Trump, unbowed by backlash to Minneapolis shooting, blames Democrats for 'chaos'
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WASHINGTON (AP) — The fatal shooting of a Minneapolis protester by a federal immigration officer touched off a fierce national debate and prompted some fellow Republicans to question President Donald Trump's hard-line immigration crackdown, but the president on Sunday night continued to blame Democratic officials.
After remaining relatively quiet on Sunday, the Republican president in two lengthy social media posts said that Democrats had encouraged people to obstruct law enforcement operations. He also called on officials in Minnesota to work with immigration officers and "turn over" people who were in the U.S. illegally.
“Tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media network.
Trump's refusal to back away from his pledge to carry out the largest deportation program in history and the surge of immigration officers to heavily Democratic cities came as more Republicans began calling for a deeper investigation and expressing unease with some of the administration's tactics.
Trump also told The Wall Street Journal in an interview Sunday that his administration was “reviewing everything,” but he refused to say whether the officer who shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti acted appropriately.
“We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” Trump said.
The White House did not answer questions about whether Trump watched the videos of the shooting in Minnesota, which seemed to contradict the account of what happened by members of his administration, or whether he planned to speak to Minnesota's Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who had appealed to the president to help bring calm to the city.
Instead, Trump on Sunday night said he would call on Congress to pass legislation banning so-called sanctuary cities. His administration has sought to apply the label to communities based on their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts, among other factors.
His push for action by lawmakers comes even as outrage over the shooting has raised the possibility of a partial government shutdown in a week because of a standoff over additional funding for immigration enforcement.
Trump's initial reaction to the shooting of Pretti came hours after it took place on Saturday. In a post on his Truth Social network, he questioned why Pretti had a firearm and accused Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey of inciting "Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric.”
But throughout the weekend, Trump, who rarely lets a major moment go without comment, did not make any public appearances or express any dismay over Pretti's death.
Instead, he posted online complaining about Canada and efforts to stop him from building an expansive ballroom at the White House, calling a lawsuit to block its construction “devastating to the White House, our Country, and all concerned.”
He also posted messages praising U.K. troops after his comments about them earlier in the week were widely interpreted as a grave insult and praising guests appearing on Fox News Channel.
When he finally weighed in again Sunday night as criticism grew, Trump was unbowed.
He called on Walz and Frey, also a Democrat, to turn over for deportation anyone in the country illegally who was held in state prisons or local jails, along with anyone who has a warrant out for their arrest or a criminal history.
In his comments to The Wall Street Journal, Trump criticized Pretti for carrying a gun.
“I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it,” Trump said. “But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”
He said that immigration enforcement officers will leave Minneapolis “at some point” but did not offer a time frame.
Members of his administration, meanwhile, were quick to say the shooting, the second killing of a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis by immigration officers in recent weeks, was a case of an armed man provoking violence.
Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller said in a post on social media, without offering any evidence, that Pretti was “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.”
Vice President JD Vance shared Miller's post. He issued other ones blaming local officials and describing what was happening in Minneapolis as “engineered chaos” that was “the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.”
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Trump has decided to test the strength and extent of his personal popularity.
(100) Truth Details | Truth Social
... I am hereby calling on Governor Walz, Mayor Frey, and EVERY Democrat Governor and Mayor in the United States of America to formally cooperate with the Trump Administration to enforce our Nation’s Laws, rather than resist and stoke the flames of Division, Chaos, and Violence:
1. Governor Walz and Mayor Frey should turn over all Criminal Illegal Aliens that are currently incarcerated in their State Prisons and Jails to Federal Authorities, along with all Illegal Criminals with an active warrant or known Criminal History, for Immediate Deportation.
2. State and Local Law Enforcement must agree to turn over all Illegal Aliens arrested by Local Police.
3. Local Police must assist Federal Law Enforcement in apprehending and detaining Illegal Aliens who are wanted for Crimes.
4. Democrat Politicians must partner with the Federal Government to protect American Citizens in the rapid removal of all Criminal Illegal Aliens in our Country. Some Democrats, in places like Memphis, Tennessee, or Washington, D.C., have done so, resulting in safer streets for ALL.
In addition, I am hereby calling on the United States Congress to immediately pass Legislation to END Sanctuary Cities, which is the root cause of all of these problems. American Cities should be Safe Sanctuaries for Law Abiding American Citizens ONLY, not Illegal Alien Criminals who broke our Nation’s Laws.
All of these requests are rooted in COMMON SENSE, and will provide the best possible circumstances to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! The Trump Administration is standing by, and waiting for ANY Democrat to do the right thing, and work with us on these important matters of MAKING AMERICA SAFE like it is in all sections of our Country where we are, together with Local Leadership, participating and involved.
DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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Jan 25, 2026, 4:35 PM
He's not wrong.
Minnesota's elected leaders have chosen resistance to the federal government and are actively engaged in subverting federal law enforcement through the signal chat.
It has been clear for months that Americans do not want working, family oriented people deported. If they had stuck from the beginning to deporting the worst of the worst they probably wouldnt be suffering the public perception disaster they are now.
How do you think Americans feel about Democrats policy of demanding foreign criminals be allowed to stay in America?
I agree. I don't want that. That doesn't matter. It's the law.
If Americans really don't want that, we have a mechanism for changing the law.
Good and Pretti were American Citizens.
I dont think "we have no choice" is a working explanation.
So that means foreign criminals get to stay? Great argument.
Sorry, I must not have explained "mechanism for changing the law" clearly enough.
Here, maybe this will help.
People break laws all the time that they are not arrested or prosecuted for. You make it sound like it would be a great sin to concentrate only on the worst of the worst.
Insisting on arresting all illegals will get you a totally Democratic congress in the fall.
Your point? They also violated laws and protocol through bold interference in law enforcement duties/activities.
Correct. Drive on any interstate highway in Texas for nearly unlimited evidence of this.
Citation? Or are we just being a bit dramatic?
I'm on record in other seeds as anti-deportation, anti-tariff, and just generally anti-stupidity from either side of the aisle.
What we need quite desperately is a modernized immigration system where we not only allow but encourage immigration of people who have something to offer this country. We need more of those people. The math on that is pretty clear.
However, we need to curtail quite dramatically this bleeding heart nonsense of treating these people like we're the neighborhood crazy cat ladies, where we bring in an unreasonable number with no questions asked and support them indefinitely simply because we feel sorry for them.
There needs to be a balance. We didn't have that under Biden and we've gone too far the other way under Trump.
I think it's been a foregone conclusion since election day that certainly he House would swing in '26, and quite possibly the Senate. I'm guessing Trump and team suspect that's the case, which is why he's pressing every issue like he has 12 hours left to accomplish his agenda.
The problem here is, once again, Democrats can't seem to get out of their own way. They keep pandering to their base at the expense of alienating swing voters.
There needs to be a balance, but neither side seems particularly interested in it.
I will agree to everything except this which I found unnecessary
I said that where?
We can't address problems we refuse to identify.
It needs to be reiterated that the Democratic Party has now lost the presidency twice to a caricature of a human who was a literal laughing stock until he won.
I spent 30 years as a coach. When you lose to a team you should have blown out badly, you take a hard look at yourselves and change your behavior. You work harder, you get back to basics, you identify the things you did wrong and you fix them. You take accountability.
If you refuse to accept any accountability, simply pretend it wasn't your fault and don't change your behavior, you're going to get embarrassed again, and again, and again. That's where the Democrats are.
While swing voters do not like what they're seeing in Minnesota, they also get pretty angry over what they saw in Alvarado. They don't want immigrants rounded up by guys in military vehicles, but they also don't want gross abdication of immigration enforcement. They want to be able to afford a house, not hear about how "home ownership is a weapon of white supremacy". What the actual.... Oh FFS.
That's why I say they can't get out of their own way. They seem determined simply to peddle a different flavor of stupid.
Your whole schtick here is saying that nothing Trump does or says matters. It was ridiculous the first time you said it and it is ridiculous today. Why did Trump even get the nomination in 2016? It had nothing to do with the Democrats. It had to do with what the Republican Party had become.
No John, that's just how you interpret anyone who doesn't share your hysteria.
The really ridiculous thing is tattling on somebody every day for years while they keep doing the same thing every for years.
The Republican Party had become the very thing the Democratic Party is now. They couldn't get out of their own way, they refused to admit that elections are won in the center, and kept losing the WH.
Gee and here I just thought that more people didn't vote than the 77 million who did vote for Trump.
Hopefully next election that will be Trump's excuse as well.
Poll: Why 80 Million Americans Didn't Vote In Year Of Record Turnout : NPR
Well I'm not afraid to ask in what universe does it make sense that 77 million people voted for Donald Trump for president?
How completely terrible must the alternative(s) been?
The problem is the tactics being used to round up undocumented immigrants, even those following the law and awaiting their court date for asylum hearings. The right got many Latino Americans to support them by telling them it wasn't about their xenophobic disgust at the 55 million legal Latino Americans, it was just the real criminals, the drug smugglers, the human traffickers, the gang members, the 'worst of the worst' they were told. Now they see the truth which is that rightwing religious conservatives are just intentionally ignorant xenophobes who are desperate to keep some moronic warped bigoted white Christian America ideal alive. Now we see the tide turning of those tens of millions of Latino Americans with buyer's remorse and they will be coming out to vote in the midterms en masse. The pendulum is going to swing back so hard the MAGAites won't even know what hit them. But then again, that's just par for the course for such brain-dead bigots.
My main problem with your false equivalent is that it is false...
The problem with that meme is that the majority of voters did not vote for Trump in 2016, 2020 nor 2024. Thus, showing rightwing conservative wannabe Nazi's are still fucking losers.
It is quite a challenge to appeal to folk who have their heads screwed on backwards. It's not like Donnie's flaws aren't noticeable to all, in any normal political environment he would have been laughed out of the room. So how exactly do you campaign to win the votes of people who don't believe in truth, think airplane contrails contain mind control drugs and believe in some hilarious fantasy deep state? Those folk have abandoned reason, and yet, as a politician you have to court the lowest common denominator to get the most votes. You have to appeal to the dumbest fucking people on the planet, which is exactly what Trump did, and the problem was the rest of us didn't want to believe there were so many of them.
I believe there is a kernel of truth in that meme.
From what I can tell, most Trump supporters favor having an abysmal human being —even a psychopathic demagogue traitor who is the only PotUS to have tried to steal a US presidential election with lying, coercion, fraud, and incitement— rather than have anyone who is a D as PotUS.
Agreed. I remain amazed at the current state of the electorate.
At least in their minds. Not necessarily grounded in reality.
“…rather than have anyone who is a D as PotUS.”
At the expense of our international standing, our internal commonality, and our Constitutional guarantees.
To accept behavior we wouldn’t tolerate in raising our children is irresponsible at best and in direct conflict with our national interests. Petty, and as predictable as the next attempt to justify the absurdity of it all.
Nice spin attempt. Including the people that did not vote in the count is just dishonesty.
While I am sure that is true for some (both parties have their share of straight ticket D or R voters) I can't help but wonder how much better the D's would have done if someone like Josh Shapiro were their nominee.
He stated that the "majority of voters did not vote for Trump". That is a fact. Trump did not get a majority of the votes. Further, about 35% of the electorate did not vote for anyone. Some of those who did not vote 'might' have voted for Trump, but they chose not to bother doing so.
In result, those who voted for Trump comprised just over one-third of the electorate.
I think Josh Shapiro is a substantially better candidate than Kamala Harris. But the Ds had no real choice. It was too late to start a new fund-raising campaign and the only person who could use the extant funds was Harris.
The biggest failure of the Ds in the last cycle was Biden's utterly stupid decision to run again and the Ds inability to get him to change his mind until it was too late. Had the Ds run even a normal, decent candidate from the start, Trump likely would have lost the election.
And, of course, the GOP did run a full primary yet inexplicably and stupidly went with Trump (a known pathological liar, con-man, traitor who is the only PotUS who tried to steal a presidential election through lying, coercion, fraud, and incitement) and bypassed having a decent nominee. They could have easily nominated someone other than Trump with no problems with timing or funding.
Trump did win the popular vote as the meme says, he did not win the majority.
The spin is that he changed the goalposts.
If the point is to emphasize that Trump is PotUS based on the votes of ⅓ of the electorate, then it most certainly is valid.
Yes, more people voted for him than for Harris. He did not win over 50% of the popular vote.
Feelings has nothing to do with a discussion of facts.
What amazes me is that there are so many who still support and try to defend this psychopathic buffoon.
That is not relevant to what the meme said. It is nothing more than a diversion attempt away from the actual point
This is interesting. Do you consider that meme to be factual?
The meme is meant to troll Ds. You recognize that, right?
No, but then again I don't consider Trump to be a Nazi
Not D's, It is something for the people that keep insisting Trump is a Nazi to think about.
MAGA - "We aren't as bad as Nazis".
Not exactly a ringing endorsement...
No it isn't. But I would think no one on the right thinks they are Nazis so they are being compared to something that is not true.
It does remind me of many on the lefts mantra "we're not as bad as Trump" though. And as you know there is actually a Trump that seems to set the benchmark for many on the left.
That's nice.
The meme specifically mentioned Ds.
Look, I do not equate Trump with Hitler (yet), but it is not that much of a stretch to see the similarity between Hitler's Brown Shirts and the masked DHS agents en masse in US communities, engaging in brutality and violence, and confiscating people:
Ultimately, Trump should have DHS focus on the bad guys and NOT just show up in public and start running down those who look like they are illegal. Go after the murders/rapists/drug dealers/... and do so intelligently rather than masses of masked, poorly vetted, poorly trained individuals stirring the pot.
I'm sure you've convinced yourself of that. Thank you for making my point.
Exactly.
If you're going to win swing voters, you will probably first need to acknowledge they exist.
But thanks for proving my point. If you convince yourself that everybody who disagrees with you as a lunatic, you don't have to take accountability for anything.
It certainly can't be the fault of Democrats that they keep losing elections ridiculously. Nah.
Interesting how your opinion constitutes "reality" and everybody else's is somehow fantasy.
Thank you for making my point.
Looks like another strawman argument. Conveniently, I have just recently illustrated my position:
You are trolling. I have never made that claim. Here is a hint, when you have to make shit up and especially when that shit is personal, you just might be trolling.
If you try to NOT engage in fantasy, you might not get called out when you claim your fiction is fact.
They did. They made hundreds of choices along the way to paint themselves into that corner. This is like saying the ICE agent "had no real choice" when the car started rolling at him.... pretending it wasn't his choice to stand in front of the car in the first place.
OK, so we agree they did have choices.
Among those choices was whether or not to launch legal attacks on potential challengers to Biden. They could have let open elections happen, but they chose not to.
Trump was elected the first time out of an angry response to liberal elitism, condescension, and disdain for regular Americans. Biden did almost nothing to address that, and if anything made it far worse. His supporters loved it while it was happening, but the pendulum always swings back.
I'm sure you've convinced yourself of that.
Yes. You have. You said:
You've also blamed "the electorate", and not for the 1st time.
So as much as you don't want to admit it, you're definitely trying to argue that it wasn't their fault.
Hang on... let's check....
So these opinions with which you disagree are "not grounded in reality". Another word for that is "fantasy".
I was referring to their choices once Biden pulled out. You intentionally are ignoring the context.
So you did indeed read my other comment but still wrote the above, knowing full well you were misrepresenting me.
This does not in any way counter what I wrote (which you even quoted):
The GOP had a perfect opportunity to pick a decent human being as their nominee. No pressure, plenty of time. No incumbency politics. I stated the Ds problem and the GOPs problem. You try to counter the stated GOP problem and argue to amplify the D problem. Not objective.
And here you go again. You know full well that I was talking about when Biden withdrew and yet you play this dishonest game. Why do you waste time with such nonsense? It is childish IMO.
Yes, finally, you get something correct. I do indeed blame the electorate. Ultimately, we (the electorate) put these dolts in power and do not properly hold them accountable.
Another lie from you. Given I upfront stated the Ds problem (not the first time) you are clearly trolling.
I never claimed that "your [my] opinion constitutes "reality" and everybody else's is somehow fantasy." That is your trolling rhetoric.
Yes. I absolutely reject the idea that "they didn't have a choice" when they inflicted their situation on themselves. Pretending otherwise is simply enabling their quest to avoid any accountability for their own losses.
Yes. So did the Democrats. They chose Hillary Clinton instead. Let's don't forget how we got here the first time.
The difference here is that the GOP won. And they won fairly. So they don't need to examine where they went wrong.
The dishonest game is ignoring the dozens of terrible decisions that put them in the no-win situation in the first place. It wasn't just one.
Maybe... just maybe... if they had let the primary debates go ahead somebody might have noticed that Joe would never be able to handle one against Trump.
Do you think that maybe.... just maybe... if they had stopped suing challengers long enough to hold some fair primaries, the electorate you despise might have chosen a better candidate for them?
So the phrase they "had no real choice" is complete bullshit and a feeble attempt to once again hold somebody else responsible for the failure of the Democratic Party.
This is like blaming the ball when your QB throws an interception.
Translated: "another inconvenient observation"
Given I upfront stated the Ds problem (not the first time)
You're pretending it's one problem and not dozens. You're also trying to imply that they couldn't really help it... "incumbency politics" and all. You're trying rather desperately to divert attention from the fact that the Democratic Party has decided their last three nominees based on whose turn it was rather than who the voters actually may have wanted.
Sure. Right. You said their assessment of a candidate was not "grounded in reality". That's somehow totally different. Of course it is.... *eyeroll*
When Biden dropped out, the only person who could use the campaign funds was Harris. With only about 100 days to work with, the Ds technically could have nominated someone else, but realistically, they had no choice.
How did we get to 2016?
Strawman argument. You know I was talking about choices once Biden dropped out. You know I have stated that the Ds made mistakes prior to that. Do you get some pleasure out of such intellectual dishonesty?
That is idiotic. The electorate is ultimately in charge.
No I am not. You are just inventing one false allegation after another. It is obvious trolling.
Get serious.
Police who once backed ICE’s mission are losing faith in its tactics
Some local and state law-enforcement leaders who have seen the agency’s tactics up close are voicing concerns that agents have strayed from the administration’s stated focus on public-safety threats.
In Maine, Sheriff Kevin Joyce was among the local law-enforcement officials who met with border czar Tom Homan nearly a year ago to hear the Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement priority : the removal of people with serious criminal records.
It was a mission the 39-year law-enforcement veteran could support.
But on Thursday, Joyce publicly issued blistering criticism of federal agents, accusing ICE of “bush-league policing” after he said they detained one of his corrections officers, a migrant authorized to work in the U.S., on a roadside in Portland, Maine.
“I’m not anti-ICE by any stroke of the imagination, but they’ve moved the goal posts,” Joyce, the sheriff of Cumberland County, and a self-described moderate Democrat, said.
Many police leaders say they still support combating illegal immigration and believe the troubling actions stem from a minority of officers, but they say these problems undermine their efforts to put a human face on law enforcement on the ground.
Federal authorities have defended their tactics. “Our operations are lawful. They’re targeted and they’re focused on individuals who pose a serious threat to this community,” Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino said Tuesday at a news conference in Minnesota. ICE collaborates with local and state law enforcement across the country to deport criminal migrants, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.
A shift
As recently as early December, federal agents identifying themselves as “DHS investigators” would arrive at the Faribault, Minn., police station lobby to inform a supervisor about individuals with criminal records they were targeting.
“At first, the narrative certainly fit that they were targeting people with significant criminal history,” Chief John Sherwin said in an interview earlier this week. “Since the New Year, they’re not sharing with us who they’re going after.”
Four times in the past month, his officers have responded to 911 calls that turned out to be ICE operations. In one instance, a caller reported being “about to get shot”—police arrived to find ICE agents.
Recently, a call came in from a mobile-home neighborhood about cars honking and driving in circles. Sherwin drove there in an unmarked car and stopped beside a vehicle with dark windows and a Texas license plate. The driver identified himself as border patrol and said his cover was blown by citizens recognizing him and he was leaving.
A resident then posted Sherwin’s license plate on Facebook and falsely identified it as an ICE vehicle.
“I’m literally right down the middle,” said Sherwin, an appointed police chief who isn’t registered to vote with a party. “I can see both sides, and I feel caught in the middle.”
Regular citizens aren’t the only ones complaining to police about ICE. On Tuesday, several police chiefs in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area held an unusual press conference: They said federal agents had stopped, along with local residents, some off-duty police officers “for no cause” and asked them to prove their citizenship.
Mark Bruley, the police chief of Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb, said chiefs had received “endless complaints” and that off-duty police officers—all people of color—had experienced the same treatment. In one case, he said, one of his officers was stopped as she drove past ICE. The agents boxed her in, knocked her phone from her hand when she tried to record them, and had their guns drawn, he said.
“If it’s happening to our officers, it pains me to think of how many of our community members it is happening to every day,” Bruley said.
At a separate news conference the same day, Bovino rejected the criticism about federal agents, saying, “Everything we do every day is legal, ethical, moral, well-grounded in law.” Bovino didn’t directly address the Brooklyn Park allegations when asked about them.
Trump unleashes 450-word rant about vanity project as nation reels
Donald Trump has lashed out at a lawsuit seeking to halt his ever-expanding White House ballroom, warning that any attempt to stop the project after he put so much effort into it would be “devastating” to America.
As tensions escalate across the country over the killing of yet another U.S. citizen by immigration enforcement officers, the president issued a wild, 450-word Truth Social post on Sunday morning - not in relation to the latest tragedy, but rather, his pet vanity project.
“Making such a large gift to the U.S.A. was thought to be, by almost everyone, “A WONDERFUL THING TO DO” - But no, as usual, I got sued, this time by the Radical Left National (No!)Trust for Historic Preservation, a group that couldn’t care less about our Country!” he lamented.
NTHP is the heart of conservatism; conservation through preservation.
If you live near one of the current 27 historic sites you probably hate the restrictions imposed upon you.
Tearing down part of the White House by executive fiat probably pissed the NTHP off big time...
In 1949, Congress chartered the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) to support the preservation of places critical to the American story. For more than 70 years, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has led the movement to save America’s historic places and is a privately funded nonprofit organization.
NTHP is not a Fed organization and they have to follow the Cultural Resources Preservation Act regulations and guidance on the conservation/preservation requiring agencies to consider the impact of their actions on historic properties. Key provisions include Section 106, which mandates federal, state, and local review of projects for potential damage to sites.
Key provisions include the Section 106 review process for federal projects, the National Register of Historic Places, and the creation of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP).
If you are claiming that the WH is in the HABS directory - it is and is recognized as a National Historic Landmark and is part of the National Park Service.
Currently, there are 95,000 properties listed in the National Registry of Historic Places and 2,600 listed as National Historic Landmarks.
I don't think there is any doubt now that this administration is using ICE to terrorize Democratic States and cities. They are terrorists, plain and simple. We've already seen two summary executions carried out by the terrorists; do we really need to wait for more? Stand up, protest non-violently, vote. We know that these rightwing conservatives only protect the 2nd amendment when it's some piece of shit like Kyle Rittenhouse carrying an AR-15 at a rally, pointing it at people and threatening protesters that's allowed, if you're a legal gun owning Democrat who doesn't even touch your gun, expect to be shot and killed. It's our new reality.