“The View” hosts were seething on Monday morning, after ICE killed a second U.S. citizen in Minnesota this weekend. In discussing it, moderator Whoopi Goldberg minced no words, shaming the Trump administration for defending the second “straight up murder” in recent weeks.
To tee up the subject, the ABC hosts played various angles of footage of Alex Pretti’s killing, and the moments that led up to it, followed by clips of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and more attempting to justify the killing and blaming Pretti himself. The hosts of “The View” were quick to point out that video disproves the Trump administration’s version of events, leading to Whoopi’s question.
“How long can they continue this? They murdered a man,” she said angrily. “He is standing, he has his phone, and he has a bottle of water. He has his phone and a bottle of water, and they shot him 10 times! What the — mm.”
Whoopi had to restrain herself from cursing on air, and opened the discussion up to the rest of the group. Sara Haines was quick to argue that killings like this are precisely why people are showing up to ICE activity, to ensure there is video evidence. Eventually, the conversation circled back around to Whoopi, who was still restraining her anger.
“I don’t know what you’re investigating if you’re not investigating the straight up murder — the straight up murder, this is the second one,” she said. “The second murder of an American citizen who is doing what they — you haven’t gotten rid of the Bill of Rights yet.”
“You see it, you’re not blind,” Whoopi added. “And if you don’t see it, it’s willful, because you’re not looking. You can’t sit by this.”
The moderator called out Noem and CBP head Gregory Bovino directly, informing them that “You all have blood on your hands.” Meanwhile, host Ana Navarro raged at how Trump officials like Vice President JD Vance and more are “emboldening and empowering the lawlessness.”
Host Alyssa Farah Griffin mourned that this is the world she’s about to bring a child into, and echoed the anger and shock at the table.
“I’m so sick of my party saying to people, ‘If you care about border security, and you care about getting criminal undocumented migrants out of this country, you have to tolerate this.’ That’s not true,” she said. “This is incompetence by law enforcement, and it’s cruelty by law enforcement.”
“Do we stand for anything if not for basically half of the Bill of Rights at this point?” Farah Griffin added, calling out how the 1st, 2nd, 4th and more amendment rights have been infringed upon in Minnesota and beyond.
For her part, host Sunny Hostin quietly admitted that she is in a “fragile” mental state after watching the events of the weekend.
“I always believed in the rule of law, right? I’ve dedicated my life to enforcing the rule of law, studying the law,” she lamented. “When I was a prosecutor, I pledged to the Constitution, to uphold the Constitution. And to see the lawlessness by the United States government is deeply disturbing.”
Hostin does think Pretti’s killing is an inflection point for people though, and hopes to see more people speaking up.
