Trump administration officials and MAGA world are attempting to rewrite the shooting in Minneapolis.
The shooting took place on Wednesday morning when several masked agents—later identified by Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin as members of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency—approached a vehicle. Video footage shared on social media appears to show a masked agent ask the driver to get out of the vehicle before grabbing the door handle. At this point, the driver appears to reverse, before driving forward and turning. A third masked federal officer, standing near the front of the vehicle, pulls out a gun and fires at the vehicle, killing Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman.
The masked officer who fired at the vehicle was identified by the Minnesota Star Tribune as ICE agent Jonathan Ross. McLaughlin did not immediately respond to an email asking if DHS could confirm the Star Tribune’s reporting.
Almost immediately, federal government officials portrayed Good as the perpetrator. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem called Good’s actions an act of “domestic terrorism,” adding that the victim had “weaponized her vehicle” and that the agent involved had simply “followed his training.” Later on Wednesday in a Truth Social post, president Donald Trump wrote that Good had “viciously” run over the agent while blaming the “radical left.” In a press conference on Thursday morning, Noem doubled down, once again calling Good a “domestic terrorist,” while falsely claiming the agents involved were “surrounded and assaulted and blocked in by protesters.” On Thursday, vice president JD Vance claimed Good was “a victim of left-wing ideology” and that she had “[thrown] their car in front of ICE officers,” adding, “You’ve got to be a little brainwashed.”
The administration’s effort to immediately spin the narrative, and deflect the blame from the agents Trump has empowered to target communities across the country, is something the current administration has done repeatedly. This case, however, is arguably one of the more egregious examples thus far, given how wildly the sanctioned government narrative diverts from the reality shown in video footage of the incident shared online.
MAGA world influencers very quickly fell in line. Trump’s decision to blame the “radical left” was echoed by his loudest supporters online, some of whom predicted mass violence from the left as a result of the incident.
“She was trying to stage an illegal blockade of the road to interfere with ICE agents and then rammed her car into one of them when they attempted to apprehend her,” podcaster Matt Walsh wrote on X, in a post viewed nearly 700,000 times. “This isn’t even a close call. Entirely justified. She is 100 percent to blame for her own death.”
Video footage of the incident appears to directly contradict Walsh’s claim that Good “rammed her car” into the agent who shot her through the windshield and the driver’s window. Local politicians also disputed this claim: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the administration’s version of events “bullshit” and a “garbage narrative.” Frey also said ICE should “get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz also rejected the government’s narrative, instead blaming Trump’s policies which, he said, are “designed to generate fear, headlines, and conflict … Today that recklessness cost someone their life.”
That didn’t deter other influencers and content creators, however. “The Minneapolis ICE shooting can now be 100% confirmed to be self defense from this new video,” Robby Starbuck, a visiting fellow with the hugely-influential Heritage Foundation, wrote on X. “The deceased anti-ICE driver clearly HIT the ICE agent that opened fire with her car. This is textbook self defense.”
“These Bolsheviks will come for ICE agents and their families next,” Jack Posobiec, a conspiracy theorist with close ties to the Trump administration, wrote on X. “And then they will come for anyone who supports ICE, too. Understand the situation we are in. Pray and prepare your homes for what is coming.”
Experts point out that by parroting the administration’s talking points, MAGA world influencers help spread those talking points to a much wider audience.
“When it comes to influencers spreading these narratives, they’re simply the more popular mouthpieces for high-ranking officials, helping reach those who might not have the time to watch every press conference or read every press release,” Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, tells WIRED. “It’s a cyclic trend that happens with a lot of major events, where an inaccurate or outright false interpretation becomes the dominant narrative and trickles down from the top to some of the average news consumers.”
When Trump was asked to provide evidence to back up his claims that Good had “viciously” run over the agent, he showed New York Times journalists a video that didn’t show the agent being run over. When this was pointed out, Trump responded: “Well, I…the way I look at it,” before the Times reported that he appeared to trail off. “It’s a terrible scene,” Trump then told the New York Times reporters at the end of the video. “I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”
Some MAGA influencers also blamed Walz and Frey for inflaming the response to the shooting, calling for them to be replaced immediately. Others like Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller and former special government employee working at Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, blamed the mainstream media.
“The Legacy Media is complicit in violence against ICE officers,” Miller wrote on X. This view was echoed by Vance on Thursday morning: “The reporting over this has been one of the biggest scandals I’ve ever seen in media. I’ve never seen a case so misrepresented and misreported.”
As MAGA world continues to echo its version of events in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning, the administration shows no sign of backing down.
The post MAGA Is Already Rewriting the ICE Shooting in Minneapolis appeared first on Wired.
