Trump repeats baseless claim that Renee Good was part of ‘leftwing network’ of paid agitators | Donald Trump
At the White House on Friday, Donald Trump endorsed the vice president’s baseless claim that Renee Good, the 37-year-old who was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, was part of a shadowy “leftist network” trying to “incite violence” against federal agents.
Asked by a Fox News reporter to expand on J.D. Vance’s comments about Good, the president said the vice president was “very accurate overall” and then cited what he described as evidence that at least one person who was near Good when he was killed was “probably a paid agitator.”
The claim that none of the protesters opposing the mass deportation campaign is motivated by horror at what is being done to their neighbors but should be given to salaried workers is a familiar claim for Trump, who has made it repeatedly in recent months.
In Good’s case, Trump focused on how someone was heard shouting the word “shame” repeatedly in video recorded by a witness of federal agents killing Good, indicating to him that the person must have been a “professional badass.”
“I watched this,” Trump said. “A woman was shouting: ‘Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!’ He is a[n] agitator, probably a paid agitator, but to me he was an agitator, a very high-level agitator, very professional. “She wouldn’t stop screaming.”
It was unclear whether the person who shouted “shame” at ICE officers at least 10 times during the incident was the person recording the video or someone standing next to him. But the president’s claim that only a paid agitator can shout at ICE agents conducting immigration raids on the streets of American cities is contradicted by hundreds of incidents recorded last year.
The video captured a witness yelling “shame” at agents at two different points in Good’s killing. First person shouted the word twice The agents opened fire as they attempted to remove Good from his vehicle.
A short time later, when the person recording the incident approached the agent who killed Good, Good’s voice or someone behind them could be heard shouting a warning at him. eight more times as he walked away from the scene.
The president also complained that the person’s terrified screams made it difficult to watch the video of the murder on television.
“The news kind of turned him down, shut him down because you’re trying to watch, he was too loud, too crazy, and not normal at all,” he said.
“When someone sees something like that,” he said, referring to the close-range shooting of a neighbor, “they don’t scream and scream and say the same words. So I guess you could call it a professional, but I didn’t think he did a very good job.”
“You have agitators,” the president concluded, “and we will always protect ICE, and we will always protect our border patrol and law enforcement.”
