The barbaric killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis over the weekend has left a deep mark on much of the country. Even the Trump administration appears to recognize there is no credible way to spin the incident in its favor, and reports now suggest ICE’s occupation of the city may be nearing an end. At the very least, ICE commander Greg Bovino has already been demoted, and DHS head is also reportedly on thin ice (pun intended).
As to be expected, on Monday night, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Seth Meyers all used their monologues to address Pretti’s murder and the Trump administration’s initial attempts to control the narrative by portraying him as a domestic terrorist who was intent on inflicting a massacre.
Kimmel lamented that it felt like Americans are “being forced to play a game that has no rules.” He added, “We see videos in which one of our fellow Americans is clearly executed by ICE, and they won’t even admit it was a mistake.”
Colbert chided at the suggestion that ICE are the “victims,” saying, “Masked secret police shooting innocent people with impunity are not victims. The only way they could be considered victims is if they are weak-minded individuals led to the darkness by Donald Trump, now participating in an evil system that will stick to them like hot black tar for the rest of their lives. And I’d suggest cooking at home from now on, fellas, because no meal will ever go un-spat upon. [Greg] Bovino complained that people are calling them Nazis, but that’s an unfair comparison, the Nazis were willing to show their faces.”
Seth Meyers lauded the thousands of people who peacefully took to the streets in the wake of Pretti’s death, commenting that “the barbarism we’ve seen from the government is heartbreaking, but the response from the American people is heartening.”
And Jon Stewart questioned whether Pretti’s greatest “crime” in the eyes of the government was simply being a “witness who captured the truth.” Remarked Stewart, “They’re lying. We saw it. And that’s how brazenly they lie when they know we’ve seen the truth. That’s how they lie when they know we know. Imagine how they lie when there’s no evidence to contradict them. And maybe that, more than anything, explains why Alex Pretti really was a threat. Because he was brandishing a weapon: a handheld, aluminum, 1080p, 60fps weapon of mass illumination. Because there is nothing more dangerous to a regime predicated on lies than witnesses who capture the truth.”
However, one late-night host chose not to address the weekend’s events at all: Pretti’s name was noticeably absent from Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show monologue. Though he often leans into his persona as the “apolitical” alternative in late-night, Fallon’s omission was glaring, especially given that he welcomed a prominent political figure, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for a surprise guest spot in the very same segment.
Then again, Fallon also didn’t address Nicole Good’s shooting either, so he may just be following the mantra see no evil, hear no evil, call out no evil.
