Greg Bovino has been demoted from his role as the commander of at-large Border Patrol operations. It is a welcome change, but another change is due: Kristi Noem should no longer be secretary of homeland security.
The Minneapolis shooting of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents is not as scandalous or unforgivable as it is being portrayed by Democrats and liberal media. While more details are still on the way, the premise of the shooting is fairly defensible, as some of us have detailed. Officers were in a physical confrontation with a man who was armed with a gun and were forced to make a snap decision to protect their lives, while a crowd of protesters made the situation more chaotic.
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And yet, many of President Donald Trump’s top officials have overstepped, speaking of the situation with as much hysteria as Democrats. Bovino had been one of them, claiming that “this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Pretti made a series of stupid decisions and found himself in a physical fight with officers, which he initiated, while having a gun on his person, but there is no indication he went there with the gun to deliberately try to “massacre law enforcement.”
Noem similarly said that “this looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” She also said, “I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.” FBI Director Kash Patel echoed that sentiment, saying, “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.”
This is a talking point straight out of a Democratic gun control group’s communications staff. Plenty of peaceful protesters go to protests with “a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.” This is actually the norm for, say, pro-Second Amendment protesters in Texas. Noem is irresponsibly exaggerating the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Pretti and then helping Democrats undermine the Second Amendment in her efforts to defend Border Patrol’s actions, even though the shooting can be justified on the merits already.
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Noem is undermining gun rights and making Border Patrol, and Immigration and Customs Enforcemtn, more unpopular with her overdramatic defenses. It isn’t clear what positives she brings to the role that could not be brought by someone else. She has no value above a replacement-level secretary and is undermining Trump’s agenda, the support for immigration enforcement, and the Second Amendment.
If that is not enough for her to go, as Bovino has, then it isn’t clear what would be. Noem is not cut out for the job or the moment, and both the Trump administration and the country would be better off without her in charge of the Department of Homeland Security.