If you’ve noticed a strange rumble emanating from Washington, D.C., let me help you out: It’s the sound of Republicans running for political cover after immigration officers shot and killed another American citizen, Alex Pretti.
It began as a low rumble on Sunday night, when a smattering of Republicans and usually reliable conservative pundits tepidly expressed concern about the shooting and how the Trump administration was characterizing the incident. By Monday, the rumbling crescendoed into a deafening roar.
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said he was “deeply troubled” and called for an immediate investigation.
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., who is in a safe Senate seat, said he was “deeply troubled” by the shooting and called for an immediate investigation.
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, criticized Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem by name, noting that he disagreed with her agency’s “premature … response” to the shooting Saturday, which she claimed Pretti instigated. CNN cited multiple DHS officials who, according to the network, complained that Noem was damaging DHS’ reputation.
On social media, one Republican after another bemoaned Pretti’s death and called for an investigation of the shooting.
The situation was so bad that even Trump was looking for political cover. Late Sunday night, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump declined to defend the Border Patrol officers who took Pretti’s life and signaled that he was looking for an exit ramp from the violence that immigration agents have unleashed in Minnesota over the last month.
By Monday afternoon, at its daily briefing, the White House was in full retreat. When asked if Trump agreed with statements from Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller that Pretti was a domestic terrorist, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the president would not “characterize Mr. Pretti in that way.”
One could practically hear the bus being driven over Noem and Miller.
But not just those two. On Sunday, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino had blamed Pretti for his own death, accused him of planning to massacre law enforcement officers and said Border Patrol officers were the real victims of the incident. By late Monday, news broke that Bovino was being dispatched out of Minnesota. Other reports suggested that Bovino, who had previously been excoriated by a federal judge in Chicago for lying about his and his agents’ use of force in that city, had been demoted.
One could practically hear the bus being driven over Noem and Miller.
Pulling the reins on Bovino, who up to that point had been the face of the administration’s aggressive and lawless tactics, is as close as the White House has gotten in the past 13 months to flying a white flag on its campaign of mass deportations.
Indeed, it was only two weeks ago that the White House and congressional Republicans en masse were defending a federal immigration officer shooting dead Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and an American citizen.
What’s driving this Republican reaction is the revulsion and anger of the American public.
While most Americans saw the shooting of Good as unjustified — and the videos of the shooting suggested that ICE agents were in little danger when they fired on her — there was just enough doubt that Republicans did what they have typically done: defend the White House and its campaign of mass deportations.
But Pretti’s death felt very different, and so, too, was the reaction to it. Pretti was a literal Boy Scout who worked as an intensive care nurse for the Veterans Administration. Indeed, one of his last acts before Border Patrol officers killed him was to try to protect a woman whom they threw to the ground.
Moreover, as eyewitness videos of the incident emerged, the gap between the administration’s description of the shooting and what Americans could see with their own eyes widened into a chasm.
Administration officials did themselves no favors by suggesting that Pretti, by having a loaded gun, brought his death on himself, which sparked outrage among pro-gun advocates. The national reckoning over Trump’s mass deportation campaign was long overdue. Anger that had been simmering in the country after Renee Good’s shooting boiled over, and many Americans, who up to now had been silent about ICE’s behavior, began speaking out. (The outrage was helped along, no doubt, by the fact that hundreds of millions of Americans were stranded at home because of a winter storm, giving them plenty of time to watch the videos of Pretti’s death on their phones.) The national reckoning over Trump’s mass deportation campaign was long overdue. The president’s approval ratings are in free fall. Americans are angry and anxious — and not just with the state of the economy. According to the latest New York Times/Siena poll, Trump is 18 points underwater on immigration, the same deficit he has on the economy. New polling out today shows Trump with a 27-68 approval rating among Hispanics, who have borne the brunt of the administration’s immigration onslaught. Abolishing ICE was not long ago a marginal political position. Today, a plurality of Americans support scrapping the agency. Independent voters do by a double-digit margin. By letting federal agents run wild and refusing to curb them, Trump and the GOP have taken the one issue on which they had probably the greatest political advantage over Democrats and flushed it away. It’s little wonder that Democrats have opened a consistent lead on the generic congressional ballot, which was undoubtedly another factor in congressional Republicans’ sudden spasm of apostasy. Does this mean that Republicans are preparing to break with the president who has done so much political damage to the GOP brand in just over a year in office? Don’t count on it. Congressional Republicans didn’t jettison Trump even after he almost got many of them killed on Jan. 6, 2021. A single death in Minnesota isn’t going to get them to completely change their tune — and for many who represent red states and safe House seats, they are likely better off aligned with Trump. But at least for a moment, Trump and the GOP realized that they’d overreached and that there are limits to how much lawlessness, violence and chaos Americans will tolerate. In the near term, Minneapolis may get a reprieve from the federal assault against it by ICE and Border Patrol agents, and if that happens, Alex Pretti’s death, though needless, tragic and horrific, will not have been in vain.
Michael Cohen is an MSNBC columnist. He is also the publisher of the newsletter Truth and Consequences and hosts the weekly podcast That ‘70s Movie Podcast. 
