In the days since Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti’s shooting death at the hands of federal law enforcement, videos of the event have played a crucial role in shaping public thought about it.
Though video evidence can often be ambiguous, and a full investigation hasn’t occurred, the early outcome is rising public doubt about statements made by Trump administration officials. At issue, amid competing narratives about what the videos show, is whether federal agents responded appropriately or with excessive force.
The Trump administration spent the weekend labeling Mr. Pretti as engaging in “domestic terrorism” and someone who wanted to “massacre” law enforcement. But witness videos of the shooting show Mr. Pretti holding a cellphone in one hand and nothing in the other. He positioned himself between federal law enforcement agents and a woman they had pushed to the ground, before the agents pulled him to the ground, apparently took his firearm, and then shot him.
Why We Wrote This
Video footage doesn’t guarantee agreement on the facts among a partisan public. But in the aftermath of a fatal shooting by federal agents on Saturday, a number of conservatives and business leaders broke with the Trump administration’s interpretation of events.
The government’s narrative did not appear to take hold. By Monday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Trump administration were taking sharp criticism not just from people on the political left, but from business leaders and Republican officeholders, and even from stalwart Republican-leaning organizations such as the National Rifle Association. Responding to a federal prosecutor who warned that people who carry guns could be lawfully shot by officers, the NRA labeled that statement as “dangerous and wrong.”
On Monday, President Donald Trump shifted course. He dispatched his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minnesota to oversee operations there and to report directly to the president. He also wrote on social media that he had a conciliatory phone call with Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, during which the two discussed working together. Border Patrol senior commander Greg Bovino and some Border Patrol agents might leave Minneapolis as soon as Tuesday, according to multiple news reports.
While persuasive and powerful, images and videos can be manipulated with the intention of skewing public opinion. The manipulation occurs on both sides of the partisan divide, giving both sides fuel for rage, analysts say. In the case of Mr. Pretti’s shooting, what people saw in the videos appeared to override the Trump administration’s description of events, which some political supporters say harms the White House’s credibility.
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
“I think the trustworthiness of a government and government agents depends on people’s perception. They reach a line where people decide either ‘I consent to this’ or ‘I dissent,’” says Margaret Levi, a Stanford University political scientist. Even if their government behaves in what some consider authoritarian ways, Professor Levi says, “the street does affect things,” through consistent protests and ultimately through voting.
“Seeing is not just what you see with your eyes, but also with the experiences and ideas that we bring to the image,” says Sandra Ristovska, founding director of the Visual Evidence Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. In the case of the shooting of Mr. Pretti, the official statement said that he was an armed agitator who needed to be treated with force.
“But there were multiple videos that were recorded from a number of angles, and these cast doubt on the official narrative,” Ms. Ristovska says. “That is why there is a need for an independent investigation into the shooting.”
Shaping the narrative
On Saturday morning, disinformation researcher Kate Starbird performed a data analysis of social media responses to the shooting. What she found surprised her. On X, she tracked posts by right-wing influencers through a tool her team at the University of Washington has developed to reveal how accounts shape dominant narratives. Some influencers touted claims by the Department of Homeland Security that Mr. Pretti was brandishing his handgun and that the Border Patrol agents had acted in self-defense. Ms. Starbird was struck by how quickly the influencers sprang into action.
“Perhaps more remarkable was how relatively ineffective this effort was,” Ms. Starbird wrote on her Substack, Sensemaking Distortion.
Users on X were overwhelmingly sympathetic to Mr. Pretti. Moreover, posts and reposts defended Mr. Pretti’s First and Second Amendment rights. People pushed back against claims that he had threatened federal agents. Instead, some users asserted that Mr. Pretti’s gun had already been confiscated when he was shot.
“The right was having trouble controlling the narrative, even on their home turf on X,” wrote Ms. Starbird, who is a professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington.
It didn’t take long for research teams at news outlets such as The New York Times and the BBC to analyze multiple videos of the shooting. So did Bellingcat, an independent journalism organization that investigates online materials. Their respective frame-by-frame examinations were at odds with the way DHS had characterized the events of the shooting.
But even when presented with strong evidence, some people develop a deep commitment to the first thing they believe, says Jeffrey Blevins, a faculty fellow of the Center for Cyber Strategy and Policy at the University of Cincinnati. “You don’t move from that. Then it just becomes about defending.”
Still, Professor Levi says a shift might be occurring. Mr. Trump’s base, she says, embraced the notion that liberal cities were chaotic and crime-ridden because of failure to impose order. She’s seeing more people start to conclude that immigration officers’ behavior is problematic.
Allie Beth Stuckey, a Christian conservative commentator with more than half a million followers on X, wrote that ICE was losing the PR war. Images are powerful, she noted. Instead, she wished to persuade millions of people in the “mushy middle” that immigration enforcement protects vulnerable Americans from criminals.
“The truth is that deportations and securing our border ARE loving actions that are good for our neighbors, especially the weakest ones,” Ms. Stuckey wrote on X.
Leila Navidi/Star Tribune/AP
Videos need “larger context”
Jason Steinhauer, a public historian who studies the intersection of history, tech, media, and politics, says that the debate in Minneapolis highlights how important images and videos have become in shaping public opinion on major issues.
“We see clips, oftentimes out of context, oftentimes edited, oftentimes attached with commentary from those who have particular agendas or those who want to advance certain areas,” Mr. Steinhauer says. “It’s very rare” that those videos are the complete story and speak for themselves. “There’s always larger context and more information that we need to make sense of what we’re seeing.”
Even so, videos and imagery are powerful tools, Mr. Steinhauer says, and in his view it’s too soon to say which way public opinion is bending because it’s so dependent on one’s own social media bubble. “Ultimately, we will see the results in November,” in the midterm elections, he adds.
In Minnesota, the federal immigration enforcement operations have shaken the political scene in unpredictable ways. GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Madel dropped out of the race on Monday, saying he could not support the national Republican Party’s “stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of the party that would do so.”
Mr. Pretti’s death on Saturday was the second fatal shooting at the hands of federal agents in Minnesota since law enforcement surged there in December. On Jan. 7, Renee Good was shot and killed in her car as she apparently attempted to drive away from ICE officers who were trying to get her out of her car. In the aftermath of that incident and the shooting of Mr. Pretti, there are other signs of Republican discomfort, as the party prepares for a challenging midterm election, with the party’s narrow hold on Congress in the balance.
Republican governors in Oklahoma and Vermont called federal law enforcement’s strong-arm tactics in Minnesota unacceptable. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said ICE should “recalibrate” its mission after the shootings. John Kasich, a Republican former congressman and presidential candidate from Ohio, posted a video saying the Trump administration’s policies were “tearing the country apart.”
“It is raising the consciousness of Americans who are saying enough is enough, and this is going to have a big impact on the midterm elections, and the Republicans may pay a huge price for this,” Mr. Kasich said.
The business community has also been feeling the impact of immigration enforcement raids. The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce issued a public letter calling for de-escalation. The letter was signed by more than 60 CEOs from Minnesota-based companies, including Target, Best Buy, and General Mills.
“With yesterday’s tragic news, we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions,” the letter said.
The discourse over the videos of Saturday’s incident and the cellphone footage of the earlier shooting of Ms. Good underscore how the information landscape has changed. People are increasingly getting their news from social media and unverified influencers rather than from the traditional legacy media, says Sander van der Linden, author of “Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity.” Complicating matters: those news silos are often partisan.
One role for traditional media, assisted by open source intelligence, is to sort through evidence and make sense of it, Mr. van der Linden writes via email. Instances in which claims by government officials don’t accord with video could help boost news literacy by alerting members of the public to efforts at manipulating narratives.
“I am not saying we should tell people not to trust law enforcement reports, but I think the right approach now is a healthy dose of skepticism given failed fact-checks from the government,” he says.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that the Department of Homeland Security says Border Patrol agents, not ICE agents, acted in self-defense.