Trump Thinks This Is the Main Issue With Alex Pretti’s Death
The president just can’t get behind the fact that slain Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti was licensed to carry a firearm.Donald Trump—a born and bred New Yorker—mentioned Pretti’s gun permit status at least three times on Tuesday, apparently in disbelief that someone in the American Midwest could legally walk around with guns.“You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns, you just can’t,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn Tuesday afternoon. Later, at a restaurant in Iowa, the topic came up again.“He certainly shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” Trump said, noting that he viewed Pretti’s death as an “unfortunate situation.”“I don’t like that he had a gun. I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff,” Trump said.Moments before ICE agents shot the 37-year-old dead in the street, videos taken from multiple angles depicted Pretti with no weapon in his hands. Instead, he was filming federal officers with a phone, while his other hand—which remained empty—was raised. Pretti intervened when an agent shoved a woman, trying to help her back on her feet before he was slammed to the ground by seven ICE agents—one of which shot Pretti 10 times in a span of five seconds, ending Pretti’s life.The widely documented reality of the situation has not prevented the Trump administration from attempting to twist the narrative into one that benefits its immigration aims, even if that means attacking Pretti’s Second Amendment rights, which were created to defend the American populace from exactly the kind of federal tyranny executed in Minneapolis.Almost immediately after Pretti—a highly respected ICU nurse who worked in Veterans’ Affairs—was killed, Department of Homeland Security officials quickly branded him as a “domestic terrorist,” insisting that his death was justified on the basis that he had supposedly “approached officers with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun.”But even as the White House has attempted to shift the optics on its operations in Minnesota, Trump has still continued to scold Pretti for daring to carry his gun on his person while he protested through the streets of Minneapolis.“I don’t like the fact that he was carrying a gun that was fully loaded and he had two magazines with him, it’s pretty unusual,” Trump told Fox News Tuesday. “But nobody knows when they saw the gun or how they saw the gun.”That has put the White House at odds with gun lobbyists, including the National Rifle Association, which was the single largest outside donor in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. At the time, the organization donated $30 million to transplant him from the golden escalator into the Oval Office. In 2020, it donated another $16.6 million to Trump’s aims.Responding to a post after Pretti’s death by U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, in which the Trump official claimed law enforcement are “legally justified” in shooting Americans in possession of firearms, the NRA posted: “This sentiment … is dangerous and wrong. Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”Gun Owners of America took on a more forceful tone, writing online that “the Second Amendment protects Americans’ right to bear arms while protesting—a right the federal government must not infringe upon.”