January 25th, 2026
There’s a telling moment when an administration loses control of its own story. It’s not always dramatic—no resignation speeches or emergency press conferences. Sometimes it’s just the silence where certainty used to be, the fumbling where there should be message discipline, the allies who suddenly can’t find the talking points.
That moment arrived for the Trump White House this weekend.
The killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse shot down on a Minneapolis street while holding nothing but a cellphone, has done more than spark outrage. It’s exposed something this administration works desperately to hide: there is no coherent strategy, no unified message, and increasingly, no one in charge of the chaos.
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Watch how they’ve responded—or more accurately, how they’ve failed to respond. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, pressed by NBC’s Kristen Welker on whether Pretti ever brandished a weapon, couldn’t answer. Not wouldn’t—couldn’t. He mumbled about ongoing investigations while video evidence showed Pretti holding up his phone, recording the agents who would kill him seconds later. This wasn’t strategic ambiguity. This was a senior Justice Department official with no idea what he was supposed to say.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried a different approach, claiming Pretti brought a semiautomatic weapon to a peaceful situation—conveniently ignoring that there’s zero evidence Pretti ever drew the gun, and that lawful gun ownership is supposedly a constitutional right this administration claims to champion. ABC’s Jonathan Karl dismantled the argument in real time. Bessent had no coherent response.
Then there’s Kash Patel, challenged by Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on how federal agents could claim a threat from a man filming with his phone. Patel’s answer? The matter is under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security. Translation: we have no story that works, so we’re stalling.
These aren’t coordinated responses. They’re not even in the same universe. One official claims ongoing investigation prevents comment. Another jumps in to justify the killing. A third deflects to a different agency. It’s the communication strategy of an administration that’s lost the plot.
Behind the scenes, the picture is even worse. According to CNN’s reporting, Trump has been expressing frustration that his immigration messaging is “getting lost”—as if the problem is branding rather than the fact that federal agents killed a nurse on camera. Sources describe him as “exasperated,” which is a polite way of saying the president is watching his signature issue spiral out of control and doesn’t know how to stop it.
His response was quintessentially Trumpian: an impromptu press conference on his first anniversary in office, thumbing through mugshots like show-and-tell, trying to redirect attention to dangerous criminals being deported. It was supposed to project strength and command. Instead, it looked like what it was—desperate improvisation from a president who’s lost control of the narrative and doesn’t have a plan to get it back.
Top White House officials have been “plotting how to move the narrative away from the unrest in Minneapolis,” according to sources familiar with internal discussions. Think about that phrasing. Not “addressing the concerns,” not “ensuring accountability,” but moving the narrative. They’re trying to change the channel while the house is burning down.
The problem they’re facing is that this isn’t a communications challenge. It’s a credibility crisis, and it’s metastasizing in real time.
Even MAGA Republicans are breaking ranks. Senator Bill Cassidy—a reliable Trump ally—issued a statement calling the Minneapolis events “incredibly disturbing” and demanding a full joint federal and state investigation. “The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake,” Cassidy wrote. “We can trust the American people with the truth.”
When your own coalition members are publicly questioning the credibility of your signature enforcement agencies, you’ve lost message control. When they’re calling for outside investigations, they’re signaling they don’t trust your version of events. Cassidy didn’t have to say that. The fact that he felt compelled to speaks volumes about the panic spreading through Republican ranks.
The administration thought they could manage this the way they’ve managed everything else—attack the critics, question the facts, flood the zone with alternative narratives. But they ran headfirst into a problem they didn’t anticipate: their own base.
The NRA, Gun Owners of America, and Republican lawmakers like Thomas Massie aren’t buying the justification for Pretti’s killing. When Bill Essayli, Trump’s own appointed U.S. attorney, claimed that approaching law enforcement while armed creates high likelihood of justified shooting, the NRA called it “dangerous and wrong.” Gun Owners of America reminded everyone that the Second Amendment protects bearing arms while protesting—a right “the federal government must not infringe upon.”
The White House built its coalition on Second Amendment absolutism and law-and-order rhetoric. Now those principles are in direct conflict, and there’s no talking point that resolves the contradiction. Either you defend gun rights for all lawful carriers, or you defend federal agents killing someone who never drew their weapon. You can’t do both, and watching administration officials try is revealing the intellectual bankruptcy at the core of their governance.
This is what happens when an administration governs by narrative rather than principle, by spectacle rather than competence. Eventually, reality intrudes in ways you can’t spin. A 37-year-old nurse lies dead on a Minneapolis street, killed by federal agents while exercising constitutional rights this president claims to protect. Multiple videos contradict the implicit justification for lethal force. Your own appointees can’t get their stories straight. Your allies are demanding independent investigations.
And the president? He’s frustrated that his messaging is getting lost, as if better communications could paper over a constitutional crisis of his own making.
Barack and Michelle Obama perhaps said it best: this is “a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.” They noted that Americans expect federal agents to work with state and local officials, not against them. “That’s not what we’re seeing in Minnesota. In fact, we’re seeing the opposite.”
The Trump White House has no response to that, because the Obamas are right and everyone knows it. So instead, they’re “plotting” how to change the subject, hoping Americans will forget what they’ve seen with their own eyes.
But here’s the thing about truth—it has a stubborn persistence that outlasts even the most sophisticated spin operations. When Senator Cassidy says “we can trust the American people with the truth,” he’s acknowledging something this administration has tried desperately to obscure: people can see what’s happening. The videos exist. The contradictions are documented. The chaos speaks for itself.
This is why our work matters. Every article that documents the inconsistencies, every report that holds power accountable, every voice that refuses to accept the narrative over the evidence—these aren’t just acts of journalism or activism. They’re the essential work of democratic citizenship.
The administration wants us to get tired, to move on to the next outrage, to accept that chaos is the new normal. Our job is simpler: keep telling the truth. Keep documenting what we see. Keep asking the questions they won’t answer. The narrative may collapse on its own, but accountability only comes when enough people refuse to look away.
We owe Alex Pretti at least that much. And we owe it to ourselves, and to the country we still believe in, to keep faith with the truth even when—especially when—those in power would rather we forget it.
