President Trump moved swiftly on Saturday to try to shift the blame for another shooting death in Minneapolis away from the federal agents involved in the incident, claiming instead that it was the result of inflammatory rhetoric by local officials and the victim himself.
Members of Mr. Trump’s administration also quickly labeled the man, whom Minneapolis police said was 37 years old and an American citizen, as a “domestic terrorist” and a would-be-assassin hours after the morning shooting, before all the facts were yet known or an investigation could take place.
In a pair of social media posts, Mr. Trump accused local politicians, including Governor Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, of “inciting Insurrection” in an attempt to divert attention from an unrelated fraud scandal. He called ICE agents “patriots” who were left unassisted by local police as they seek to detain what Mr. Trump described as violent immigrants.
“If they were still there, you would see something far worse than you are witnessing today!” the president wrote.
Mr. Trump also shared a photo of a firearm that federal officials claim belonged to the man who was killed. Police in Minneapolis said the man, whom law enforcement officials identified as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, had a firearms permit. It is legal to openly carry a weapon in Minnesota.
The defiant and angry response by the president and members of his administration further inflamed tensions in a city that has for weeks been wracked by conflicts between protesters and government agents sent there to enforce the president’s crackdown on immigrants. Increasingly, U.S. citizens have taken to the streets to protest what many have described as a military-style occupation of an American city in which federal agents are using aggressive and violent tactics.
Shortly after the shooting, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, posted messages on social media claiming the man was seeking to murder federal agents.
“A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists,” Mr. Miller said. Earlier he responded to a tweet from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, that criticized the administration’s crackdown in her state.
“A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response? You and the state’s entire Democrat leadership team have been flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country,” he wrote.
The fatal shooting Saturday came a little over two weeks after Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman, was shot three times while she was driving in her S.U.V.
In the hours after she was shot and killed, Ms. Good was labeled a “domestic terrorist” by members of the Trump administration, as officials moved quickly to exonerate the ICE official who shot her before an investigation could determine what had occurred.
Trump and top officials followed a similar playbook on Saturday, even as videos emerged that challenged their accounts.
The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man approached Border Patrol agents “with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and they tried to disarm him. But footage from the scene verified by The New York Times shows the man was holding a phone in his hand when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him. A Times analysis found that at least 10 shots were fired.
Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol official in charge of agents in Minnesota, asserted that the man was attempting to murder agents.
“This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” Mr. Bovino said at a news conference on Saturday.
The latest shooting spurred Minnesota officials to demand that DHS officials leave the state.
“How many more residents, how many more Americans, need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” said Mr. Frey.
On X and in a later news conference, Mr. Walz said that he had spoken with Susie Wiles, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, in the wake of the shooting. He had argued for state officials to lead the investigation. He accused “the most powerful people in the federal government” of “spinning stories and putting up pictures.”
Of immigration agents, Mr. Walz added: “They killed a man, created chaos, pushed down protesters, threw gas indiscriminately and then we’re left to clean up.”
Mitch Smith contributed reporting from Chicago.
Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.
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