Ramesh Ponnuru critiques the Trump administration’s response to ICE protester Alex Pretti’s death.
You’re a government official and you have just learned that some of your employees have shot and killed a civilian. You don’t have all the facts, and there are discrepancies in the initial accounts. What do you do?
For most of us, I presume, the answer is to call the victim’s family to express condolences and then to promise the public a full investigation followed by whatever consequences the results warrant.
That’s how previous administrations, regardless of party, would have responded. But the Trump administration views such niceties as weakness. Looking weak, giving an inch to the critics, must be avoided at all costs.
So Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem chose differently when ICE agents shot and killed a protester in Minneapolis over the weekend. …
… Based on past performance, we can be confident that none of these officials will ever apologize for the smears. At most, aides to President Donald Trump will drop them and perhaps pretend they never made them. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, two days after the shooting, explained that none of his colleagues were talking about “the legal definition of domestic terrorism.” (Compare with Noem at her news briefing: “That is the definition of domestic terrorism.”)
Some in the administration are reportedly frustrated, calling the statements from Noem “a case study on how not to do crisis PR.” Sure, and Bovino has already been put out to pasture as a result. But the statements are also signs of moral rot and civic irresponsibility. People speak the way Noem and company have when they have decided that fighting their enemies, even the dead ones, is more important than being decent.
And, let’s not forget, putting the administration’s enemies in their place is what the surge of immigration enforcement to Minnesota was always about.
