Trump administration officials are starting to realize that they’ve got a credibility problem.
“This is highly problematic and not a good look, and not something our government should be remotely engaged in,” one unnamed official told Politico, referencing the gaslighting over the circumstances that led to the murder of Rachel Nicole Good, 37, by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem immediately labeled Good a “domestic terrorist,” a claim echoed by Donald Trump and JD Vance, the latter in particular going next-level troll, telling reporters, who did not push back, in a Thursday press conference that Good was part of “a broader left-wing network to attack and to doxx and to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their jobs.”
Telling us that what we can see with our own eyes isn’t in fact what we saw with our own eyes is not selling with the bulk of America.
The follow-up action of the Trump Justice Department, which is shutting out a state-level investigation into the shooting, which would seem to guarantee that the murderer, Jonathan Ross, 43, will get off scot-free, is a bigger part of the credibility problem.
Basically, why should we trust you, when one of your agents shoots an unarmed woman in the fact three times, you tell us that it was her fault, and you shut down any review of what happened, to make sure your word is the final word.
“I don’t know how we recover from this,” another Trump official told Politico.
Short answer: you don’t.