By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
In the Jan. 22 edition of the Reader, I used my Bouquets and Barb column to wonder about the seemingly incongruous nature of the Republican party since President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement has taken it over.
Now, after the murder of a 37-year-old intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, I am repeating my original question: Where are the Republicans protesting the tyranny and erosion of rights we are all seeing across America?
Scroll through the social media channels of right-wing influencers and you might see the trolls explaining away Pretti’s brutal killing with claims like, “Don’t bring guns to a protest,” and others saying, “Just comply.”
Either Republicans think the rest of us are too stupid to remember the saber-rattling and name-calling that has come from that side of the aisle for decades, or they just don’t care that their words now invalidate everything they once supposedly believed in.
Pretti was legally carrying a pistol, for which he held a permit, just like so many people we see walking around Bonner County every single day. Also, he never brandished the weapon or approached ICE agents. Instead, Pretti was pepper-sprayed after attempting to help a woman who an ICE agent violently shoved to the ground. He was filming the agents — also a legal activity — with one hand and had his other hand held in the air when the federal agents took him down to the ground, piled on top of him, removed his weapon and shot him 10 times from point blank range, ending the life of an American citizen who was standing up for his rights, as well as the rights of others. Countless videos are available from a multitude of angles, all showing the gun removed, Pretti’s hands up, no resistance, and a tragic, disgusting murder of an American citizen by federal agents.
To make a terrible situation worse, the Trump administration responded to the killing with the usual gaslighting and deceit we’ve become accustomed to. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem claimed that Pretti “showed up to a law enforcement operation with a weapon and dozens of rounds of ammunition,” and that “He wasn’t there to peacefully protest. He was there to perpetuate violence.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller labeled Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin.”
The truth is, Pretti was a nurse who worked for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He worked with veterans. He had no criminal record. He held only a cell phone in his hand when agents took him to the ground and shot him for “defensive” reasons, according to Noem.
I’ll ask again: Where are the Second Amendment-loving Republicans standing up for a U.S. citizen murdered by feds in broad daylight?
“Don’t bring guns to a protest,” they say. Let’s take the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, who illegally brought an AR-15 style rifle and shot three men, killing two of them during civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisc. in 2020. Rittenhouse was found not guilty of the killings and was subsequently lionized by the right. Why is Pretti not afforded the same support, especially since he was legally carrying a weapon and was not brandishing it in any way?
“Just comply,” they say. That’s not what the right was saying during the pandemic. If you look closely, you can probably still see the words, “We will not comply,” burned into the pavement outside the Sandpoint Library during one of many protests when people claimed they would “never comply” with government officials’ mask mandates to help the spread of the disease.
Why does the right continue to scream about their rights, while also diminishing or belittling the same rights for others who don’t share their political point of view? Is it yet another case of “rights for me, not for thee” at work here?
Trump himself waded into the issue, offering a confusing answer to a reporter’s question on Jan. 27 about Pretti’s killing: “With that being said, you can’t have guns,” Trump said. “You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t. You can’t walk in with guns. You can’t do that. But it’s just a very unfortunate incident.”
Where is the outrage from the right? Conservatives have so closely tied their ideology to the Second Amendment, it seems insane that they’d just swallow this latest load of hogwash from the president without pushing back. Yet here we are.
What makes matters worse is the fact that ICE doesn’t need to be in Minneapolis, marching through the streets like Nazis, violently pulling people from their vehicles and homes and handcuffing children. After Pretti’s killing, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a demand letter — more like a ransom note — to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, claiming that if Walz turned over the state voter rolls, the surging federal immigration enforcement presence in the state would end.
This is tied to the Department of Justice suing nearly two dozen states for not turning over their full, unredacted voter files containing partial social security numbers, full dates of birth and driver’s license numbers. Minnesota’s top election official, Steve Simon, said his answer to Bondi’s request is “No.”
“Her letter is an outrageous attempt to coerce Minnesota into giving the federal government private data on millions of U.S. citizens in violation of state and federal law.”
I’ll let you all wonder what the federal government under Trump wants with this private data on Americans.
Something is rotten in the state of America. Republicans, where are your voices? Why don’t you stand up against this tyranny, once and for all? Or was it all just bullshit?
