Once again, the response was quick, fuming, and filled with falsehoods.
On January 7, about five hours after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis fatally shot a woman in her SUV, President Donald Trump addressed the reckless killing in a social-media post: The victim, he said, “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive.”
Those were lies. Trump shared murky slow-motion footage from a distant door camera, but clearer videos from eyewitnesses had already gone viral and showed the reality. ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good, an American citizen and 37-year-old mother of three, point-blank through the windshield and open driver’s-side window as Good tried to turn her slow-moving vehicle away from him. Ross then reholstered his gun and walked down the street toward where the SUV had crashed, eyewitness video showed. (Moments later in that same video, Ross can be seen even more clearly walking back up the street and showing no signs of serious injury. Trump officials have since claimed that Ross suffered from an unspecified degree of internal bleeding.)
Trump’s post culminated with him blaming Good’s death on what he said was a sprawling conspiracy targeting ICE agents: “We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!” Just over a week later, amid tense protests and further violence by ICE in Minneapolis, he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act.
Trump’s vitriol, though often seen as “unhinged” by critics, is methodical and by design. He uses any violent national tragedy as political ammo. During his first year back in the White House, he has seized upon assassinations, mass shootings, and other deadly traumas to stoke partisan division and justify extreme policies and actions. Fact-finding in the aftermath of a tragedy does not matter to him—only setting the narrative does.
“He only speaks in one key, and that key is division.”
His top officials back him in lockstep. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared shortly after Good’s killing—before any investigation—that Good had committed “an act of domestic terrorism.” Noem’s description of what happened with the ICE agents defied reality: “A woman attacked them, and those surrounding them, and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.” Vice President JD Vance blamed the deceased victim for “an attack on the American people,” declaring it “classic terrorism.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated that Good’s death was “a result of a larger, sinister left-wing movement that has spread across our country.”
The brazen lying and demonization were familiar, the latest in a pattern from Trump that has included his response to the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, a mass shooting at a Mormon church, a terrorist attack on National Guard soldiers, and even the shocking murders of Hollywood icon Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. (Details on these and others below.)
Most modern presidents have sought to console and reassure the country in the face of national tragedy, but Trump’s behavior stands alone, says Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “He seems incapable of trying to unify people or issue words of healing,” Dallek says. “I can’t think of a single instance in which he tried to calm tempers. He only speaks in one key, and that key is division.”
Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, President George W. Bush stated that true Islam “is peace” and urged Americans not to vilify millions of Muslims who were making “an incredibly valuable contribution to our country.” After the devastating gun massacre at a historic Black church in South Carolina in 2015, President Barack Obama called for national soul-searching and emphasized the power of goodness and grace over racist hatred.
You have to go back half a century, to “law and order” hardliner Richard Nixon, to find a more combative approach, Dallek notes. Yet even though Nixon was bilious and conspiratorial against the political left, he was more measured in his public reaction to national trauma and less willing than Trump to disregard reality. Nixon’s messaging included victim-blaming after four students were shot dead by national guard troops at Kent State University in May 1970—but he also acknowledged that most in the protest movement were “very peaceful” and said he would withhold judgement about the shooting until after a factual investigation.
Trump’s tactics have been effective for helping him maintain a minority base of fervent supporters, says Dallek. “They can all get behind this idea that whatever is happening within MAGA is much less worse than the threat of ‘the radical left.’”
He adds: “It justifies, after the fact, his very aggressive and even extremist policies, including the unleashing of ICE on blue cities and states. The narrative he creates says to all his supporters that what he’s doing is ‘destroying the enemy within,’ that he’s taking care of the scourge that he promised to address. I think it’s a mistake to discount just how powerful that can be.”
Trump provokes so much news and controversy for the public to process that his exploitation of violent tragedies tends to fade quickly from consciousness. The rhetoric has an intended effect, then attention is gone. But scrutiny of recent disasters reveals the clear pattern by which Trump has built up a leftist bogeyman (including designating antifa a domestic terrorist group) and has further cultivated contempt for immigrants and political adversaries.
When Charlie Kirk was assassinated last September, the Trump White House emphasized blame, rapidly and without evidence, on a broad conspiracy. Law enforcement authorities announced in the initial aftermath that the suspect charged in the killing, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, likely acted alone—and no evidence to the contrary has emerged in the more than four months since. Nevertheless, top Trump aide Stephen Miller hammered home the preferred narrative on Kirk’s former podcast, in a conversation with Vance that was live-streamed from the White House five days after the killing. “It is a vast domestic terror movement,” Miller said. “And with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks…and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi pushed broader blame in an interview with ABC News: “Who killed Charlie?” she asked. “Left-wing radicals, and they will be held accountable.” On Newsmax, Dan Bongino, then the FBI deputy director, leaned into talk of investigating a possible conspiracy.
“That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent.”
Inside a Phoenix stadium 11 days after the killing, Trump led the memorializing of Kirk as a persecuted martyr. He said that Kirk had faced “menacing hate” everywhere on his campus tours from “rage-filled radicals.” He denounced “antifa terrorists” and claimed that “many of these people” allegedly targeting Kirk were highly paid “agitators.”
In an especially dark turn, Trump went off script after saying that Kirk was a “noble spirit” with a forgiving view of the political opposition. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” Trump added, waxing sardonic. “I hate my opponent. And I don’t want the best for them.”
Later in September, a man committed a mass shooting and arson at a Mormon church in Michigan and was quickly killed by police. Less than three hours afterward, Trump commented on social media: “The suspect is dead, but there is still a lot to learn.” In that same post, however, he declared a motive: “This appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America.” Asked the next morning about motive on Fox & Friends, Leavitt said she’d learned from FBI director Kash Patel that all they knew so far was that the killer “hated people of the Mormon faith.”
Further media reporting on the perpetrator, who killed four victims and injured eight others, soon complicated the Trump narrative of a war on Christianity. Friends said that 40-year-old Thomas Sanford was a right-wing Republican. Social media posts showed he’d backed Trump for president, and recently a Trump sign had been displayed on his home. His grievance with the Mormon church appeared to hinge specifically on a rough breakup he’d gone through years prior with a Mormon girlfriend. He was an ex-Marine who’d served in Iraq and had a history of substance abuse. He had a young son with a rare genetic disorder, a source of emotional and financial strain. Sanford, in other words, was like many other suicidal mass killers: his pathway to violence was complex, with no clear ideological explanation.
The Trump White House said nothing further. Media coverage dwindled. But there was evidence from the start that some people had perceived the source of the massacre the way Trump wanted: As a Wall Street Journal reporter described from near the scene that day, “I’ve heard people yelling out car windows about radical leftists.”
Depending on who the victims are, Trump’s divisiveness has taken other forms—including what he doesn’t say or do in the aftermath. Back in June of last year, when a man in Minnesota hunted two Democratic state lawmakers at their homes, fatally shooting former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and wounding Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Trump was notably muted as a search was underway for the suspect. Trump offered only a brief, uncharacteristic written statement, posted by Leavitt on his behalf, in which he denounced the violence generally and said that the DOJ and FBI were fully on the case. After the suspect was captured and evidence emerged that he was a Trump supporter who held extreme far-right views, Trump began using media interviews to trash Gov. Tim Walz as “grossly incompetent” and “a terrible governor.”
Normally after such a rare, high-stakes catastrophe, a president would offer support to regional leaders directly impacted, but not in this case. Trump sowed uncertainty in the media about whether he would reach out to Walz, and when asked again three days after the assassinations, he scoffed. “I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling him,” he said. “The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess.”
Three months later, when asked by a reporter why he hadn’t ordered US flags lowered in honor of Hortman—as he had just done for Kirk—Trump said he was “not familiar” with who Hortman was. He added that he “wouldn’t have thought of” lowering flags for her and blamed Walz for not making the request. Earlier this January, Trump promoted a delusional conspiracy theory on social media suggesting that Walz himself was behind Hortman’s killing.
After an Afghan national gunned down two National Guard members in a terrorist attack just before Thanksgiving in Washington, DC, Trump unleashed a broad tirade against immigrants. The shooter had first been resettled in the US in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, a program for some who’d fought alongside the US military in Afghanistan. But although the shooter had later been approved for asylum under the Trump administration in 2025, Trump railed against his predecessor, vowing to “re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden.” In those same remarks from Mar-a-Lago the day of the attack, Trump went on to demonize “hundreds of thousands of Somalians” in Minnesota (overstating and misnaming that population). He blamed them for “ripping off billions of dollars” and alleged they hate America.
Trump soon amped up his dehumanizing rhetoric as ICE began aggressive operations targeting Somalis and others in the Minneapolis region. During a Dec. 2 cabinet meeting broadcast live, the president laced into Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whom he has vilified for years: “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work.” He said further of the Somali community, “When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
Trump’s team applauded as Vance pounded the table enthusiastically.
Trump’s reaction to another high-profile tragedy late last year seemed especially revealing. It is difficult to conceive of any purpose—other than to express vengeful satisfaction and provoke outrage—for his response to the news that Rob and Michele Reiner had been stabbed to death in their home, and that their long-troubled son Nick was the suspected killer.
Trump’s victim-blaming post on social media was bizarre, degrading, and grim: “A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME… He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness.”
The outrage came indeed. (“We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House,” wrote conservative columnist Bret Stephens.)
This pattern of conduct from Trump may be pushing the nation farther down a dark path, says Dallek, the historian. One concern is that the more violent events we have, the more divided the country could become. “Because the interpretation of those events by different factions is so in conflict, each violent episode worsens the atmosphere. It inflames people on all sides, and it’s impossible at that point for reason to triumph over the fury that people feel, in some cases justifiably.”
Trump has made clear repeatedly that he may further attempt to use the American military against Americans.
The risk has heightened around the killing of Renee Good and as ICE and Border Patrol operations have grown more lawless and violent. In Dallek’s view, Trump’s signals have been disturbingly clear: disinterest in the real facts of what’s happening on the ground, a total absence of accountability, and the White House doubling down on claims that it is their militarized deportation forces, not communities, that are under siege.
“To all ICE officers,” Miller declared on Fox News this week, “you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.”
“It creates a kind of permission structure,” Dallek says. “I think the leaders of the Trump administration have told ICE and Border Patrol to take off the gloves, to be very aggressive. Now we are seeing the results of that message on the streets of American cities.”
Trump’s latest threat has long been building. Though the federal courts recently thwarted some of his extended deployments of National Guard troops, he has made clear repeatedly that he may further attempt to use the American military against Americans.
“We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he told reporters in the Oval Office last fall. “If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I’d do that.”
