President Donald Trump is trying to sound empathetic about two deadly shootings tied to federal agents in Minneapolis, saying he feels “terrible” about Alex Pretti and “even worse” for the family of Renee Good. The way he explained that difference, though, has turned a pair of tragedies into a fresh political flashpoint. His comments have raised hard questions about whose grief counts, how presidents talk about state violence, and what it means when loyalty to him slips into the middle of a condolence message.
At the center are two people who will never hear any of this: a young man killed in the snow and a 37-year-old mother of three shot in the head. Their families are left to navigate not just loss, but a national argument over whether the president’s sympathies are being rationed according to politics.
Two shootings, one city, and a president’s sliding scale of sympathy
The basic facts are grim. In Minneapolis, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti during what officials described as a law enforcement operation that quickly spiraled into chaos. Witness accounts and early footage fueled anger over whether the agents who confronted Alex Pretti were ever in real danger, or whether they escalated a situation that could have ended without gunfire, a debate that has played out in live updates tracking the Minneapolis shooting and its aftermath.
Not long after, another operation in the same city ended with the death of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was shot in the head by a masked ICE agent. Reporting on Good describes agents opening fire and continuing to shoot even after a target collapses, raising questions about tactics and restraint. Together, the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good have turned Minneapolis into a national symbol of how federal power is being used on city streets, with a running live blog chronicling the fallout from the Minneapolis shooting that first put Pretti’s name in headlines.
Trump’s “terrible” versus “even worse” comment, in his own words
Into that raw context stepped President Donald Trump, who has never been shy about weighing in on high profile shootings. Asked about the deaths, he said he felt “terrible” about what happened to Alex Pretti, but then added that he felt “even worse” about Renee Good because of who her parents are. In his telling, the difference was that Good’s parents were “tremendous Trump fans” and “Trump people,” a framing that turned a basic expression of sympathy into a ranking system tied directly to his own support base, as detailed in coverage of how Trump Says He about each family.
Trump repeated the same idea in multiple interviews, stressing that he was upset by both shootings but circling back to the fact that Good’s parents were “Trump fans” and “tremendous Trump people.” One account of his remarks notes that he explicitly contrasted his feelings, saying he felt “terrible” about Alex Pretti, but worse about Renee Good because her parents were Trump fans, language that appears in a report headlined with the phrase Trump Claims He “terrible” about both deaths. Another write up of the same comments captures the same hierarchy, describing how Trump Says He “Terrible, About Alex Pretti, Even Worse, About Renee Good Since Her Parents Were” Trump supporters, making clear that the president himself is the one tying his emotional response to their politics.
How politics slipped into a condolence call
On its face, a president saying he feels awful about two people killed by federal agents should be the bare minimum. What made these comments land so awkwardly was the way Trump seemed to calibrate his empathy based on whether the victims’ families liked him. In one account from Jan, President Trump is quoted admitting he feels “terrible” about the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, but then saying he was more upset about Good because her parents were “Trump fans,” a detail that appears in a National News story on how Trump feels about each death.
Another report from Jan spells it out even more bluntly, quoting President Trump as saying he felt “terrible” about Alex Pretti and Renee Good, but that he was more upset once he learned that Good’s father and mother were strong supporters who lived in a neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis. That same account notes that President Trump learned about Good’s father’s political leanings and then folded that into his public reaction, effectively telling the country that the grief of “Trump people” hits him harder.
Minneapolis, federal firepower, and a growing backlash
Trump’s comments did not land in a vacuum. Minneapolis has been living with the reality of heavily armed federal agents operating in its streets, and the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good have only sharpened local anger. Coverage of the operations describes federal agents from ICE and other agencies moving into neighborhoods, with Good killed by a masked ICE agent and Pretti shot during what officials framed as a high risk encounter. A live blog of the Minneapolis shooting that killed Pretti has documented protests, vigils, and demands for transparency from state leaders like Tim Walz and Jacob Frey.
In Washington, TNND reported from WASHINGTON that President Donald Trump weighed in on the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, describing Good’s shooting as “worse” than Pretti’s because her parents were Trump fans. That account notes that federal agents from Customs and Border Protection and ICE were involved in the deadly shootings, and that Trump defended the broader operation while calling the videos “terrible” to watch, a framing captured in a piece that quotes President Donald Trump describing the scenes. A related segment tagged with topics like Jan, Trump, Shooting, Pretti, Good, and Federal agents underscores how the same remarks are being replayed in coverage that highlights the federal role in both deaths, as seen in a companion link that lists those topics outright.
Video, music, and the culture clash around the shootings
As often happens with high profile police and federal shootings, the public is not just reacting to written reports but to images and sound. A short video clip circulating online shows Trump being asked what he thought when he first saw the footage of the shootings, with the president saying the whole thing is “terrible” and that everyone has an opinion about the video. That exchange, preserved in a YouTube short from Jan, captures him trying to balance a nod to how bad the images look with a defense of the agents’ split second decisions, even as he keeps returning to the political identity of Good’s parents.
The cultural response has gone beyond cable clips. Bruce Springsteen has already folded the death of Alex Pretti into a new song about Minneapolis, with lyrics that read, “Then we heard the gunshots / Then Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead / Their claim was self-defense, sir,” turning the shooting into a kind of modern protest ballad. The song, which references the “streets of Minneapolis” and calls the operation one of the most aggressive law enforcement efforts in Minnesota, is detailed in coverage of how Then Alex Pretti ended up as a symbol in Springsteen’s lyrics. When musicians, activists, and local residents are all telling their own versions of the story, a president’s decision to weigh victims’ families by their loyalty to him does not just sound off key, it risks locking his legacy to the most painful images coming out of Minneapolis.
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