Politicians Reach Different Conclusions on Minnesota Shooting Video

The Trump administration and some Democrats have drawn divergent conclusions from bystander video of the fatal shooting of a woman in Minnesota by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. How can one side say the agent was “recklessly using power” and the other determine he “fired defensive shots”? Experts told us it’s common for people to view the same video differently, and that the early evidence isn’t enough to reach definitive conclusions.

Shortly after the Jan. 7 incident, in which 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was killed by the agent in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social a video clip of the shooting, captured from a distance, and said that the woman “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.” Additional bystander video, captured closer to the shooting, showed the agent wasn’t run over but left unclear whether the vehicle struck him. Republicans and Democrats have still disagreed on what the early video evidence depicted.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a Jan. 7 press conference, “This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism,” determining that the ICE officer “fired defensive shots” because he was “fearing for his life.” The next day, Vice President JD Vance echoed that assessment, saying, “She was trying to ram this guy with his — with her car.”

Democratic leaders in Minnesota have disputed that. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said on Jan. 7, “So they are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video … myself, I want to tell everybody directly. That is bullshit. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.” In a press conference that day, Gov. Tim Walz referred to “a very difficult video to watch,” saying it was “beyond me” that Noem “has already determined who this person [Good] was, what their motive was.” He criticized the large deployment of federal agents in Minneapolis and said that Good was killed “for no reason whatsoever.”