We need to talk about the shooting of a man in Minneapolis over the weekend and what President Trump should do about his ongoing mission to rid the United States of criminal illegal aliens, which is exactly what he was elected to do.
He was elected with majority support to get rid of all the illegals here. All of them. A majority of the country was united in getting rid of the illegals who are here, never mind the worst ones who have committed additional crimes. Of course the majority was united in that, and that is what President Trump has been trying to do.
He has gone to city after city trying to do it with very few problems – except in Minneapolis where he has a true insurrection at hand. It is evident in the streets there day after day after day. And the question is: What do we do about it?
The Shooting
On Saturday, a 37-year-old Alex Pretti was shot by border patrol agents there after a confrontation. Alex Pretti was there being subversive. From the look of it, he was there trying to direct traffic into an ICE operation. He was not there to assist law enforcement or make things easier for them. He was there with a loaded gun looking to cause trouble for the Border Patrol agents, and that trouble came back on him.
I am so sick of this bullshit. These are organized agitators who train to disrupt and, in some cases, hurt law enforcement. They go out there looking for confrontations that they can make go viral on social media or that they can use as propaganda to turn people against the good guys (i.e. the ones who are trying to rid us of the scourge of child molesting illegal immigrants).
The agitators want to paint themselves as noble and the ICE or Border Patrol agents as awful. They want to get some sort of confrontation on camera or something that will make officers look silly or bad or brutal, and then when things turn actually bad, or brutal, or dangerous, or – in the case of Renee Good and now Alex Pretti – fatal, all of their remaining enablers rush to social media and the cameras to say, ‘You see, we told you.’
No. Even if I, Megyn Kelly, went to interrupt law enforcement conducting lawful arrests and law enforcement operations with with a loaded gun tucked into the back of my pants and then I engaged in a physical confrontation with them where I am shoving and they are shoving, I would be in grave danger. I would be in grave danger even without having a gun in that scenario because resisting arrest can lead to very bad things. Just ask George Floyd.
You don’t resist arrest. You don’t antagonize cops in the middle of the street in a law enforcement operation. Bad things can come. When law enforcement has hands on you trying to place you under arrest, you submit. That’s it. Submit.
Haven’t we all had this conversation with our children? Every normal parent tells their children if you get pulled over by a cop or find yourself interacting with a cop, you submit. If they are being a prick, a racist, a bully, overbearing, if they’re wrong, if they don’t actually have the right person, we will deal with it later because you don’t antagonize a law officer with a gun. They face too many threats that are deadly to them. We have to be the ones to be extra careful about not antagonizing.
And that is especially true in Minnesota and Minneapolis because of what they are doing to the Border Patrol and ICE officers there. Ironically, there is a greater responsibility on those protesters – they are terrorists, in my view – to behave well and submit immediately, than there is on anybody else because they have put these guys on the razor’s edge. I mean, as Alex Pretti was getting shot, an ICE officer elsewhere in Minnesota had his finger bitten off by one of these terrorists.
I know I am supposed to feel sorry for Alex Pretti, but I don’t. Do you know why I wasn’t shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations. It’s very simple. And if I felt strongly enough about something the government was doing to go out and protest, I would do it peacefully on the sidewalk without interfering because interfering is where you go south. Laying hands on a law enforcement officer of any kind trying to conduct a law enforcement operation? That is a felony. You are going to get arrested. And if you do anything that resembles resisting, you are in serious trouble.
That doesn’t give them the “right” to shoot you. But it amps up the situation and the danger such that they may be found in reasonable fear of their safety if they do.
Media Manipulation
As a result of all this, the media has lost its mind. It is even more biased and disgusting than normal, and it is doing its level best to completely tank Trump and all Republicans on this issue. And it is working. The polls keep showing rapidly eroding support for President Trump’s immigration efforts, which are completely noble, well-intended, and the right policy.
This is happening because of the media. My mom somehow started watching World News Tonight with David Muir on ABC, and she started to sound like a leftist. Now, she is watching Special Report with Bret Baier if she needs to watch news in the six o’clock hour, and she is getting back on track.
But this is the manipulation of people – even people who should know better – and it is ubiquitous. It’s ABC, it’s NBC, it’s CBS, it’s CNN, it’s MSNBC, it’s The New York Times, it’s The Washington Post, it’s the Chicago Tribune, it’s the Minnesota Star Tribune. It’s everywhere.
The Poll Problem
As a result, President Trump is losing on this issue. I say this as a supporter who doesn’t want him to, but this is going to turn into an absolute bloodbath come the midterms. We are talking about possibly losing the Senate and Republican control. Let me give you some of the numbers.
Axios got its hands on internal GOP polling, which reportedly alarmed some Trump insiders. It was completed at the end of December, days before Renee Good was killed in Minneapolis. It found that 60 percent of independent voters and 58 percent of undecided voters said Trump was “too focused” on deporting illegals. Again, this is a poll by Trump’s team. Some 33 percent said Trump was primarily deporting law-abiding people as opposed to criminals. That is shocking.
A New York Times poll asked, “Do you think the tactics used by Immigration Customs Enforcement have gone too far, not gone far enough, or been about right?” 61 percent said too far, only 26 percent say it’s about right, and 11 percent said not far enough. When you break down the 61 percent who said “too far,” that included 94 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of independents, and even 19 percent of Republicans.
To be perfectly honest, I am in the 11 percent. I don’t think they have gone far enough. We have made very little progress in getting these illegals out of the United States. They have tried so hard. God bless Tom Homan. He is a hero. But the numbers aren’t great. We have so many more to get out.
Something needs to be done. Do we just invoke the Insurrection Act and say, ‘We’re tough, and this is what we do?’ I mean, I would be happy with it, but I have to think about the rest of the nation and about what is going to play out in the long term. I just don’t know that sending the actual military there to keep matters in hand is going to do it.
I also don’t want to see law enforcement continue to risk their lives. Renee Good and Alex Pretti died because of their own terrible decision making. That’s the truth. But I am worried about the ICE agents and the Border Patrol agents, who actually are just trying to enforce the law. We have already seen several injuries. We have already seen them shot. It is just a matter of time before one of them gets killed.
Possible Progress
This morning, there was some progress. Trump posted on Truth Social that he is sending Tom Homan to Minnesota. He later announced that Tim Walz called him with the “request to work together with respect to Minnesota.” I mean, Trump had been asking him to do this for weeks. The president said it “was a very good call” and they “actually seem to be on a similar wavelength.” He went on from there:
“I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future. He was happy that Tom Homan was going to Minnesota, and so am I! We have had such tremendous SUCCESS in Washington, D.C., Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, and virtually every other place that we have “touched” and, even in Minnesota, Crime is way down, but both Governor Walz and I want to make it better!”
So, they are looking for “any and all criminals that they have in their possession”? That is what the feds have been asking for quite some time. The reason they don’t get them is because Minnesota is a sanctuary state – not officially, but by default – and Minneapolis is a sanctuary city, so they don’t cooperate in handing over those criminals to the feds, even if there is an ICE detainer on them.
Is Walz ready to sacrifice the sanctuary state and city policies? Great. That actually would be a win. But we’ll see. I think we all know Gov. Walz is very, very, very interested in distracting from his massive fraud scandal, and he has no real interest in stopping the bedlam that is on the streets of Minneapolis right now.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,238 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.