President Donald Trump brushed over the recent chaos in Minnesota after the latest fatal shooting by a federal agent during a speech that lasted just over an hour in Iowa Tuesday evening.
Speaking at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, Iowa, the president’s remarks, which he appeared to read directly from a teleprompter, did not directly address the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti that has sparked outrage across the country.
Instead, he focused mostly on a defense of his administration’s economic record.
Trump boasted that the American economy is “booming,” even as surveys show consumer confidence hitting the lowest levels in a decade and the job market cooling into a “low hire, low fire” labor environment due to continued uncertainty over the long-term effects of his policies.
He also bragged about agreements his administration has made under which countries will import large quantities of corn-based ethanol fuel — an important product for Iowa’s farmers — even though his use of tariffs and threats against Greenland and other NATO allies has led to many of those handshake deals being suspended or delayed.
He urged the crowd of supporters who’d come to see him to vote for a slate of Republican officeholders in the midterm elections this coming November and warned that Democrats, should they take control of the House next year, would move to impeach him for an unprecedented third time and leave the country “locked…in constant battle.”
But Trump hardly made mention of the uproar in Iowa’s northern neighboring state of Minnesota, despite abruptly reversing a weeks-long campaign of aggression against the Democratic-led city of Minnesota just a day earlier.
On Monday, Trump dispatched White House Border Czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to meet with Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey in an effort to calm tensions in the wake of Saturday’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a Department of Veterans Affairs nurse.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the Border Patrol’s “Commander-at-Large” Bovino drew the president’s ire after they were quick to pass judgment about Pretti’s intentions in the immediate aftermath of his death, according to reports.
Noem claimed on Saturday the shooting had been the consequence of “a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement,” even though Pretti never drew his weapon, which he had a permit to carry, and did not confront the agents before he was tackled after trying to help a woman who’d been shoved by a CBP agent.
She also falsely accused him of having “reacted violently” when agents attempted to disarm him — a claim that appears to be contradicted by video of the shooting.
Bovino also claimed Pretti had violent intentions, telling reporters over the weekend that it “look[ed] like” he “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
Thus far, Trump is standing by Noem, having told reporters before leaving the White House on Tuesday that he does not plan to ask for her resignation.
Asked whether he would press her to step down in the wake of two fatal shootings in less than a month — including Saturday’s killing of Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent — Trump simply replied: “No.”
When pressed further on whether he still has confidence in Noem’s ability to lead the sprawling Homeland Security bureaucracy that includes agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Secret Service in addition to the myriad agencies that handle immigration matters, Trump said he thinks she’s “doing a very good job” because the U.S.-Mexico border is “totally secure.”
His defense of the embattled homeland security secretary comes just one day after she and her de facto chief of staff and political adviser Corey Lewandowski met with Trump in the Oval Office for a multi-hour sit-down at her request.
Despite Trump’s professions of support, he has a long history of jettisoning advisers and associates even after vouching for them, especially when members of his own party call for him to do so.
Already, at least two GOP senators — North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski — have called for her to resign over the Pretti killing.
