Hi everyone-
Heard of Christmas in July? Now we have George Floyd in January. After the shooting death of activist Renee Nicole Good on Wednesday, the George Floyd contingent mobilized and took to the streets to protest. Some waved Palestinian flags, since that was the last cause du jour, while others told reporters they'd been out protesting post-Floyd back in 2020. I bet it was nice to get the band back together.
A woman was killed, and that is terrible. My full sympathies go out to her family, especially her children, who are now left without a mother. But this has been the only side of the story you will hear from the liberal, legacy outlets and their apologist counterparts. There is way more to the story than that and while it will come out in dribs and drabs and its noise will hardly rise to the level of the leftist "Abolish ICE" crowd, it will be the truth. As we already know, however, truth is underappreciated when inciting rhetoric is what gets the job done.
And by "job," I mean anti-Trump sentiment and civil uprising as a means to further implement a leftist social agenda. What you don't hear through the megaphone is that these activists are funded. Good was trained by an Antifa-affiliated group called ICE Watch. She intentionally stopped her car in the road at which point her passenger, her wife, got out of the car and started filming. When ICE agents urged her to get out of the car, she did not, instead turning up the street and running into an ICE agent, who opened fire.
I don't know if I would have opened fire. You don't know if you would have opened fire, either. We do know that the agent was likely freaked out. He'd been in an altercation with a vehicle in June and ended up hospitalized over it. An illegal immigrant suspect dragged the agent for some 100 yards and he had lacerations that required stitches.
I sat in the White House press briefing room yesterday as Vice President JD Vance spoke about the matter and took questions from reporters—none from me, though, and none from most of the reporters who stood shoulder to shoulder, stepping on each others' toes for a better angle for their mics, their phones, their raised hands. Honestly, it's the first time I've been back since I got my press pass nearly a year ago and I gotta say I was not into the vibes in that cramped tiny room nestled between the White House proper and the West Wing.
Vance told us about the agent and his past difficulties. He implored Democrats to "be honest about the fact that we have way too many illegal aliens in this country and our ICE officers should be supported in doing their job." He said the media and Democrats are "trying to actually marshal the far left lunatic fringe to engage in doxing, to try to make it impossible for them to enforce the law, and in some cases, actually to engage in acts of domestic terrorism against our law enforcement officers."
And he had questions, the same questions we all have: "How did she get there? How did she learn about this? There's an entire network, and frankly, some of the media are participating in it, that is trying to incite violence against our law enforcement officers. It's ridiculous. It's preposterous, and part of our investigatory work is getting to the bottom of it."
That's all well and good, but here's my question: Democrats are leaning into the George Floyd playbook after this Minneapolis shooting and that incident led to defunding police and an anti-law enforcement attitude that persisted. Can that be avoided in this case when Democrats are so unified on message? How can you ensure that the ICE operations have popular support?
Libby