Noem Makes Wild Excuse About Calling Alex Pretti a Domestic Terrorist
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem crumbled Tuesday when confronted about smearing Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was shot and killed by federal immigration agents earlier this year. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar said that Noem calling Pretti a “domestic terrorist” was “one of the most hurtful things” his parents said they could ever imagine. “Do you have anything you want to say to Alex Pretti’s parents about their son?” Klobuchar asked.Rather than apologize, a wide-eyed Noem launched into a typical public relations response, claiming she’d relied on information from agents and couldn’t “even imagine” what Pretti’s parents had gone through. Klobuchar continued to press Noem to give a real answer. “Sir, I di—ma’am, I did not call him a domestic terrorist,” Noem replied. “I said it appeared to be an incident of.”Klobuchar scoffed. “I think the parents saw it for what it was,” she replied. Just hours after Pretti was shot and killed, Noem gave a press conference where she claimed he had committed an “act of domestic terrorism.” She also falsely claimed that Pretti had brandished a weapon, intending “to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” A surplus of video evidence and a review by U.S. Customs and Border Protection found that Pretti had done no such thing. A number of Trump administration officials quickly attempted to walk back the secretary’s baseless claims, but the damage was already done. Klobuchar wasn’t the only lawmaker to confront Noem with her false claims about Pretti: Louisiana Senator John Kennedy called out the secretary for trying to push the blame onto White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Kennedy read aloud from a January report by Axios that quoted Noem’s comments to a person familiar with her remarks. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” the Republican recounted Noem saying. “Sir, I did not do that,” Noem claimed, and dismissed the comment because it came from an article that relied on anonymous sources. Little over a month after Pretti’s killing, and Noem still appears unwilling to take accountability for spreading dangerous misinformation.