outside agitators
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BOOST BY PRETTI SHOOT?
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MMA
Study: Fox News smeared Alex Pretti dozens of times following his killing by federal agents
In the week following Pretti’s killing by DHS, figures on Fox News made at least 75 claims blaming Pretti for his own death or contradicting video evidence
Written by Harrison Ray & Isabella Sherk
Research contributions from Tyler Monroe & Rob Savillo
Published 02/06/26 9:58 AM EST
On January 24, Customs and Border Protection agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Minnesota intensive care nurse, during immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis. In the week that followed, Fox News personalities and guests made at least 75 claims about Pretti that either wrongly alleged that he had been violent toward federal agents or directly blamed him for his own killing.
- Video verified by ABC News showed Pretti holding his phone to record CBP agents as a masked agent knocked a woman to the ground, then pepper-sprayed Pretti when he stepped between them. Shortly after, multiple agents pulled him to the ground before two agents fired approximately 10 shots at Pretti, killing him.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and figures from the Department of Homeland Security quickly made public statements claiming Pretti had intended to “massacre law enforcement,” commit “an act of domestic terrorism,” and “inflict maximum damage” — despite video evidence directly contradicting their claims.
In the hours following the shooting, Fox News began running with the Trump administration's narrative and parroting its talking points. Network figures and guests quoted or aired the administration's misleading and false statements at least 22 times in 24 hours after the news broke.
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From the January 25, 2026, edition of Fox New's Fox & Friends Weekend
- ## Fox News made at least 75 claims that contradicted video evidence or blamed Pretti for his own death
- Media Matters reviewed Fox News programming from January 24-30 and found that network guests and personalities made at least 75 claims attacking Pretti — either falsely claiming Pretti was violent toward federal agents or blaming him for his own killing.
Fox’s weekend shows airing just after the shooting made the most claims attacking Pretti. On January 24 alone, network figures and guests made at least 32 such claims. As video evidence became harder and harder to refute into the week, shows hosted by Will Cain, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham aired the most claims attacking Pretti among all of Fox’s weekday programming.
The number of daily claims against Pretti declined over the following days until footage of a January 13 incident involving Pretti and DHS agents resurfaced on January 28. Fox personalities seized on the footage to once again cast Pretti as an aggressor against federal agents, with the network airing at least 10 additional attacks even as his family stressed that “nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex's killing at the hands of ICE.”
Despite their pleas, Fox host Jesse Watters told viewers that in the new video, Pretti “looks like a dangerous, hostile, unhinged male nurse with a loaded weapon who went back for more a week later.”
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From the January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
- Figures on Fox News repeatedly argued that Pretti’s decision to carry a gun justified his killing, with anchor Jon Scott asking why anyone would go to a protest with “a semiautomatic handgun and a couple of magazines,” and former acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey even claiming the agents “very well could have prevented a major mass shooting of multiple officers.”
Fox News contributors and guests also repeatedly contradicted video evidence by insisting Pretti had behaved aggressively or brandished a weapon. Fox contributor Paul Mauro claimed agents were only “trying to subdue him without using deadly force” when Pretti “pulls out that 9 mm,” former DHS official Charles Marino asserted that Pretti “showed up to this protest, intended to obstruct and confront law enforcement agents, and it turned out badly for him,” and right-wing activist Chris Rufo described him as “a violent leftist agitator … seeking armed conflict with the police.”
Former prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky described the shooting as “essentially a suicide-by-cop type of scenario,” claiming, “It's long been known if you're going to fight with cops and resist in situations that are escalating like this, it is a death wish.”
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From the January 24, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox Reports with Jon Scott
- Not all Fox personalities embraced the Trump administration’s narrative. Late on January 24, contributor Ted Williams broke with the prevailing Fox coverage, saying that the administration put out a “misrepresentation” of what took place in the video. He continued, “This man is dead, he has a family, and to go out and call him a domestic terrorist without giving any more information is just unacceptable.”
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From Fox News' live coverage on January 24, 2026
- Fox contributor Trey Gowdy even compared Pretti to Kyle Rittenhouse, adding, “Alex Pretti's firearm was lawfully being carried. It's lawful to carry a gun in Minnesota. He never brandished it. He didn't point it at the cops. … We certainly should not be labelling him as a domestic terrorist who's going to execute cops. There's no evidence to support that.”
But many others on the network continued to churn out false statements and justifications for Pretti’s killing.
- ## Methodology...
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reboot, meld w paid protestor soros BS // antifa 4 terror 3 BS
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MMA
01/26/26 4:56 PM EST
01/26/26 3:52 PM EST
- ### Megyn Kelly: Minnesota protesters are “terrorists” who must “behave well and submit immediately”
01/26/26 2:16 PM EST
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- ### Newsmax's senior judicial analyst on Alex Pretti shooting: “To me, their shooting is indefensible”
01/26/26 10:54 AM EST
01/26/26 10:34 AM EST
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MMA
January 24, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube
BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): You need to pray for Border Patrol, federal law enforcement, and ICE right now as Minneapolis is about to pop off. Another deadly shooting.
This time, a left-wing protester attempted to pull this Sig Sauer handgun on federal officers and commit a mass murder, potentially killing many of them because there were quite a few around during an arrest situation where a left-wing agitator, probably a professional paid agitator, 51 years-old, was reaching for this firearm.
Federal law enforcement put him down, but a Border Patrol member shot and killed an individual in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the intersection of 26th Street, Nicollet Avenue. This is the same avenue that the Quality Learning center is on. Goodness gracious. What started it all, and now we're learning so much more about what the left is willing to do.
This would be the second time that a leftist paid protester, agitator, terrorist has been killed in self-defense by federal law enforcement for attempting to commit murder. Renee Good tried to run over federal officers, and this individual tried to shoot federal officers. You can see here in this video -- what you'll see is federal officers tussling, attempting to apprehend the agitator and then the individual showed his firearm. And you can hear the discharge of a weapon. And the reactions from inside of whatever establishment was filming this -- again, well, stop resisting arrest. Stop fighting federal law enforcement.
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apparently open border anti-immigrant
mma
January 9, 2025, edition of Fox Business' Mornings with Maria
MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Have we ruled out all outside agitators?
MARK TEPPER (GUEST): No. In fact, I think there were videos of some arsonists creating new fires. So no, I don't think that's been ruled out at all and given the terror attacks that we saw on January 1, I mean, it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility that that's happening. But you know, what's happening right now — at least for me — a lack of mitigation standpoint prior to this has to do with the fact that California is effectively a one-party system. And when you're operating under a one-party system, there's no accountability from the other party to help you make sure that you're doing what you should be doing.
BARTIROMO: That's a great point.
TEPPER: Gross incompetence. Having priorities backwards. All that stuff contributed to what's happening, not saying it caused it, but it certainly contributed.
BARTIROMO: But I'd like to know what kind of investigation is underway in terms of outside agitators. I mean, all of these people who have come into America and wanting to disrupt our lives. I would like to see an investigation to ensure that we know that there were no outside agitators starting these fires.
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OANN broadcast a segment on Tuesday filled with conspiracy theories about Gugino supposedly trying to “scan police communications” with his phone.
“Newly released videos appear to show Gugino using a police tracker on his phone, trying to scan police communications during the protest,” OANN insisted on Tuesday. “The tactic, known as skimming, is an old trick used by Antifa to locate police officers and plan violent activities, bypassing the police response.”
Why would Gugino be trying to “locate” police when they’re standing right in front of him? That obvious question goes unanswered in the report. And it gets even dumber from there.
“In addition, the 75-year-old, who’s been referred to as an agitator, was supposedly using the technology to black out police communications. That, however, didn’t quite work,” OANN said. “And many police officers support their police colleagues.”
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/04/white-house-forced-retract-claim-viral-videos-prove-antifa-plotting-violence
many lnx twt pix vid
white House Forced to Retract Claim Viral Videos Prove Antifa Is Plotting Violence
Robert Mackey
June 3 2020, 9:29 p.m.
THE WHITE HOUSE engaged in an extraordinary act of rumor-mongering on Wednesday, releasing a compilation of viral video clips posted on social media recently by people who believed, wrongly, that the piles of bricks they came across had been planted there by anti-fascist activists, known as antifa, to inspire violence at protests.
“Antifa and professional anarchists are invading our communities, staging bricks and weapons to instigate violence,” a caption for the video posted on the official White House Twitter feed claimed. “These are acts of domestic terror.”
A screenshot of a video and caption posted on the White House Twitter feed on Wednesday.]
Within minutes, journalists discovered that most of the clips included in the video posted online by the White House had already been investigated and debunked. A short time later, without explanation or apology, the White House deleted the video from its official Twitter and Facebook feeds — but only after it had been viewed more than a million times on Twitter alone.
A screenshot showing that a video was removed from the White House Facebook feed on Wednesday.]
Although the White House tried to hide the video once it became clear just how riddled with errors it was, The Intercept saved a copy before it disappeared.
The video is worth examining in detail, since it shows just how unconcerned with the truth people in the White House are, as they conduct a frantic search for evidence to support the president’s baseless claim that the protests over racial injustice and police impunity have been hijacked by phantom “professional protesters.”
The compilation includes seven clips showing bricks, rocks or paving stones that the people who filmed them found suspicious. Three of the clips were broadcast a day earlier in a report from “Inside Edition,” which told its viewers that “police say small bands of the so-called ‘professional agitators’ are taking advantage of the crisis and hijacking peaceful demonstrations.”
“Piles of bricks have also appeared at the scenes of major demonstrations,” a reporter for the tabloid news show added. “There is speculation they may have been planted there by Antifa, for use as projectiles aimed at cops and storefront windows.”
However, as open-source investigators for BBC News, Buzzfeed and Vice had already reported before the White House compiled the clips, almost all of the video included in it showed ordinary piles of bricks used in construction projects which were underway before the wave of protests began in response to the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by Minneapolis police officers last week.
In the first clip, recorded in Dallas on Saturday night, a young black protester addresses the camera, and shares the conspiratorial idea that a pallet of bricks outside a courthouse must have been planted there to provoke a riot.
Reuben Lael
@reubengotsoul
The Dallas protest was a lot of things. But I was very disappointed to see this RANDOM stack of bricks in front of the courthouse. #setup #BlackLivesMatters #makeblackcount
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“This is a set-up,” the young man says to the camera in the original video, which was posted on Twitter by a black activist. “You got to do better,” the man adds, wagging his finger in a sarcastic scolding of the slipshod provocateurs he imagines were responsible. In the background, another protester can be heard saying, “there ain’t no damned construction around here.”
That is not quite correct, however. Photographs and video shot on May 5 at the same location, outside the Dallas County Courthouse — during a protest by the far-right Oathkeepers in support of Shelley Luther, a salon owner who was jailed for reopening her business during the coronavirus lockdown— showed that there were extensive roadworks and piles of bricks at that same street corner three weeks before George Floyd was killed.
Oath Keepers
@Oathkeepers
Standing outside the Dallas County Courthouse waiting to see if defiant Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther will be arrested today by the local tyrant judge. She is inside court house for a “contempt of court” hearing. Stay tuned.
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Even if the roadwork had been largely or entirely completed by last Saturday, it seems far more likely that the bricks had just not been cleared away than that they were removed and then planted again, outside a courthouse, by left-wing agitators.
In an interview, the man who recorded this video and posted it online, Reuben Lael, told me that he took the threat of “interlopers,” meaning “anarchists or any other anti-America groups,” using violence to distort the meaning of the Black Lives Matter protests very seriously. “America is vulnerable and on the radar of people who want to destroy the country,” he said. Lael argued that it was important to him “to protect the young protesters” and “kind of keep the narrative clear” by at least letting the young man who suspected the bricks might have been a set-up make it plain that he was not a rioter and not interested in violence.
Another clip used by the White House, and “Inside Edition,” shows a pile of bricks in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in video that was posted on Twitter on Saturday. However, as Benjamin Strick of The BBC reported on Tuesday, the bricks were clearly visible at the same spot in video posted on YouTube on May 24, one day before the killing of George Floyd.
Benjamin Strick
@BenDoBrown
Hi @WhiteHouse. You are wrong. Some of these "staging bricks" to "instigate violence" videos are false. This one filmed in #Fayetteville (https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0527635,-78.8789179,3a,75y,165.39h,76.74t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sWhaj_0gr7RbgZ8d5Z4oF9Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 …) the bricks were there pre-May 24 in this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5rJCesyF_A …. See more here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/52877751 https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1268248480880963584 …
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The Fayetteville Public Works Commission also confirmed to Strick’s colleague, Shayan Sardarizadeh, on Tuesday that the paving stones had been placed on that sidewalk last week ahead of planned work to restore the cobblestoned street following work on water and sewer lines beneath the pavement.
In the White House compilation, that video from Fayetteville is the fifth clip, and, as Strick pointed out on Twitter, the pile of paving stones in it appears to be identical to those shown in the second clip in the sequence, which seems to show the same stones (surrounded by the same traffic cones and brick wall) at a different time of day.
The third clip in the White House video, of a police officer removing blue boxes of stones from a street corner in Gravesend, a part of South Brooklyn where there have been no protests or rioting, was posted on Twitter on Tuesday morning by someone who claimed, without evidence, that they had been placed there by Anifa. “Bricks have been places strategically around Brooklyn in anticipation of protests,” a conservative Brooklyn resident named Yaakov Kaplan wrote in his video caption without evidence. “ANTIFA is way more organized than politicians pretend.”
That video was shared on Twitter on Wednesday morning by Commissioner Dermot Shea of the New York Police Department. However, Mark Treyger, a New York City Council member who represents that area responded to the commissioner’s tweet a short time later, calling his accusation that the stones had been placed there by antifascists false. “This is in my district. I went to the site. This construction debris was left near a construction site on Ave X in Gravesend,” Treyger wrote on Twitter.
Mark Treyger
@MarkTreyger718
This is in my district. I went to the site. This construction debris was left near a construction site on Ave X in Gravesend. Could be evidence of a developer breaking law since phase 1 hasn’t begun, but there was no evidence of organized looting on X last night that I’m aware of https://twitter.com/nypdshea/status/1268187062001455111 …
Commissioner Shea
@NYPDShea
This is what our cops are up against: Organized looters, strategically placing caches of bricks & rocks at locations throughout NYC.
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It is nor clear where the fourth clip in the White House compilation was shot, but it shows what look like ordinary construction materials.
The sixth clip, of young protesters in Manhattan picking up bricks during a march on Saturday night, was edited by the White House to cut out the start of the scene, in which they could be seen first breaking down a barrier around a clearly defined construction site in the East Village. The original clip, posted by a reporter, showed a yellow fence around the building materials and a sign reading “LANE CLOSED CAUTION,” before it was pulled down by the protesters to get at the bricks.
Kevin R Hogan
@KRHogan_NTD
"Yo, we got bricks. We got bricks!"—#Rioters in Manhattan chanced upon a cache in the street equipped with bricks and a shovel at 10:01 p.m. on Second Ave between St. Marks Pl. and Seventh St.
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The seventh and final clip offered by the White House as supposed proof of anti-fascists “staging bricks” was perhaps the most embarrassing mistake. That viral clip showed several piles of large rocks inside six metal cages on a sidewalk in Sherman Oaks, California, which people on social platforms speculated were caches of ammunition for future riots.
Talia
@talialikeitis
Wow. All over LA ... anyone else seeing these?
Not my video. Just sharing —
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In fact, as the Chabad of Sherman Oaks had already explained on its Facebook page on Monday, in response to the viral rumor that these were stones prepared for rioting, the structures were in fact security barriers that had been in place outside the Jewish center for nearly a year.
Jennie (she/her) ?????? #BlackLivesMatter
@JennieRoberson
People keep RTing this like it's prep for looters. That's a hoax. This is in front of Chabad in Sherman Oaks. They're bolted to the cement to keep people from ramming a car into the place of worship & are getting boarded up. Share the shit out of this 2 stop the false narrative.
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“Nevertheless to alleviate people’s concern that they may be vandalized and used by rioters, they were temporarily removed,” the center said in a message posted on Facebook with a photo of the cages after the rocks had been removed.
A screenshot of a Facebook message posted on Monday, debunking a viral rumor.]
The White House social media director, Dan Scavino, did not reply to a request for comment on why the video was posted after most of its contents had already been debunked, and why it was removed without explanation.
Despite a lack of evidence, belief in the president’s conspiracy theory that “outside agitators” from the ranks of the anti-fascists are infiltrating protests to spark violence has become an article of faith among his supporters, and has been echoed from senior officers in some police departments. On Monday, Terence Monahan, the chief of department and the highest-ranked uniformed police officer in the NYPD, told a local television crew that it was time “to get those groups out of here — from California, from all over this country, who are being paid to take this movement, which is a good movement, and turn it into violence” against police officers.
Robert Mackey
@RobertMackey
NYPD is being led by a chief, Terence Monahan, who reveals here that he believes the baseless conspiracy theory that groups from other parts of the country "are being paid" to hijack the protests and inflict violence on the police. He's in charge. https://twitter.com/morenabasteiro/status/1267589169695666176 …
Morena Basteiro
?
@morenabasteiro
An emotional ?@NYPDChiefofDept? tells ?@JoshEiniger7? that it’s time to get the agitators “out of here” - “from California, from all over this country, who are being paid to take this movement, which is a good movement, and turn it into violence.” ?@ABC7NY?
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Other departments have found themselves forced to debunk viral rumors of imminent attacks from anti-fascists, who use the term antifa as a nickname, but are not members of an organized group, as Trump and his followers seem to believe.
On Monday, a police department in Idaho wrote on Facebook that a viral rumor spread by a rightwing militia group, that “Antifa has sent a plane load of their people into Boise and three bus loads from Seattle into the rural areas,” was entirely untrue. “The Payette County Sheriff’s Office has been monitoring social media posts that have stated FALSE information,” the department wrote. “The Payette County Sheriff’s Office has not had contact with and has not verified that Antifa is in Payette County. The Payette County Sheriff’s Office has not given any specific warnings to our citizens about Antifa or other organizations.”
Ahead of a protest on Sunday, the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce tweeted that it “had received tips from unnamed sources that protesters from outside of Sioux Falls planned to attend the rally and incite violence.”
Sioux Falls Police Chief Matt Burns told The Argus Leader, a local newspaper, on Monday “that authorities were looking for the buses and didn’t find any evidence of them arriving and unloading protesters.”
But unverified claims that “pallets of bricks” have been mysteriously delivered to protest sites have also been embraced by some anti-Trump activists on the left. The podcaster Tonya Tko used many of the same viral clips of bricks in her own video analysis posted on Facebook on Monday, in which she concluded that the government must be trying to undermine peaceful protests in favor of racial justice by inciting people to violence. Tko’s video, “Bricks Planted in Protest Cities Across the U.S.: IT’S A SET-UP!” in which she also suggests that the Covid-19 pandemic might have been part of a wider government plot, has already been viewed 3.4 million times.
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