Trump’s Slippery Definition of ‘Patriots’ and ‘Terrorists’
On January 6, Donald Trump’s administration published an apologia for the Trump supporters whom he incited to storm the Capitol five years earlier. The next day, Stephen Miller, in response to news that an ICE agent had shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, lambasted the Democratic Party on X for “inciting a violent insurrection.”
The juxtaposition of the January 6 anniversary and the shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota the next day is a coincidence of timing. But the echo of language between that which the Trump administration has attacked (alleged violence against federal law-enforcement officers) and that which it has defended (actual violence against federal law-enforcement officers) is striking.
President Trump’s long-standing view has become official policy: His supporters are definitionally “patriotic” and therefore entitled to take any actions on his behalf, regardless of how violent or illegal they may be. His opponents are definitionally terrorists, and therefore constitute legitimate targets of state violence. This is how an organized mass attack to overthrow the government becomes “peaceful” and “patriotic,” while a single woman attempting to flee ICE agents constitutes a violent attempt to overthrow the government.
[Adam Serwer: First the shooting. Then the lies.]
It is possible that the ICE officer who shot Good feared that she intended to drive her car into him. But video documentation shows that she was turning her car away from the officer when he shot her. Although it remains unclear whether her car grazed him, videos show the officer running down the street to check on Good, then walking away unaided. As for Good, her ex-husband has told Minnesota Public Radio that she was not a political activist—she had never protested anything, to his knowledge—and that she had merely been caught in the vicinity of the ICE raid after dropping off her 6-year-old at school.
The Trump administration, however, immediately circulated a fantasy version of what happened.
In a message on Truth Social, Trump recited what has become the new MAGA talking points. The president called Good part of a “Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate” and charged that she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” He added, “It is hard to believe he is alive.”
Vice President J. D. Vance insisted that the officer was “defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over.” The Homeland Security Department described the shooter as bravely saving “his own life, as well as the lives of his fellow officers” from “an anti-ICE rioter” engaged in “an act of domestic terrorism.”
[Read: Lethal force on a frozen street ]
What’s notable about these hysterical claims is how far they go beyond the simplest possible defense. The administration is not merely insisting that the ICE officer believed Good’s car might strike him, an argument that might have reframed the shooting as a tragic error. Instead, they have presented the shooting as absolutely necessary—an act of patriotism, even—and its victim as an unhinged would-be murderer posing a threat to the republic.
This account is especially jarring when read in contrast with the White House’s stream of lies about January 6. (National Review’s Noah Rothman has written an excellent point-by-point refutation.) The administration’s revisionist history not only says that the insurrection was just a peaceful march that went awry because of mistakes made by the Capitol Police; it also says that Ashli Babbitt, an actual rioter who attempted to breach a barricaded room protecting members of Congress, was “Murdered in Cold Blood” by a Capitol Police officer.
There is no objective standard of conduct that could possibly explain why beating police officers is peaceful but attempting to flee from them is terrorism. This is not an oversight, but the essence of Trumpism. This administration believes that it is entitled to do as it pleases. Its perceived enemies are entitled to nothing.
