"Fucking Bitch!"

Dear Everybody:

In Minneapolis murder news:

--Yesterday VP JD Vance released a video that captured the final confrontation between Renee Good and the ICE agent who shot her and which he claimed proved that the shooting was justified. Vance; "Watch this, as hard as it is. Many of you have been told this law enforcement officer wasn’t hit by a car, wasn’t being harassed, and murdered an innocent woman. The reality is that his life was endangered and he fired in self-defense."

-- It was the scariest thing they’ve done yet because it did anything BUT prove their story. In the first place, it turns out (which they eventually admitted) to be video from the phone of the ICE agent who shot Renee Good, which means he was filming throughout the encounter during which he claimed he was so frightened he shot her in self-defense. In the second place, Good says, "

That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you," to the agent just 20 seconds before he shoots her. In the second place, the government has no business releasing evidence in the middle of an investigation, and in the third place, (and this is the real kicker) he can be heard saying "Fucking bitch!" after he shoots her.

--Chris Hayes: "In the video that the shooter took, which I believe was leaked to be exculpatory, he appears to yell ‘fucking bitch’ after he shoots Renee Good."

--Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: "Hard video to watch, but about as close as you can get to conclusively disproving the Trump admin’s claims that she deliberately attempted to run down the officer. She even talks nicely with him moments before. Note also that the officer is more focused on filming her than on anything else."

--Tennessee Holler: "NEW VIDEO. This puts an end to all the lies. Horrific. They were having a calm exchange seconds before he murdered Renee Good, and she was barely moving and clearly avoiding him."

--Tellingly, Fox tells its viewers it is showing the whole video but then cuts off before the officer says, "Fucking bitch!" (Which tells you they know just how damning this is.)

--Asha Rangappa: "Him moving to the front of the car and then reaching for...his weapon before Good even begins moving forward demonstrates that the intention to shoot was not reactive to a threat posed by the vehicle."

--dplugin: "He knew he was going to shoot her the moment she put the vehicle in reverse. That is when he first moved to unholster. He made no effort to move to a safe location."

--Republicans immediately defended the video as vindicating the ICE agent. GOP Senator Tom Cotton: "The videos make clear: the ICE officer was justified and Democrat politicians lied about what happened. Proud to stand with our brave ICE officers against the left-wing mob." (What mob?) And neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes said, "The left is starting to realize that body cams are not their friends."

--GOP Rep Roger Williams: "People need to quit demonstrating, quit yelling at law enforcement, challenging law enforcement, and begin to get civil." (Who have I heard that said to before? Oh, yes, rape victims: "Just like back and enjoy it.")

--Reporter Ryan Grim: "You watched this and that’s your conclusion? He shot her twice through her side window. How was he in danger? I think you’re starting to realize you may have ruined yourself over this."

--Rick Wilson: "this new footage that Vance thinks exonerates the ICE murderer Jonathan Ross absolutely does not. This was spectacularly poor judgment on the part of the White House to release this."

--Charlotte Clymer: "He didn’t shoot her in the head at point-blank range because he felt like he was in danger. He shot her in the head at point-blank range because he felt emasculated."

--Margaret Atwood: "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

--Raw Story said the new video "makes the whole thing appear even worse, appearing to show that Renee Good was not threatening the agents and not even looking at Jonathan Ross as she tried to turn the car to exit the situation before he opened fire."

--Ex-FBI agent Michael Feinberg said : "Why on earth is a law enforcement officer filming an interaction with a civilian filming an interaction with a civilian on his cell phone? They’re not influencers...I spent a long time in law enforcement. There is never a situation where if I thought I was in danger, I would preoccupy one of the usable hands by taking a video of the person to whom I was talking. You want your hands free to respond to the situation. This is like, I’m sorry, but that excuse is asinine."

--Palmer Report: "This is...the stuff of cartoon villains. What kind of psycho hears the words, ‘I’m not mad at you,’ from a woman and responds by shooting her in the face and then yelling ‘bitch’ at her dead body?"

--Uncomfortable: "Yup. This is Trump’s ‘shoot someone on Fifth Avenue’ moment."

--Josh Shapiro: "JD Vance is profoundly and pathetically a weak human being, and he does whatever he thinks his boss wants him to do. What we need right now is not idiotic gaslighting from the sitting VP."

--(Note: It is astonishing to me that they would release this video and think that it vindicated the killing in any way. How could they have possibly thought that? It just proves the monsters they are.)

--Palmer Report: "Just how removed from reality are these Trump regime folks if they thought this latest video was going to help their cause?"

In other Minneapolis murder news:

--Renee Good’s wife spoke out in a statement that says it all: "We had whistles. They had guns."

--After the shooting, ICE agents immediately went to the home of the shooter and removed all his and his wife’s stuff from his house and whisked him out of town.

--Dem Rep Robin Kelly: "I am impeaching Kristi Noem, who is an incompetent leader and a disgrace to our democracy. She wreaked havoc in the Chicagoland area and has brought her reign of terror to Minneapolis. One of her rogue ICE agents shot and killed an innocent woman today. It must come to an end."

--MAGA is upset because the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, used the word "fuck" yesterday when he told ICE to "get the fuck out of Minneapolis." Frey: "I’m so sorry if I offended their Disney princess ears, but here’s the thing, if we’re talking about what’s inflammatory, on one hand you got someone who dropped an F-bomb and on the other you have somebody who killed somebody else."

--ICE is now claiming that a few months ago he was dragged by a car in another incident and totally traumatized by the experience, so that’s why he got scared and shot her. (I don’t think you can believe a word ICE says at this point, but even if it were true, and he had some sort of PTSD, he shouldn’t have been on active duty. But my guess is that tomorrow we’ll find out the story’s not true at all. And the fact that they’ve come up with some sort of extenuating circumstances tells me that they know they’re in deep trouble.)

--Meanwhile, in Oregon, the state attorney general is opening an investigation into the shooting of two people yesterday.

--Reporters are evacuating their children from Minneapolis. Aaron Rupar: "We evacuated our kids out of Minneapolis this weekend, and my spouse reports that as she drove them out of town she saw multiple freeway exits where people are being pulled over. It feels like the Twin Cities is being subjugated by a hostile occupying force."

--There have been nine shootings in four months, all aimed at cars.

Friday afternoon, Trump was asked by reporters why the DOJ wasn’t conducting a joint investigation with the Minnesota police. Trump: "Well, normally I would, but they’re crooked officials. I mean, Minneapolis and Minnesota, what a beautiful place, but it’s being destroyed. It’s got an incompetent governor, fool, I mean, he’s a stupid person. And it looks like the number could be $19 billion stolen from a lot of people, but largely people from Somalia, they buy their vote, they vote in a group, they buy their vote. They sell more Mercedes-Benzes in that area than almost, can you imagine you come over with no money and then shortly thereafter you’re driving a Mercedes-Benz? The whole thing is ridiculous. So they’re very corrupt people. It’s a very corrupt state."

--During that same press conference, he gave several answers that shocked and scared people:

--He was asked why job numbers were lagging, and he then gave out the job numbers for the month, which weren’t supposed to be posted till this morning. Trump: "I said post them whenever you get a chance. I don’t know. They gave me some numbers. When people give me things, I post them."

--Josh Dungan: "Oh, that’s a safe person to be giving more serious information to."

--James B. Webb: "FYI this man has the nuclear codes..."

--Trump said he doesn’t need international law because he’s not looking to hurt people and anyway, "it depends what your definition of international law is."

--Trump was wearing an American flag pin and a pin depicting a cartoon version of him. When a reporter asked about it, he said, "That’s called the happy Trump." He said someone gave it to him so he put it on.

--Aaron Rupar: "I mean, who doesn’t wear pins of themselves?"

--Ellis Shaefer: "Wearing pins with a picture of the dictator is a thing in countries under authoritarian rule. All the sycophants wear them." (That’s true. I reported earlier how all of them were wearing a gold pin of Trump’s face, but I hadn’t seen this cartoon one before."

--Trump said China has no windmills. (In fact, they have hundreds of thousands of them, including the world’s single largest wind farm.)

--Trump: "I feel I won Minnesota. I won it all three times. Nobody has won it since Richard Nixon many many years ago. I won it all three times in my opinion. It’s a very corrupt state...I did so well in that state. The people were crying every time after."

--Kevin M. Kruse: "President Sundown McGoodbrain thinks he won all three times in Minnesota despite losing all three times."

--He kept talking about the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump: "You should get the Nobel Prize for every war you stop. These were major wars. These were wars nobody thought could be stopped...When you put out 8 wars, you should get one for each war."

He said "Norway is very embarrassed by what happened." (Note:

--Reporter: "Would you ever order a mission to capture Putin?" Trump: "I don’t think it’s gonna be necessary. I’ve always had a great relationship with him." He then immediately followed that with, "I’m very disappointed."

--When asked why he needed to own Greenland, he said, "Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document." (Translation: It’s what I need to feel powerful and successful.)

--Trump: "I’m a fan of Denmark, too. They’ve been very nice to me. But the fact that they had a boat land there (in Greenland) 500 years ago doesn’t mean they own the land. I’m sure we had lots of boats go there also." (Not 500 years ago we didn’t. We didn’t even exist then. And is he saying whoever lands a boat in a country gets it? If so, I seem to recall the English landing. And the Spanish. And the Vikings.)

--Trump: "We’re gonna do something in Greenland whether they like it or not." He threatened that if they won’t do it "the easy way," he’ll do it "the hard way."

--At one point, he got up from the table and wandered over to the window, where he stood, staring out at the construction site for his ballroom for some time.

--Mark Jacobs: "The President is mentally unfit, a danger to us all."

In Kennedy Center news:

--The Washington Opera Company canceled their contract with the Kennedy Center because of dropping ticket sales and the Center’s new business model, which requires productions to be fully funded in advance, which opera officials said is incompatible with opera operations because ticket sales cover only a fraction of production costs and the rest is paid by grants and donations, which can’t be secured years in advance.

--Richard Grenell posted (and then deleted), "Having an exclusive Opera was just not financially smart and said that ending the arrangement would give the Kennedy Center the flexibility to bring in operas from around the world. (Good luck with that!)

--Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed head of the Kennedy Center, posted: "No Sanctuary States. No sanctuary cars." (Is it any wonder people don’t want to perform there?)

--Ron Filipkowski: "I can’t imagine why nobody wants to perform there anymore."

--Since the Washington Opera pulled out of performing at the Kennedy Center, they have scheduled in its place the "premiere" of "Melania the Movie."

--Bill Kristol: "The Kennedy Center with no more operas but with the premier of "Melania the Movie" kind of says it all."

--The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival has dumped the Kennedy Center from its name and is now the American College Theater Festival. Howard University is taking the festival on.

In historical news:

--katherinekelaidis: "Do you know how my great-grandmother died? She was shot in the head by a Nazi soldier on occupied Crete in 1942. He demanded she tell him where the Jewish family from the village was hiding. She refused to tell him and started to walk past him and so he shot her. Because she did not comply and chose instead to disobey an officer of the law. Anyone whose first thought is ‘She should have just complied,’ is telling us exactly who they are."

In resistance news:

--People in Minnesota are conducting protests and noise demonstrations at the hotel where ICE agents are staying.

--Indivisible has more than 1000 vigils for Renee Good planned for this weekend. You can find the closest to you on Indivisible’s website.

In other news:

--Pete Hegseth--and Laura Loomer--arrived in LAX in Trump’s Doomsday plane. This is the plane that is supposed to be a flying command center from which the President can keep the US government running during a worst-case system, even if ground systems are hit, or if there’s a nuclear war. It’s equipped with all sorts of top secret and highly secure equipment, and this is the first time it’s ever been seen in its 51-year flying history. Now Pete Hegseth is casually flying around in it with a right-wing influencer.

--The Trump administration also said they want people to not retire so early but to work one year longer because it will really increase the GDP.

In good news:

--Jack Smith is going to testify IN PUBLIC before the House Judiciary Committee. (Yay!)

--A federal judge temporarily stopped the Trump administration’s freeze on child care and other services’ funding for 5 states.

--Ex-Trump lawyer John Sarcone has been disqualified from investigating Letitia James because he was unlawfully appointed by Trump.

Today’s fragment of poetry, from Christina Rossetti’s "A Christmas Carol": "In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago."

Best comment of the day, from Palmer Report: "There is a clear and present danger--not from immigrants or Hispanic people, but from Trump’s thugs."

Keep calm and carry on,

Connie Willis