Renee Good, Minneapolis, and the Lie They’re Already Telling
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This is not an easy episode to record, and it is not an easy one to hear. Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman sit down early Thursday to talk about what happened in Minneapolis, where Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and legal observer, was shot and killed by an ICE agent while sitting in her car, in front of her wife.
They walk through what the video shows, how the official story formed almost immediately, and why the rush to justify what happened matters just as much as the act itself. This is a conversation about a life taken, about how institutions protect themselves, and about what it means when something so plainly tragic is treated like a political problem instead of a human one.
Did that as a matter of habit, not the happiest weekender episode that we will ever record.
I'm Jared Yates Saxon.
I'm here with Nick Houseman.
How you doing, bud?
You know, it's a concerning, it's one of those dark days.
You know, the 10 pole days that we have to talk about January 6th, this is one of them.
George Floyd, all sorts of lowlights.
Yeah, it absolutely sucks.
So let's just get the usual stuff out of the way.
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Nick, we are recording this early on Thursday, January 8th, yesterday, Wednesday, January 7th, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
An ICE agent shot Renee Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother, in the face while she was driving in her car in front of her wife.
This crime was caught on video from multiple angles.
It is indisputable that she was murdered.
It has been claimed that the ICE agent was protecting himself.
That is an absolute lie.
We'll get into how the administration has lied and slandered and covered, but we'll start with the actual tragedy itself.
Renee Macklin-Good, 37-year-old mother shot by an ICE agent.
Nick, it's an indescribable type of tragedy.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention this is at least the 10th, I believe, ICE-related shooting that we have seen since Trump took the oath of office.
But this, because of the video and because of the obviousness of the cruelty and the crime, this really stands out in the mind as a real tragedy.
Right.
And most likely a flashpoint.
It sounds like rallies are now being planned and outrage is going to be expressed in a similar way to, I'd imagine, George Floyd or Brown or all sorts of things.
You know, the context also is that, you know, and I wouldn't be surprised if this particular ICE agent had just gotten there.
They had ramped up, I think it was up to 600 new ICE agents to Minneapolis simply because of this idiot who filmed some bullshit about daycare centers and Somalians.
And so they're just flooding the zone with people who are not trained to do this.
We'll have to get into some of the nuts and bolts of what actually happened because you're not going to like what I'm going to have to tell you, I don't think, about it and what they're going to be able to show and whatever, but we need to talk about it.
Yeah.
So first things first, it's really awful that this happened because of political pageantry and basically harassment.
We had covered previously how a YouTube shit poster had not just caused a major uproar when it came to Minnesota's daycare, but also cost $10 billion worth of child care funds around the country.
Tim Waltz, we hadn't covered, is not going to seek a third term as governor.
I don't know if his political career is over.
There's going to be a lot of fallout from all of this.
They had already gotten a pelt, so to speak.
They had already hit Waltz to the point where they had hurt his political career and they hurt people.
They got what they wanted.
That wasn't enough.
Department of Homeland Security, which is nothing more than a harassment organized crime Gestapo center at this point, posted good morning Minneapolis, right?
They went ahead and threw their full force and shoulder and brunt into the situation basically in order to make Tim Waltz's life worse and to capitalize on the growing controversy in Minnesota coming from the daycare situation.
And now you have a person who's dead and you have a child who has lost their mother.
And, you know, you can talk about logistics all you want.
I think I know where you're going.
But I agree that this very well could be a flashpoint.
This could be a moment. where we do see a lot of protests.
I think much like what happened with George Floyd, people are spoiling right now for something to rally around in order to fight.
I don't think that's always a conscious thing.
I think as I keep talking about on this show, with authoritarian capture and fascist abuse, it pushes and pushes and pushes and the pressure builds and builds and builds.
And we've been saying that there was going to be some sort of a flashpoint that would eventually lead to some sort of a reaction among the populace.
I don't know if this is the one.
I don't, it has the, it has the components there.
It's an obvious tragedy.
It is unthinkable.
The way that it was captured on film and the way that it is spread, people are tired of this shit and people are tired of the Trump administration and people are tired of living under a fascist regime.
So I don't know if there's going to be a total reaction.
What I do know as a person who follows these things and as an analyst, I know that the components are there.
And as a human being and as a person who is personally tired of living under fascism, I hope it is.
I hope this is the moment where people fight back because these people are criminals.
They're murderers.
They're thieves.
And I hate that we're waiting on midterms and we're waiting on the next presidential election.
They're going to kill us.
And they'll do it happily.
And as we'll talk about, like they will look at you and kill you and then lie about you.
And we'll get into that in a moment.
But I do.
I hope that there is a reaction to this.
I don't know if that's where it's going to go, but it certainly feels like it has the components for it.
Yeah.
And, you know, having the video is an important, impactful thing.
The problem is, is now it's going to further divide the lines of people, depending on what side of the aisle you're on anyway.
Oh, I mean, it's a Rorschach test.
We've already seen that.
Yeah.
And that's a really good way to put it.
And so, you know, Trump holds up a laptop in the middle of his press conference to show the angle that they clearly will only show him.
There's one angle.
And so, you know, at some point, law enforcement was allowed if a vehicle was accelerating towards them just to kill anybody they want to kill, right?
That was codified in their training.
It was whatever.
It was, they were exonerated when that stuff happened.
That has changed.
That is not any training anymore.
And part of the reason is because they'll tell you you can't approach a car from the front.
And so what they're going to show, and I, you know, this pains me to have to even say anything like this, but there is an angle where there appears to be contact with the car and this agent.
I tell you right now that if anything is going to happen, any kind of investigation, any kind of potential criminal liability, whatever, this is what is going to get this guy off and he won't be prosecuted.
Now, that might end up being the flashpoint of someone like in the Rodney King moment where they don't get prosecuted for something like that.
But I'm worried that that's going to happen when clearly something should happen to this person legally in some sort of a manslaughter, murder charge.
So it's really, really frustrating because when you see the other angle, you see that the wheels are turned the opposite direction.
The woman had backed up.
Like she was doing a three-point turn, basically, like she was obeying almost traffic laws to try and just get out of there knowing that they were going to yank her out of her car and abuse her.
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