How Trump is using violent tragedies to divide America

Once again, the response was quick, fuming, and filled with falsehoods.

On January 7, about five hours after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis fatally shot a woman in her SUV, President Donald Trump addressed the reckless killing in a social-media post: The victim, he said, “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive.”

Those were lies. Trump shared murky slow-motion footage from a distant door camera, but clearer videos from eyewitnesses had already gone viral and showed the reality. ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good, an American citizen and 37-year-old mother of three, point-blank through the windshield and open driver’s-side window as Good tried to turn her slow-moving vehicle away from him. Ross then reholstered his gun and walked down the street toward where the SUV had crashed, eyewitness video showed. (Moments later in that same video, Ross can be seen even more clearly walking back up the street and showing no signs of serious injury. Trump officials have since claimed that Ross suffered from an unspecified degree of internal bleeding.)

Trump’s post culminated with him blaming Good’s death on what he said was a sprawling conspiracy targeting ICE agents: “We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!” Just over a week later, amid tense protests and further violence by ICE in Minneapolis, he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Trump’s vitriol, though often seen as “unhinged” by critics, is methodical and by design. He uses any violent national tragedy as political ammo. During his first year back in the White House, he has seized upon assassinations, mass shootings, and other deadly traumas to stoke partisan division and justify extreme policies and actions. Fact-finding in the aftermath of a tragedy does not matter to him—only setting the narrative does.