President Donald Trump reacted to footage of slain protester Alex Pretti confronting ICE agents weeks before his death by calling Pretti an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.”
The president took to Truth Social early Friday morning to point out Pretti, 37, showed a “crazed” display of “abuse and anger” toward immigration officers, per Mediaite.
Pretti was killed on Jan. 24. In recent days, videos have surfaced which show Pretti hostilely interacting with ICE agents weeks earlier.
“Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist, Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces,” Trump wrote. “It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
The footage was released by the News Movement Wednesday and was investigated by BBC News.
The video showed an altercation between a man — identified as Pretti — and federal immigration agents on Jan. 13.
In the video, the man shouts and spits at officers. He also kicks the rear of their vehicle as it pulls away.
At that point, agents exited the vehicle, tackled the man, and sprayed chemical irritants.
The man was released and the agents left.
Another video, published by the Minnesota Star Tribune, showed another angle of the same incident.
Trump’s words follow his administration calling Pretti a domestic terrorist immediately following the killing. The administration alleged he planned to “massacre law enforcement.”
Pretti was carrying a holstered firearm, but the video revealed it was never in his hand. It was also taken by an agent before he was shot.
A lawyer for Pretti’s family addressed the earlier incident in a statement to the Associated Press.
“A week before Alex was gunned down in the street – despite posing no threat to anyone – he was violently assaulted by a group of ICE agents,” the statement read. “Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex’s killing at the hands of ICE on Jan 24.”
