Good Versus Evil

Since the days of Watergate, we've repeatedly heard -- it's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up. And it's the unraveling cover-up that is pummeling Trump, Kristi Noem, "JD Vance," Stephen Miller and the MAGOPs in the administration and Congress -- trying to deny what everyone watching the video saw and knows actually happened.  And blame the victim.  Call her a domestic terrorist.  Blame the previous administration.  Blame the media for its coverage.  And block state and local from investigating, saying your own FBI that Trump controls will take over sole leadership of the case.

This is a companion piece of sorts to my article yesterday.  That's where I ended by writing --

"I have the sense that there's actually something good to come from all these twisted, inside-out statements from Trump, DHS and those surrounding him, since we all can actually see -- and actually know -- what actually happened.  It's not that Trump, DHS and their enablers are wrong or unkind, but something far worse.  It's that when the cruel statements devoid of reality from the Trump team and those by elected MAGOP officials enabling the ICE shooting are put side-by-side with the clear-cut video of a stopped car that then tries to leave the dangerous scene without putting anyone at risk, there on full display is the pure, utter inhumanity of those in the Trump World."

And Trump, his administration and enablers are doubling down on all of that.

And it's not only so foolish, as I noted before - but it's so totally unnecessary.  Yes, the Trump administration bears responsibility for putting ICE in America's cities and given them carte blanche to be violent and cruel in going after Americans.  But they didn't pull the trigger.  One man, an ICE agent, did that and shot Renee Good to death.  Trump and all his acolytes could have said - 

"We sent ICE into our cities to track down people illegally in the country and crack down on violence to make these safe for everyone.  Tragically, events in Minneapolis got out of control, and one agent - trying to keep someone who he believed was fleeing, but appears to have just been attempting to leave the area quickly after dropping off her six-year-old child at school, she was shot and killed.  It is a tragedy we all mourn, where a split-second decision, with the best intentions, went very wrong.  We hope all Americans join us in grieving her lose.  The event will be investigated in the fullest by the FBI, state and local police and whatever the results, we will stand by.  And we continue to work toward making our country safe."

But, of course, they didn't say that.  Many people would have accepted and supported it.  Many would have found it disingenuous.  But it would have been a proper statement from an administration trying to support its mission - no matter how unsupportable it is - that has come under scalding attention for a terrible action that resulted in a murder.

But they didn't say that.  They instantly started the cover up.  They called the mother of three, including a six-year-old, a "domestic terrorist", based on absolutely nothing other than a knee-jerk reaction to cover up the actions of an ICE agent who acted against ICE policy.  A policy which states ""DHS law enforcement officers are prohibited from discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle or other conveyance."  They said she acted violently, willfully and viciously - contrary to everything clearly seen in the videos - purely as a knee-jerk reaction to cover up a murder by an ICE agent.  They called neighbors at the scene crying out in agony "professional activists" -- based on zero evidence, just a knee-jerk reaction to cover up a shooting that went very wrong.

In a long speech yesterday, VP "JD Vance" went into full cover-up mode, doing all he could to obscure the reality everyone saw and, with faux-anger, change the focus.  He blamed the media for its coverage.  He blamed the murdered victim repeatedly for her death.  He blamed her character for supposedly being "radicalized."  He defended Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Renee Good, explaining that in a previous incident, Ross had been hit by a car, dragged and got 30 stitches -- which to "JD Vance" justified him shooting at Renee Good and killing her, as he said about the ICE agent, "You think maybe he's a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him?" 

Well, y'know, maybe if an ICE agent is that sensitive he shouldn't be on the front line in area where there are vehicles all over the place -- and have a gun!  And for that matter, even if he is, understandably, sensitive about being rammed…he wasn't rammed by Renee Good.  Her car did not touch him.  Her car was at a full stop, it then backed up, slowly turned its wheels and was trying to leave the area to safety.

It's in all the videos.  Everyone could see it.  And not only see it, but it now turns out, hear it, too.

Yes, hear it --

It was Trump who in his very first knee-jerk response to cover up the shooting wrote that the murdered woman "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer."  And from the very first, it was of course immediately easy to refute the lie because we could see from the video that the ICE officer did not get "run over."  And we could see, too, that there is nothing violent, willful and vicious about it.  But now we can hear it -- because cleaned-up audio shows Renee Good saying anxiously to ICE agents, "I'm pulling out!...Pulling out!"

The more you lie, the truth comes out.  The more time that passes, the truth comes out. New details.  New eyewitnesses.  New evidence.  And new audio.  And so you're buried deeper by your building mountain of lies.

New evidence.  New camera angles.  More and more.  Like an eyewitness, Emily Heller, telling MSNOW that ICE officers were yelling at Renee Good to "Move, move, move."  So, she moved.

Like the even more damning new video CNN showed last night.  In it, we can see Renee Good's vehicle arriving. Stopping to let out a passenger.  Turning and stopping in the street...as several cars pass her stopped vehicle -- making clear that she wasn't "blocking" the street at all.  And then making even more clear from that angle how she is turning between ICE officers to leave the area.

The more time that passes, the more new evidence.  And you're buried deeper in your building mountain of lies.

​It's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up.

And yet there again yesterday was "JD Vance" covering up what actually happened -- what we all see actually happen -- what we can now hear actually happen -- by defaming the victim without any apparent knowledge of her (including her name, which he doesn't seem to have mentioned) and creating sympathy for the killer.

Related to his speech, anchor Brianna Keilar of CNN did a report on the comments by "JD Vance" and said, "As he was lambasting the press for media coverage of all of this, there are a number of people inside of DHS who are aghast at what they saw in that video. We are reporting what law enforcement, former law enforcement sources familiar with use of force protocols are saying."

And so, as Trump, "JD Vance," Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (MAGOP-OK) and other MAGOPs in Congress still keep trying to cover up a clearcut tragedy by trying to paint the victim as a fictional "domestic terrorist," someone who supposedly was "violent, willful and vicious" - cracks in that cover-up appear (as they always do) and along comes Renee Good's ex-husband (!!) who gave lie to what "JD Vance" and other MAGOP officials have been trying to inhumanely smearing her with.  His ex-wife "was no activist," he told the Associated Press, and "had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind."  He described her as "a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She loved to sing, participating in a chorus in high school and studying vocal performance in college."

Further, her ex-husband said that Ms. Good - and what a name she has for this tragedy - had "just dropped off her 6-year-old son at school" and was driving home "when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street" in Minneapolis, where they had moved last year from Kansas City, Missouri."

That's who Renee Good was.

It's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up.  

And as the Trump administration keeps trying to cover up the actions of ICE as being all by the book and proper (despite the shooting being against policy), a new video has surfaced.  As they so often do.  It's video of a doctor offering to check the pulse of the woman who's just been shot, and being yelled at by an ICE offer to "Back off!!!  NOW!!", and so the doctor says more emphatically, "I'm a physician," and you can hear an ICE agent scream back, "I don't care!"  When the doctor tries again, another ICE agent who is on camera grasps the concept that "I don't care" is the wrong answer and more calmly says, "A medic is on the way.  Give it a few seconds.  We have medics on the scene."  Though that's when you can hear a woman yelling, "Where are they???!!!  Where are they???!!!"  And after she's apparently been told to relax by an ICE agent, she yells, "...How can I relax??!!!!!!!  You just killed my fucking neighbor!!!
​

​It's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up.  

And as anyone trying to cover up a tragic disaster should realize - especially today when most everyone has a video camera in their pocket - they are now more and more videos coming to the surface.  All of which give contradict and disprove to the cover-up lies that Trump World have been frantically trying to fob off.  

And the result of this is that, already, only one day after the shooting - just one day after the instant knee-jerk lies the Trump Circle of Cover-up has tried to fob off as the scenario despite everyone seeing what actually happened - the New York Times has put together a great many of  those videos and created a very good single video of the event, breaking it down moment-by-moment, from several different angles I hadn't seen before.

It's very conclusive.  And damning.  Unraveling the lies.

What leaps out here, too, at the very end, something that has been largely unmentioned until this video, is that ICE agents (including the shooter, Jonathan Ross) drive away - as the narrator says "apparently altering the active crime scene."

Just one day after Renee Good was shot and killed.  And everything Trump and his minions have tried to fabricate, is already falling apart.  As they put the FBI -- whose leadership Trump fully, loyally controls -- in total charge, stating they will solely lead the investigation and have rescinded their cooperation agreement with state and local officials, the very definition of appearing to cover up.  Not realizing one very important thing:

It's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up.  

Which is a truly horrible problem for Trump and the MAGOPs because the crime alone is so blatant that we’ve all seen it.  From many angles.  Repeatedly.
 
But the cover-up?  That’s the lies and (in this case) inhumane actions that are so damning and damaging that they strip away so much credibility and fervent trust from many of those in the middle who have been wavering in support -- and much worse, even some who, up to now, have actually been loyal supporters.  No more.  That’s why –
 
It’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the monumentally stupid, crushingly self-defeating, and completely, totally, mind-numbingly unnecessary cover-up. 

But when you're Trump and all those around you rely on their positions because of full, unquestioning loyalty to him, and it's all built on the perception of strength and being great and smart and lies and racism and cruelty and never making mistakes and never apologizing for anything you do -- then it's all a chimera, and you don't have it in you to do anything but cover-up whenever things go wrong.  It's like the Wizard of Oz -- don't look at the man behind the curtain.

But all it takes is a little dog to pull back the curtain.  And the levers and emptiness and weakness and posturing and cosplay hats and lies, and the foundation built on sand reveals itself.  This won't bring the Trump administration tumbling down.  But it's one more major step (like attacking Venezuela but having no idea or plan for what comes next) that undermines the rot which supports it.  Because --

It's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up.