David French
Trump and Vance Are
Fanning the Flames. Again.
Jan. 11, 2026
By David French
Opinion
Columnist
President Trump is
putting on a clinic about how to break the United States.
There are few things in
American life more divisive than controversies over police violence. The racial
reckoning of 2020 and the protests and riots that followed George Floyd’s
murder at the hands of a police officer are still fresh in our minds. We also
remember the unrest and violence that followed the police shooting of Michael
Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.
The last time a
president invoked the Insurrection Act and deployed active-duty troops to
American streets was at the request of the mayor of Los Angeles and governor of
California in 1992, during the Los Angeles riots that
followed the acquittal of four officers on charges, including assault and the
use of excessive force, after their severe beating, crucially videotaped, of
Rodney King.
The King case was a
preview of our modern dilemma. How do political leaders respond when video
evidence causes the public to make up its own mind — regardless of what any
judge or jury might have to say?
The terrible divisiveness of police
violence is why responsible leaders respond to every incident with extreme
care. You lament the lives lost, you promise a fair and thorough investigation,
and you call for calm. You do not prejudge the case. You do not set up an
expectation that justice will be done only if your side’s interests are
vindicated. And you definitely don’t send out allies and subordinates to whip
up public anger.
Even if you follow that
playbook perfectly — you say the right words, you do the right things —
violence can still erupt. That’s how fraught the issue is.
But Trump isn’t a
responsible leader, and he’s at his absolute worst in a crisis. He lies. He
inflames his base. And — most dangerous of all — he pits the federal government
against states and cities, treating them not as partners in constitutional
governance but as hostile inferiors that must be brought to heel.
That’s exactly what has
happened in the hours and days since an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good on
the streets of Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Instantly, the
administration’s narrative locked in. In a Truth Social post published mere
hours after Good’s death, Trump said that
Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems
to have shot her in self defense.” He said that it was “hard to believe” that
the ICE agent (who was recorded walking around after the incident, apparently
unharmed) was alive.
Statements from senior administration
officials were even worse. Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland
security, said that Good
committed an act of “domestic terrorism.” Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant
secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, referred to Good as a violent rioter and said she
“weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in
an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism.”
Not to be outdone, Vice
President JD Vance called the incident “classic terrorism.”
But if you watch videos of the shooting, one thing is clear: No
fair-minded person could watch that incident and conclude that Good was a
“domestic terrorist” on a mission to run down ICE agents. The administration’s
claims of terrorism are false — absurdly so.
Good’s S.U.V. was
blocking part of a road, and she appeared to signal for other traffic to go
around her when an ICE vehicle approached. Multiple agents approached her car.
One said, “Get out of the car,” using an expletive. An eyewitness, however,
said that she heard conflicting instructions —
one agent telling Good to get out of the car, while another agent told her to
drive away.
As one of the agents
places his hand on Good’s door handle, she backs up slightly, turns her wheels
away from the police, in a direction to leave, and starts driving forward. At
that moment, an agent who had positioned himself in front of her vehicle sidesteps
around the vehicle and fires what sounds like three quick shots at Good.
What Good was doing
hardly qualifies as “domestic terrorism,” and this becomes especially clear
when you compare the videos from Minneapolis with video of actual terror
attacks — “classic terrorism,” to use the vice president’s phrase.
Many of us have seen footage, for
example, of the horrific ramming attack in Nice, France, in 2016 that killed 86 people — or of the
domestic terror attack in Charlottesville, Va., the following year, where a white
supremacist drove directly into a crowd of “Unite the Right” counterprotesters,
killing a woman, Heather D. Heyer, and injuring dozens of others. In both
cases, the murderous intentions of the men driving the vehicles — deploying
them as weapons — were unmistakable. Their goal was to inflict pain and death
on as many people as possible.
The Minnesota videos
show that it was never necessary for the officer to open fire. If a first shot
is taken only after an officer is out of the path of the vehicle, that
shot is not necessary to save his life.
In fact, dodging a
vehicle rather than attempting to stop it with gunfire is the preferred course of action for
federal law enforcement. Bullets, after all, do not stop cars. They kill
drivers and render the car rudderless, not immobile, which is exactly what
happened here.
Still, the fact that a shooting is unnecessary or immoral does not mean it
is criminal. A shooting can be unnecessary and immoral without being illegal,
and the legal standard can be quite complex.
Last May, in an
analogous case called Barnes v. Felix, the
Supreme Court ruled that evaluations of police shootings must consider the
“totality of the circumstances” of a shooting, not simply the precise moment of
the perceived threat.
The Barnes case involved an officer
who jumped onto a moving car after it fled from a traffic stop. With his life
in mortal danger, the officer shot and killed the driver.
The question in that
case was whether courts should evaluate the shooting only on the basis of the
seconds that the officer was in danger, or whether courts should take a broader
view and ask, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a unanimous court, about “all
the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the
climactic moment.”
That means a
frame-by-frame analysis of a shooting doesn’t come close to resolving its
legality.
Even video that appears
to have been taken from the shooter’s angle (which emerged Friday)
doesn’t resolve this particular controversy. It shows Good smiling at the agent
and telling him that she’s not mad at him. It shows her moving her car toward
him as someone (possibly her wife) tells her to “drive.” And it also shows the
shooter sidestepping the car even as he opens fire.
But we don’t yet have
video from the other agents. We don’t know why the agent moved in front of the
vehicle rather than staying to the side as the other agents did. We don’t know
the training the agent received.
We simply cannot and
should not prejudge the agent’s case — if it even becomes a case.
But that brings us back
to this administration’s malice and recklessness. There is zero indication that
it intends to conduct a rigorous investigation. All of its public energy is
directed toward demonizing Good and defending the agent. Even worse, the federal
government has been taking steps to
impede the state of Minnesota’s investigation of the shooting.
It can be difficult for a
state government to prosecute a federal agent who commits a crime while on
duty. But it’s not impossible. At the very least, there is a strong state
interest in investigating the incident to provide the public with a thorough,
accurate — and complete — account of Good’s death.
It’s important to
understand that the shooting in Minnesota is exceptional only because Good
died, not because the administration lied. In fact, for the Trump
administration, lying is the norm.
In November, for
example, a U.S. District Court judge, Sara Ellis, issued a comprehensive 233-page opinion that
exposed a series of administration falsehoods about ICE operations in Chicago.
Time and again, she exposed discrepancies between administration accounts of
riots and video evidence. She accused Gregory Bovino, the commander of the U.S.
Border Patrol, of “outright lying” in his deposition testimony.
In many ways, the Trump administration is reversing the injustice of
the civil rights era. Then, it was the states who violated the Constitution,
and federal power offered a solution. Now, the federal government is trampling
the Constitution, and many states are attempting to resist.
But they face a decisive
disadvantage. Under our constitutional structure of government, the federal
sovereign is supreme. That means federal power can offer a solution to state
injustice. But there is no easy state solution for federal oppression. A president
hellbent on oppression, reinforced by his pardon power — and effectively immune
from conviction even if he is impeached — will be able to get his way, at least
for a time.
This produces the kind of tension that
can break a nation. When a government oppresses its citizens and cuts off
access to justice, it places an unbearable strain on the system.
On Wednesday, JD
Vance posted on X, “You
can accept that this woman’s death is a tragedy while acknowledging it’s a
tragedy of her own making.”
But it was not a tragedy
of Good’s own making. She did not shoot herself, and the ICE agent did not have
to shoot her to save himself. The fact that a woman does not comply with police
commands (especially when she may have been hearing conflicting instructions)
does not mean that her life is forfeit.
Matt Walsh, the popular
right-wing podcaster, wrote, “This lesbian
agitator gave her life to protect 68 IQ Somali scammers who couldn’t give less
of a shit about her. The most disgraceful and humiliating end a person could
possibly meet.”
That’s how much parts of
MAGA devalue human life. That’s how much they despise their political
opponents.
We should certainly respect law enforcement officers, but we are not their subjects. We are not Trump’s subjects, either. But that’s not the president’s mind-set, and that’s not what parts of MAGA believe.
To the worst parts of MAGA — including
people who exert immense power over American life — your worth is defined by
your obedience. And those who don’t obey? Well, they deserve to die, and no one
should mourn their death.
