Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins and guest host of Fox and Friends forced Deputy AG Todd Blanche to answer for Trump officials describing Alex Pretti as a terrorist after he was murdered by ICE agents.
Jenkins is usually an embedded Fox News reporter scapegoating migrants crossing the border, but today he put on a different hat.
JENKINS: Some of these sources have described DHS’s response to the shooting as a case study on how not to do crisis PR. One said, they’re so fed up, they wish they could retire. Another says DHS is making the situation worse, and even another adding, DHS is wrong, and we are losing this war.
We are losing the base and the narrative. This is coming to a head, Todd.I ask you, based on the DOJ’s purview, do the actions of Alex Pretti amount to domestic terrorism?
BLANCHE: Look, we’re, it’s an investigation, so I’m not going to, to prejudge what his actions were or were not. But there’s two things that have to be part of this narrative.
There are two very important points that have to be part of the story that we’re talking about.
Number one is the reason why that happened on Saturday is because we get zero cooperation from police.
Now, DHS, Border Patrol, operates in 50 states doing hundreds of isolated, targeted arrests every day.
There is one city where we see this outrage, one city, and that’s Minneapolis.
LIE #1: Todd Blanche and the entire Trump administration prejudged Pretti and called him a violent terrorist.
LIE #2: Minneapolis was not the only city that has despised and protested ICE’s presence. Los Angeles, Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon among others vehemently protested ICE actions. In those cases, Trump illegally called in the National Guard against their protests.
JENKINS: with all due respect, with all due respect, sir, my question is more pointed.
Do you believe your colleagues may have gone farther? You are an attorney, a DOJ, 18 U.S. Code 2331, has a legal definition of domestic terrorism, and it doesn’t appear to most of the country that have watched the available video, and we’ll see if there’s body cam video. I’d love to know if that’s going to come out, if there was such a thing, but it does not appear to have met that definition of domestic terrorism.
So I’m just sort of wondering how you and the DOJ are viewing whether your colleagues may have gone too far.
BLANCHE: Look, I don’t, I don’t think anybody thinks that they were comparing what happened on Saturday to the legal definition of domestic terrorism.
What we saw was a very violent altercation, and we, I am not going to prejudge the facts.
DHS Sec Kristi Noem and Deputy scum Chief of staff Stephen Miller did prejudge. They called Pretti a domestic terrorist and assassin, respectively. Trump viciously attacked Renee Good after she was murdered by ICE, but his tone changed when he learned her father was a Trump supporter.
Blanche Dubois keeps claiming people are looking at only ten seconds of video and then making their judgment which is also a lie.
