ICE chaos as another one killed, Americans have had enough

**David Pakman** (0:00)
Federal immigration agents killed another 37-year-old, an American citizen in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti. And I am going to explain why the Trump administration is doing exactly what you would expect if you wanted to generate more authoritarian escalation. We're gonna break down the insane contradiction where MAGA tells people, arm yourselves against tyranny, and then cheers when the government kills a legally armed citizen. Kash Patel goes viral, humiliating himself on gun laws, exposing how little these people understand or care about the constitution they claim to worship. And then we will look at the latest truth social meltdowns. And the black rotting hand is raising real questions about transparency and presidential health. And the Minneapolis police chief has had enough of ice and says it's time for them to go get them out. They're not doing law enforcement. Not at all. All of that today.
They are going to start killing ICE agents. I don't like it, but ICE agents are going to start getting killed. And unfortunately, this is something that Donald Trump will use to his advantage. Let me explain and give me time to lay this out. First to just be clear up front before anybody mischaracterizes what I'm saying here. I oppose all violence. Violence against civilians is wrong. Violence against federal agents is wrong. What the Trump administration is doing right now is a blueprint for escalation. Now we've already crossed the line into something very dangerous. Let's talk about Alex Pretti. Alex Pretti was a 37 year old ICU nurse, an American citizen, no criminal record, had some traffic tickets. He was filming federal agents in Minneapolis over the weekend. He tried to help a woman who had just been shoved to the ground. Video shows him holding a phone. He gets pepper sprayed. He gets tackled by multiple agents and pinned to the sidewalk. Another agent pulls a gun from his waistband, turns away. And less than a second later, the shots start maybe as many as 10 shots in five seconds. And Alex is dead. Federal officials, federal officials immediately say he was a violent threat. But they start banding around that he's a domestic terrorist. But the videos don't show that witnesses don't say that. State officials say the feds even have blocked access to the crime scene. So this is not law and order. This is a we can't even call it law enforcement. They're not in for ISIS, not enforcing the law. This is a federal paramilitary force operating with near total impunity. And the part that a lot of people don't want to say out loud, because if you say it the wrong way, it sounds like you're advocating violence, which of course I'm not, is that when the state starts killing people in the streets with no consequences, it's inevitable that there's going to be escalation, not because violence is justified. It's not, but because human behavior is predictable. You teach a society that violence is the language through your actions. Someone eventually is going to respond in that language. And if this continues, the retaliation against agents is going to happen. And one or more agents is going to be killed, not because it's right, not because that's how we fix things. We won't. And I'll get to that in a moment. But because this is how systems break. Now the darker part is the following. Authoritarians want escalation. Chaos is useful to them. Chaos lets them say we need more force. We need troops. We need emergency powers. We need to suspend normal rules. Maybe elections are too dangerous. Maybe the country is too unstable to vote in November and take Republicans out of power in the House of Representatives. Wouldn't that be nice for Donald Trump? So let's get something very straight. I want to speak as clearly as possible. They are going to end up in a situation where the very chaos they cause is used to justify a bigger crackdown. Now, on the threats around the election, it might sound quaint to mention this, but presidents do not run elections in the United States. States run elections. Local officials run elections. So even if he tries, because he's already said, wouldn't it be nice to, you know, use that justification where we're at war? We are in an emergency. We can't have an election. Trump is flirted with that.
He cannot waive a pen and end the 2026 election, even if there is a war going on, if there's a pandemic, if there's unrest. Trump's term term will end January 20th, 2029, no matter what. But Trump can try to make the country feel ungovernable, I guess, is the word I would use. And he can provoke unrest. And then if and when the ICE agents start getting killed, he goes, oh, now it's so crazy. We now need martial law. We now need to deploy the military. We now need to suspend the 2026 election. We've got to flood every city with federal agents and escalate, escalate, escalate until people are so afraid that maybe they accept the authoritarianism. So this is the double edged sword, which is that the impunity that we see these ICE agents operating with leads to chaos. The chaos will lead to ICE agents getting killed. And then that will become the justification to say now we've really got to repress protests and civil society. The repression will create more chaos. And this is the authoritarian feedback loop that I've described to you before that people like an Apple bomb and Ruth Ben-Giott have talked to us about. So it has to stop. And I don't say it has to stop because of the optics. Although, the optics are you look. You should see the e-mails I'm getting from people around the world. David, what is happening to the United States? We look on in horror. This is this is becoming a developing nation to use Trump's term. It's a third world country over there where you've got lawless militias killing people on the streets and then they just fly them out and there's no investigation. This is how democracies slide into police states, into security states, one emergency at a time. Ordinary people get crushed in the middle and understand that I don't claim Trump is sitting at the White House going, I want ICE agents to be killed, kill ICE agents. I don't believe that that's what's going on. But Trump wants chaos to justify a bigger crackdown. And there would be no better justification, no more chaotic occurrence than ICE agents getting killed. And unfortunately, the longer this goes on, the more inevitable that seems. All right, let's talk about the guns. Maga tells people you need guns. You got to have them. If the government becomes tyrannical, you would have no tool to defend yourself if you don't have a gun. More guns, the better because of the tyrannical government. That's the pitch. That's the fantasy. That's the moral framework that they have been selling as Maga for 11 years and as Republicans for decades at this point in time. So what happens when someone takes that seriously? A white American man, 37 year old Alex Pretti, no criminal record, legally carrying a gun out there hoping to defend civilians against federal agents he believes are acting tyrannically. The government shot him dead. That is what happened this weekend. Thirty seven year old ICU nurse Alex Pretti worked with veterans, legally owned a firearm. White guy with gun should be Maga and NRA's dream. Federal immigration agents were conducting these aggressive operations in Minneapolis. Pretti showed up. He's filming. He's trying to help a woman that agents had pushed to the ground. He gets pepper sprayed. He gets tackled and he gets shot multiple times, around 10 shots in a few seconds, it is believed. The official story is he approached with a gun. He was brandishing a loaded firearm. But now, as we have bystander testimony and video, it seems he was holding a phone that agents had removed the gun. It may not have been loaded. There's controversy around that detail. I don't I can't say I know for certain at this point in time. And then after disarming him, he is shot and killed. So connect the dots. Gun activists say you need guns to resist tyranny. A citizen confronts what he believes is tyrannical state power. And the state goes, you've got a gun. Now you die. And that is the end of the story. This is the part where the fantasy collapses, because when it's their government, suddenly the guy with the gun is a domestic threat. When Obama's president, oh, everybody must be armed. When Biden's president, everybody must be armed. But suddenly, this time, someone is legally carrying a gun and the agents are heroes. Suddenly the Second Amendment is conditional. And the people who talk about resisting tyranny are the first to cheer when the state kills somebody for exercising the right that they said you should really exercise this right. You might say, well, this is a bug in the system. Wrong, wrong. The core contradiction and reality of the situation is that they only care about those principles when they are convenient to them. Now let me zoom out just a little bit here. I don't believe we should turn the Alex Pretti assassination into a story that is primarily about guns or the problem. I think that that actually plays into Donald Trump's hands. It lets Trump pivot to culture war noise and avoid the real issue. I'm mentioning it because it is an incredible hypocrisy. And later we'll look at video of Kash Patel sort of participating in that hypocrisy. But this ties directly into Trump and the ICE deployments. This is what happens when you normalize mass militarized immigration enforcement as political spectacle. And so I don't want to make this mostly about the guns. But there is this incredible double standard about the guns. The the main focus here really is you put heavily armed federal agents into civilian spaces. You tell them they're fighting an enemy from within and you blur the line between what is policing and what is a paramilitary operation. And this is why I don't believe we should use the term law enforcement for what ICE is doing anymore, because they're not really enforcing the law, certainly not the law that they were created to enforce. And then when a citizen shows up angry, legally armed, wanting to help people and intervene it, it escalates instantly into lethal force. So the problem isn't really one shooting. The problem isn't really the gun issue and that Alex Pretti was legally armed. The issue is the broader policy choice to turn supposed immigration enforcement into just a show of force against even American citizens where misunderstandings instantly become fatalities and there is no accountability because officer safety and immunity and dementia and domestic terrorists and all of this stuff. So the real story here is not guns, it's power. The state labels as a threat with significant power, anyone that they find politically inconvenient and political movements quickly abandoned their principles. When those principles become inconvenient, something I've talked about with you for a long time and wrote about in my book, the Echo Machine, the fantasy of the white legally armed guy as the hero has now become the white legally armed guy is dead. And we are going to delve into this significantly because it is hard to imagine a more tragic outcome than what we are seeing every single day. Send me your thoughts, leave a comment, email me info at David pakman.com.