The Feverish View From Stephen Miller’s Office
This is your TPM evening briefing.
The intense backlash against the ongoing immigration raids in Minnesota and the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents has led to some backpedaling and a reported tone shift from the White House. The much vaunted toning down even included a rare moment of moderation and mea culpa from one of President Trump’s most notoriously hardline aides, Stephen Miller. However, while Miller walked back claims Pretti was a “domestic terrorist,” on social media, he and his team have continued to promote a paranoid narrative that the people protesting ICE are violent and even reminiscent of armed insurgents in the Middle East.
“Working under the most adverse conditions imaginable, stalked, hunted, tailed, surveilled and viciously attacked by organized violent leftists every hour of the day, our heroic ICE officers selflessly defend our sovereignty and the lives of our people. True courage and devotion,” Miller wrote in one X post on Tuesday.
That overheated commentary came at the same time Miller was calling reporters trying to clarify the Trump administration’s initial comments about Pretti’s death.
In the hours after Pretti was shot multiple times on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement claiming he was present at the scene of an immigration raid to “massacre law enforcement.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem additionally described Pretti as a domestic terrorist, which is a label she also applied to Renée Good, another activist who was killed by federal agents earlier this month. Both Pretti and Good were among the community members in Minneapolis who arrived at the scenes of immigration raids. This type of rapid response has been a core part of the growing nationwide movement opposing ICE.
While rapid responders aim to disrupt the immigration enforcement operations, they have largely been non-violent. ICE, on the other hand, killed dozens of people last year. Pretti was a licensed gun owner and was carrying a pistol when he was killed, but video analysis of the incident shows that it was not drawn and agents removed it from his person before shooting him.
There are many signs that Americans are not buying the Trump administration’s narratives about ICE. Recent polls have shown that a majority of Americans believe ICE is too aggressive, that they are making communities “less safe,” and that their operations should be decreased. More broadly, polls indicate overall approval for Trump’s immigration policies is underwater, with a majority of people convinced too many people are being deported and that many do not fit the administration’s claim these operations are focused on violent criminals. There’s good reason for the public skepticism. While the Trump administration has consistently insisted they are targeting the “worst of the worst,” data has shown the majority of people being detained and deported have no criminal records. Trump seems to be acutely aware of all the negative reactions and, in a speech earlier this month, he openly worried about having “bad public relations people.”
That context helps explain why the response to Pretti’s death descended into what Politico later described as “finger pointing” on Jan. 27 with Noem attributing the initial comments to Miller, who reached out to reporters suggesting the characterization of Pretti as a terrorist was based on inaccurate information from Border Patrol. This back and forth — and a dramatic reshuffling of the officials leading the charge in Minneapolis — are indicative of mounting political pressure and opposition to ICE. Yet, while Miller is dutifully participating in the public and official toning down, he and his team are also continuing to spin wild fantasies casting the protesters as a terrifying guerrilla insurgency.
In other X posts in the days since Pretti’s death, Miller has accused Democrats of trying to incite attacks on ICE and of fomenting “armed resistance.” Kara Frederick, who White House salary records identify as a special assistant to the president and senior policy advisor to Miller, also reposted a lengthy message from a man identifying himself as a special forces veteran who compared rapid responders to Middle Eastern insurgents because they are tracking ICE vehicles, have encrypted group chats, and are receiving “mutual aid from sympathetic locals.”
“When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers … you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies,” the man wrote.
On Instagram, Frederick also shared a post comparing criticism of ICE to a “psy op.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions from TPM about how the overheated and dramatic posts from Miller and his team likening protests to militancy square with the administration’s supposed tonal shift. Along with all of the messages painting the protesters as part of a violent campaign, Miller has also continually advanced a very hyperbolic Great Replacement vision of the overall immigration picture.
“The Democrat Party yearns and fights and struggles for nothing more than a fully open border to the third world,” he wrote on Wednesday evening.
The administration’s public posture may be changing, but these posts are a window into Miller’s mind. It’s a frightening, feverish place.
— Hunter Walker
Dems Want To Know Why Tulsi Gabbard Was At FBI Raid
Multiple reports have now confirmed that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present at Wednesday’s FBI raid of an election office near Atlanta in Fulton County, Georgia.
“Director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure,” a senior Trump administration official told NBC News. “She has and will continue to take action on President Trump’s directive to secure our elections and work with our interagency partners to do so.”
In a post on X on Thursday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) questioned Gabbard’s presence at the raid.
“Why did Tulsi Gabbard take part in a raid on an elections office? We need to step up to protect our elections from this administration’s meddling,” he wrote.
During a press briefing on Thursday, David Becker, a former DOJ lawyer and the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research said, “there is no reason for the Director of National Intelligence to be in any kind of voting site.”
“She has neither the authority nor the competence to assess anything in that voting site,” he added. “Having someone from another agency, particularly an intelligence agency is entirely odd and unusual.”
— Khaya Himmelman
Georgia Senator in the Dark on Fulton County Election Raid
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) told TPM Thursday that he hasn’t learned anything more about the Wednesday FBI raid of the Fulton County election office.
Agents seized “all physical ballots from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County,” “tabulator tapes for every voting machine used in Fulton County” and “all voter rolls from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County,” per the warrant.
Ossoff did not sound optimistic that more information on the raid — which seems born of President Trump’s conspiracy theory-inflected grievance from losing the 2020 election — would be forthcoming.
“It’s not an administration known for its transparency,” he quipped as the Senate elevator doors slid close.
— Kate Riga
In Case You Missed It
Catch up on our live coverage of the Senate’s handling of DHS reform here: Vote Fails but Schumer, White House Negotiations Progress on DHS Funding Bill
TPM Cafe: Why Conspiracy Theories About the Minnesota Protests Are Falling Flat
Morning Memo: Content Creator Pam Bondi Happily Does Trump’s Dirty Political Work
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