Alex Pretti Kicked A Car. That's A Shootin'!
As we all know, the Bible demands an eye for an eye, a life for a tail light.
Newly dug-up videos taken 11 days before Alex Pretti was murdered by Border Patrol thugs shows that Pretti yelled at federal goons, flipped them off (with both hands!!), and kicked their unmarked rental SUV twice, the second time hard enough to break the vehicle’s passenger-side taillight. (You may have seen claims on social media that the footage is AI slop, but Pretti’s family has confirmed that it’s him in the video.)
The three videos from January 13 show various parts of the same incident, but don’t have anything to do with Pretti’s January 24 murder. But since it casts Pretti in a bad light, the footage is being treated by rightwing idiots as proof that he was a violent terrorist whose killing was justified. In Donald Trump’s America, kicking a rental car means your life is forfeit.
Here’s a screenshot of Megyn Kelly positively drooling over the irrefutable proof that Pretti sealed his fate long before trigger-happy federal agents shot him 11 days later under completely different circumstances.
Gee, we bet the White House, having briefly realized that the public is disgusted by Pretti’s murder, will shift back to insisting he was obviously a domestic terrorist and “would-be assassin,” because only the worst scum in the universe commit property damage. (January 6, 2021, excepted. Or not, because that was 100 percent peaceful.)
In video of the episode, posted by an outfit called “the News Movement,” Pretti can be seen yelling and apparently spitting at an unmarked Ford Expedition with federal goons inside. As it begins pulling away, Pretti kicks at the car twice, breaking the taillight with the second kick.
Here are two of the videos edited into one, complete with the narrator saying Pretti shouted ex-PLEE-tives at the agents. After the kick, agents got out of the SUV and tackled him, pulling his coat off. At that point, you can see the holstered gun he carried, which — as on the day he was killed — he never moved to unholster.
The Guardian posted a longer, more complete version of one of the videos, which begins after the kick to the SUV and shows the ICE goons firing pepper balls and tear gas into the crowd. Eyewitness Max Shapiro, who recorded this video, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “He got slammed to the ground pretty hard. ”
The resurfaced video has delighted the usual suspects on the Right, like presidential failson Don Junior, who guffawed, “Just a peaceful legal observer,” because federal deportation goons are allowed to kill people, and Trump supporters are allowed to assault Capitol police, but everyone else must remain stoic at all times.
Russian-sponsored wingnut Tim Pool offered his own hot take, suggesting — because he has no fucking idea how the law works — that federal goons, perhaps recognizing Pretti from the earlier incident, had every reason to kill Pretti when encountering him again.
Way to go, patriot! Suggesting that the DHS goons were doing a revenge killing really helps their defense, you betcha.
In any case, we guess we’ve learned our lesson: Alex Pretti may have been an ICU nurse who took care of veterans and tried to help a woman who’d been thrown to the ground by the goons who then killed him, but he also lost his temper and used bad words a week and a half prior to the goons killing him, so aren’t they really the same, after all?
[Guardian / Mediaite / Star Tribune]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d like to make a one-time (or recurring) donation, clicking this button probably won’t be held against you unless ICE goons shoot you.
You think that’s bad—I once saw people break into the Capitol Building and vandalize it…
The right: LEFTISTS ARE EVIL TOTALITARIANS THAT WILL MURDER YOU TYRANNICALLY!!!
Also the right: kicking a car and spitting? That's worth a public killing by goon squad.