What Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, did not say on Monday was more important than what she did.
When Leavitt stepped up to the briefing room podium to address the deadly shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, she avoided the kind of victim-blaming tirade that has become de rigueur for Donald Trump’s administration.
Instead the spokeswoman called Pretti’s death a “tragedy”, said the US president wanted to let the investigation take its course, and, strikingly, refused to endorse adviser Stephen Miller’s slander of Pretti as a “would-be assassin”.
Leavitt also spoke of a “constructive and productive conversation” between Trump and the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, and potential withdrawal of border patrol agents from the state. Walz’s office confirmed that the president “agreed to look into” reducing the number of federal agents there.
It’s too early to be sure, but it sounded like the third case of Taco – Trump always chickens out – in a week. First there was Greenland, which the president insisted that the US must control until he was persuaded to swallow a vague “framework” compromise by the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte.
Then it was a diplomatic crisis over Trump claiming that Nato troops “stayed a little back” from frontlines in Afghanistan, which provoked uproar in Britain, which lost 457 lives in the war. A rebuke from Keir Starmer, with a reported assist from King Charles, forced Trump into perhaps the closest he has ever come to an apology.
Now, with Minneapolis resembling an eerie dystopia under the boot of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the signals at least are pointing towards de-escalation. Trump wrote on social media that he and Walz were on a “similar wavelength”. JD Vance, so bombastic in blaming the poet Renée Good for her own death in Minneapolis earlier this month, was less vocal this time.
And Leavitt, who can be relied upon to articulate the Trump agenda with the religious fervour of a Puritan, looked unusually ill-at-ease and defensive. To save face, she repeatedly blamed Joe Biden, Democratic leaders in Minnesota and leftwing agitators for creating the conditions that led to the tragedy. But, notably, she stopped short of blaming Pretti himself.
When a reporter cited Miller’s tweet and asked why administration officials jump to conclusions before an investigation had even been conducted, Leavitt dodged: “Well, look, this has obviously been a very fluid and fast-moving situation throughout the weekend. As for President Trump, whom I speak for, he has said that he wants to let the investigation continue and let the facts lead in this case.”
Pressed on Miller’s “would-be assassin” comment again, Leavitt deflected: “Look, as I’ve said, I have not heard the president characterise Mr Pretti in that way.”
The press secretary declined to answer a follow-up or comment on whether Miller would be issuing an apology to Pretti’s family.
But Leavitt did remark: “Nobody here at the White House, including the president of the United States, wants to see Americans hurt or killed and losing their lives in American streets. We mourn for the parents. As a mother myself, of course, I cannot imagine the loss of life, especially losing one’s child.”
If Trump is backing down – and it is still a big if – that will be welcome but not entirely surprising. The president is, above all, a creature of television, better tuned to the power of images and commentary on the small screen than many of his younger acolytes. And the TV has been wretched for the past 48 hours: endless videos showing the street execution of Pretti, exposing official accounts as a lie.
Moreover, a scriptwriter could hardly have come up with a more sympathetic victim than Pretti, including for Republican viewers: he was an ICU nurse who cares for military veterans. He was also allegedly carrying a gun, as he was legally entitled to in Minnesota. Republican defenders of the second amendment take a dim view of this being used to justify the government’s over-zealous response.
Trump would also be aware of rumblings of discontent within his own party and not only from the usual suspects. Congressman James Comer of Kentucky urged the president to pull ICE out of Minnesota. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana called for a joint investigation into the shooting. Congressman Bill Huizenga of Michigan called for congressional hearings.
All are aware of opinion polls that say a majority of Americans believe that ICE has gone too far. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump “fielded dozens of calls over the weekend from administration officials and senators, with some worrying that public sentiment has turned against the administration’s immigration-enforcement actions”. Immigration, for so long a Republican strength, has turned into a liability.
Ultimately, Trump is not the most extreme figure in the White House. His former adviser Steve Bannon has described him as a “moderate” in the Make America Great Again movement. Miller, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, and others are often willing to go further than Trump himself while lacking his political antenna or flexibility.
Trump told reporters at the White House last October: “But I want to thank Stephen Miller, who’s right back in the audience, right there. And I’d love to have him come up and explain his true feelings, but – maybe not his truest feelings. That might be going a little bit too far.”
