Where do we go from here?
It’s been a week that feels like a year.
My brain keeps circling back to Renee Nicole Macklin Good. The filth and lies that this Administration has created around her murder is sickening. But you know, in some ways it’s not surprising.
Perhaps Donald Trump’s first notable dehumanization came when Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was bludgeoned by a stranger in their home in October 2022. The attacker fractured Paul’s skull. Trump, repeating a baseless conspiracy theory that was promoted by Elon Musk and his son, Don, Jr., said “it wasn’t a break in, it was a break out.”
A year later, Trump was still mocking both Nancy and Paul:
“We’ll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco — how’s her husband doing, anybody know?” Trump said to a raucous crowd of California Republicans at a state party convention.
Fast forward to 2025 and the horrific double murder in Minnesota. Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband were killed in “politically motivated shootings” in June. The Department of Justice pulled no punches:
[Vance Boelter] carried out targeted political assassinations the likes of which have never been seen in Minnesota.
But the President? He couldn’t be bothered to honor a Democrat by flying flags at half-mast, even though he’d demanded multiple days at half-mast for Charlie Kirk.
Republican lives matter more than Democratic lives, Trump is effectively telling his base. And in a shocking comment on “Fox & Friends” on Friday, Trump appeared to use Kirk’s assassination to explicitly designate political violence a partisan issue too, by defending violent right-wing extremists as sharing his political goals of bringing down “crime” and left-wing extremists as “the problem.”
Moreover, Trump posted a conspiracy theory video on Truth Social “alleging Gov. Tim Walz [was] behind [the] assassination.” On the first Saturday of this year.
Trump was just getting wound up.
Renee was, we learned from a video the Administration released today, sitting in her idling car, window down, chatting with the ICE agent who would shoot her while her partner (or wife, news reports differ) was filming the ICE operation and headed back to their car.
Bystanders reported that at least one ICE agent directed Renee to drive away. She first waved an ICE vehicle by. And then ICE agent Jonathan Ross walked across in front of her vehicle from right to left, turned towards her as she turned her wheels to the right and began moving forward. With no provocation, he shot her three times, at close range. Then nonchalantly walked to her vehicle when it crashed into another car and utility pole. He never dropped his phone, which continued recording.
On Truth Social, Trump almost immediately claimed Renee was “screaming” (she was not). He called her a “professional agitator” (she was a poet and mother) who was “driving disorderly” (the car was idling) and had “violently, willfully, and viciously [run] over the ICE Officer (she did no such thing), who seems to have shot her in self defense (not according to video).”
Here’s The Guardian on Friday: Trump administration unleashes torrent of untruths after woman shot dead by ICE. Victim-blaming began almost as soon as Renee Nicole Good was killed.
The “Administration” acts at the direction of the President who has demonstrated over and over again that he is devoid of a shred of human decency.
Trump has repeatedly shown us that he doesn’t care a fig about truth or honesty. He treats Democrats and blue states as enemy territory that he must conquer. After all, he told the New York Times this week that his only constraint is his “morality.”
His behavior shows us he does not know the meaning of that word.
I do not know how we move forward as a country. Many of you will protest on Saturday. It’s important but not enough.
Venezuela is impeachment-worthy.
This detached-from-reality behavior is 25th Amendment territory.
But it is not August 1974; Trump makes Nixon look like a poser; and the GOP is now the Gutless Obstructionist Party.