Even Texas Governor Greg Abbott Says ICE Needs to “Recalibrate”
Even Texas Governor and vocal Trump supporter Greg Abbott has taken issue with federal agents’ deadly shootings in Minneapolis, saying that ICE needs to “recalibrate.”“In general, we need to have respect for law enforcement officers in the country. ICE, they are law enforcement officers,” Abbott said Monday morning on conservative radio host Mark Davis’s show. “So they, being the White House, need to recalibrate on what needs to be done to make sure that that respect is going to be re-instilled. And that’s not an easy task, especially under the current circumstances.”He added that he believes the White House is “working on a game plan” to help federal agents “go about their job in a more structured way to make sure that they are going to be able to remove these people, but without causing all the kinds of problems and fighting in communities that they are experiencing right now.”Even as Abbott refused to attack slain protester Alex Pretti like much of the Trump administration—White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called Pretti a “domestic terrorist”—he still placed most of the blame on local leaders, specifically Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz. “Your responsibility, your duty, is to use your office to make sure that there’s going to be calm and order in your community, and that means tamping down the rhetoric, tamping down ... the anger that your local residents feel, and instead instill calm and order,” he said. “This is truly the problem in Minnesota. It’s more about the lack of leadership, and the lack of calming by the governor, by the mayor—and candidly, I think they want it that way.”Still, it seems that the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—both caught on video and both so clearly contrary to the Trump administration’s narrative of their domestic terrorism—are a red line for more on the right than they would admit.