Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez publicly condemned JD Vance for doubling down on saying he thinks ICE shooting protesters is “acceptable.”
On Friday morning, AOC spoke out once again about the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis this week. As Republicans – the president and vice president chief among them – double down on defense of the agent acting in self-defense, the New York representative explained how there is a fundamental difference between them and herself.
“I understand that Vice President Vance believes shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “That is a fundamental difference between Vice President Vance and I. I do not believe the American people should be assassinated in the street.”
Friday also saw a new video released seemingly from the vantage point of the agent who shot Good. It caused a resurgence of those calling self-defense and others pointing to the video as further proof that this was flat-out murder. Vance took to his own social media account to state his opinion on the matter.
“Watch this, as hard as it is,” Vance wrote. “Many of you have been told this law enforcement officer wasn’t hit by a car, wasn’t being harassed, and murdered an innocent woman. The reality is that his life was endangered and he fired in self-defense.”
In a lengthy interview with The New York Times earlier this week, Trump also tried to explain the shooting as a defensive one rather than murder in the streets. Times reporter Zolan Kanno-Youngs, who was joined by colleagues Tyler Pager, Katie Rogers and David Sanger, recalled how “as a slow-motion surveillance video of the shooting played on the laptop, we told him that this angle did not appear to show that an ICE officer had been run over.”
“Well,” Trump responded. “I — the way I look at it…”
“It’s a terrible scene,” the president said at the end of the video. “I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”
