The most head-spinning thing about the Trump Administration’s decision to release the assassin’s own footage from the killing of Renee Good on a snow covered suburban street in Minneapolis is that they thought it would work in their favour. 

It did not. 

“That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” Renée Good said to the ICE agent who was about to kill her. “I’m not mad at you.” 

Her last words. 

Her dog standing in the back seat, looking out the window, 

We see her turn the steering wheel away from the ICE agents, clearly trying to move out of the way. We hear another agent shout, “get out of the fucking car.” Someone says “whoa!” then we hear the sound of three gunshots. 

The shooter’s phone camera spins up into the trees. 

We hear him say, “fuckin’ bitch,” and we hear the sound of Renee Good’s truck as it crashes, its driver lifeless now, into a line of parked cars. 

In any crisis communications strategy, it is customary to get all of the facts before you go to the press. Yes, you might put out a “holding statement,” a way to let the press know you are not ignoring them. It could read like this: 

“What happened today was tragic. There will be a thorough investigation. We will ensure that those responsible for Renée Good’s death are held accountable. We send our sympathies to her family.” 

Then, you do your due diligence before you say any more. 

The Trump Team has no time for this.

Within hours, Renée Good, mother, poet, wife, “pure sunshine,” as her wife described her, had been branded a “domestic terrorist” by Trump’s head of homeland security, Kristi Noem. With suspicious speed, Trump was posting to social media that Good “violently, willfully and viciously, ran over the ICE officer who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

They wanted to get ahead of us. They wanted to distort our view.

Throughout this past year, Noem’s department of homeland security has argued that to shoot footage of ICE agents as they carry out their violent, racist crackdown, is illegal. 

It is not, but you can understand why they would like it to be so.

There were several eye witness accounts to the killing of Renée Good, many of which were captured on camera. 

And so, when Noem attempts to convince us that Good is trying to “run [the ICE agents] over and ram them with her vehicle,” we know she is lying. When Trump doubles down on this lie and tells us it is “hard to believe” the ICE agent was alive, us watching cellphone video of the ICE agent, walking, easily, towards the vehicle of the woman he has just gunned down, it is impossible to believe what he is saying. 

The following day, the vice president excoriated the press for not touting the White House line. 

And then, perhaps it was panic, perhaps they could see their tsunami of lies wasn’t working, perhaps they couldn’t see at all, they released the shooter’s cellphone video, championing it as – yes – their Trump card. 

Then we saw everything. 

We saw the truth. 

Rest in Peace, Renée Good. 

May those who are responsible for your death be held accountable, and those with the means and courage to do so, continue to bear witness.

January 27 2026