For Trump, the Truth in Minneapolis Is What He Says It Is

The Trump team has advanced one-sided narratives to justify each of the killings, even when bystander video shows something else entirely.

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Without waiting for facts, the Trump team has advanced one-sided narratives to justify each of the killings and demonize the victims. Renee Good, a mother of three, was engaged in “domestic terrorism” and “viciously ran over the ICE Officer,” they declared. Alex Pretti, an I.C.U. nurse at a veterans’ hospital, was an “assassin” aiming to “massacre law enforcement.”

The trick is that the Trump versions of reality have collided with bystander videos watched by millions who did not see what they were told. Ms. Good did not run over the ICE agent who killed her; a video analysis suggested she was trying to turn away from him and he continued to shoot her even as she passed him. Mr. Pretti approached officers with a phone in his hand, not a gun; he moved to help a woman who was pepper sprayed and he was under a pileup of agents when one suddenly shot him in the back.

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“You say something enough times and it becomes true,” he once told Mary Pat Christie, the wife of Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, who has related his wife’s anecdote to associates. Stephanie Grisham, Mr. Trump’s former White House press secretary who has broken with him, recalled that he told her the same thing: “It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie — say it enough and people will believe you.”

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The challenge for Mr. Trump at this point is the modern cellphone. There are scores or hundreds or more on the streets of Minneapolis these days and they are capturing at least a slice of reality regardless of the president’s storytelling. One of the central questions in American life today is whether a picture is worth more than a thousand of Mr. Trump’s words.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/us/politics/trump-truth-minneapolis-shootings.html