Trump's Impunity Turns Lethal

Joe Conason
Mon, 26 Jan 2026 16:49:14 -0800
Opinion

When top public officials and law enforcement authorities lie routinely to cover up police misconduct, the lawless killing of innocent civilians becomes inevitable. That is why Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good — and others who have perished in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security — are dead today.

The sense of impunity that has defined Donald Trump's life and regime is poisonous to the rule of law and encourages murder, just as he predicted when he famously proclaimed that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"

When he first uttered those words a decade ago, Trump was merely a candidate for president, and what he said about himself was taken as a "joke." What that supposed jest reflected was the sense — inculcated in him by his corrupt and mendacious attorney Roy Cohn — that he could get away with anything. Extended to its maximal reach in his presidency, it has repeatedly proved lethal.
Updated: Mon Jan 26, 2026

When top public officials and law enforcement authorities lie routinely to cover up police misconduct, the lawless killing of innocent civilians becomes inevitable. That is why Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good — and others who have perished in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security — are dead today.

The sense of impunity that has defined Donald Trump's life and regime is poisonous to the rule of law and encourages murder, just as he predicted when he famously proclaimed that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"

When he first uttered those words a decade ago, Trump was merely a candidate for president, and what he said about himself was taken as a "joke." What that supposed jest reflected was the sense — inculcated in him by his corrupt and mendacious attorney Roy Cohn — that he could get away with anything. Extended to its maximal reach in his presidency, it has repeatedly proved lethal.

How far Trump would take his self-awarded license to kill began to emerge back then, too, when he repeatedly urged supporters to "knock the hell out of" hecklers at his rallies and promised to pay the legal expenses of anyone arrested for such an assault. His constant invocations of violence, up to and including killing, have long since become an expansive genre of Trump coverage. As Americans have seen in his unrestrained awarding of pardons to his most dangerously rabid and criminal supporters, the president believes that he and anyone who backs him ought to be immune from prosecution — or even criticism.

In the wake of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement killings in Minneapolis, Trump's appointees displayed their own sense that they would never be held accountable for anything that they say or do. Although these were scarcely the first instances when the president and his minions have prevaricated, misled and brazenly lied, it was perhaps the most serious episode of untruthfulness in his second term.

Responding to the deaths of both Good and Pretti, the loudest voices in the White House and the DHS spread lies about the incidents and vicious slurs about the victims. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, widely viewed as the enforcer of Trump's anti-immigrant blitz, joined with the dumb and unqualified DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in defaming the dead as "domestic terrorists." Gregory Bovino, the DHS official running ICE operations, told the press that Pretti, a licensed gun owner who had never drawn his weapon, had showed up to "massacre law enforcement."

In their zeal to shape the public narrative even as they shut down and frustrated any actual investigation, the Trump regime invented versions of the deadly incidents that were clearly contradicted by video evidence. So unsustainable were their impulsive lies that Trump himself as well as Bovino and Noem were finally forced to backtrack, insisting that they now intend to unearth the truth.

Having rushed to false and fraudulent judgments, the administration can make no plausible claim to pursuing any impartial finding of fact in these alleged crimes. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel — both devoid of professional qualifications for their jobs and politically tainted from the beginning — have already offered pronouncements on these cases that befoul any probe they might oversee. They have allowed tampering at the crime scenes and behaved in ways that no honest law enforcement agency would permit in these circumstances.

Before the advent of Trump, America had started to develop a culture that prioritized lawfulness in law enforcement, that upheld accountability for police officers and others empowered to use lethal force. But we now live under a government that scorns the ethical and legal norms that most Americans cherish, even when they are imperfectly upheld.

That scorn, embodied in the president himself, is a danger to all of us. Inculcated in the poorly trained, bullying ICE agents on the streets of American cities, the Trumpian sense of impunity is a public menace that will not abate until he is gone from office.

The best defenses are massive public protests demanding that the killers and their enablers be held accountable. If ICE is not abolished, then its budget must be cut and its recruitment and training practices drastically reformed. Miller should be fired, as should Bovino and most of the hierarchy of DHS, ICE and the Border Patrol — along with many of the agents they recruited. Noem and her friend Corey Lewandowski ought to be dismissed as well — and if they are not, then Congress should move to impeach her.

Their lies kill — and will kill again.