to carry out plans. And more people, further downstream, willing and able to do the actual work. By firing competent people and hiring sycophantic yes-ones, Trump made inroads (but not roads) here at home. Stephen Miller and Russell Vought tell him what to do, he orders morally bereft lackeys, like Bondi, Patel, Hegseth, Noem, et nauseati, to carry it out. Trump’s monarchy has eliminated and/or ignored Constitutional checks, so it’s been working very well. Not for you and me, of course. But, for him and his spawn’s and cronies’ bank accounts, it’s been magical.

Neither Trump, who, between golfing and posting social-media jeremiads, hasn’t the time, nor Rubio, who hasn’t the downstream cooperants, can “run” Venezuela. Trump could have turned to opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, but, too bad for her, she won “his” Nobel Peace Prize. Vice-President Delcy Rodriquez, a Maduro acolyte, initially responded to the kidnapping by demanding Maduro’s return and promising that no one would be allowed to steal their resources. To which Trump replied, aping Al Capone, “If she doesn't do what's right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” As this was never about drugs, neither was it about creating democracy. Was Tucker Carlson wrong, too? 

The “peace president” has become the bully of the Western Hemisphere, threatening whomever and taking whatever he wants. Some see this as dangerous dereliction; others – MAGA and Foxoid media, predictably – see it as USA! chant-worthy. I’m among the former, given the license this has provided our adversaries to do the same, one of which already has. Which might explain Trump’s antecedent defense of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: tilling his own soilage.

If the outcomes of Trump’s adventurism are unknowable (recall Bush’s Iraq invasion, about which V.P Cheney promised we’d be greeted as liberators and SecDef Rumsfeld said it’d be over in days), some are predictable. First, Trump’s dismissal of alternative energy in deference to fossil fuelers will continue, accelerating climate change, probably irreversibly; and, second, if American oil companies do return to Venezuela, rebuild its oil infrastructure, and resume pumping and selling the oil, Trump will cash in with a pre-arranged personal cut of the profits. It’s the only consistent aspect of his foreign policy. He admitted to working with oil companies, but not Congress, in advance of the invasion. 

How on board they are with the risk and expense is unclear, but Trump offered up US taxpayers to foot the costs.

Trump considers the oil underneath Venezuela “ours.” By any law, it never was; but it’s true that American oil companies once harvested it as if it were, taking from Venezuela billions in profits, making it unsurprising that the country would eventually take back control. Or, as Trump says, steal it. To evaluate that characterization, it’s worth knowing the history. Here’s one source. And another.

Maduro is a bad guy. Considering what Trump has done, and if he follows through on his threats to other sovereign countries, how does Trump compare? Opinions will vary.