Within hours after a woman is shot and killed by a federal agent on a snowy Minneapolis street, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have already written the narrative that Renee Good was an agitator, part of a “leftwing network,” complicit in her own death. The speed with which the Trump administration moved to control the story around Good’s killing reveals something troubling about how power operates when it goes unchecked.
For context, the 37-year-old victim was shot by an ICE officer during a Wednesday immigration enforcement operation. Good, as per reports, was attempting to drive away when the officer, identified as Jonathan Ross, opened fire.
By Thursday, Vice President Vance was standing in the White House briefing room, effectively closing the case before any serious investigation had started. “What you see is what you get in this case,” he declared, speaking with the certainty of someone who had already decided the truth.
The VPOTUS claimed Good had “accelerated her car into the officer and hit him.” However, video footage of the incident that circulated online does not clearly show the vehicle making contact with Ross.
.@Timodc on JD Vance’s comments about Renée Good: “He paints her as an enemy…as a domestic foe, he lies about her, he shows no sympathy towards her. And, and he does so in a lecturing, condescending, smarmy way… It’s totally, totally sick, and I find him to be repulsive.” pic.twitter.com/pB6EnQxMMx
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) January 8, 2026
With this, critics suggest that the gap between Vance’s assertion and what the clip actually shows is significant, as it suggests the Trump administration was not at all interested in facts so much as in narrative control.
Unsurprisingly, Trump echoed the talking points and told Fox News that Good “viciously ran over” Ross. However, the videos tell a different story.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey even watched the same footage and reached the opposite conclusion. “What you see is garbage,” he stated of the arguments that Ross was acting in self-defense.
Trump further claimed that Good was a professional agitator, someone screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at federal agents during the operation.
“She was a very high-level agitator, so professional. Probably a paid agitator,” Trump said. However, the 79-year-old commander-in-chief offered no evidence to support this claim, only the certainty of someone accustomed to being believed.
What Donald Trump and JD Vance failed to mention was what Good’s wife said about why they were there. As per her spouse, the couple had simply stopped their neighbors during the ICE operation. This detail did not fit the narrative of “paid agitators” and leftwing conspiracies, so it comes as no surprise that it largely disappeared from the administration’s public statements.
JD Vance on Renee Good: This is classic terrorism. pic.twitter.com/4cVZGpQ2pE
— jordan (@JordanUhl) January 8, 2026
In the briefing room, Vance ruthlessly employed his skills in verbal combat and media manipulation. He condemned journalists for depicting Good as “innocent,” as though sympathy for a dead woman was itself a form of bias.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves. Every single one of you,” Vance said, turning the focus away from the shooting and toward the media covering it.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt amplified the message and called Good’s killing “a result of a large, sinister left-wing movement.” She even declared that the Trump administration would “redouble our efforts to get the worst of the criminal, illegal alien killers, rapists and pedophiles off of American streets.”
Amid an ongoing investigation, the Trump administration has reframed Good’s death not as a tragedy requiring scrutiny but as an attack on law and order orchestrated by the political left.
When asked what role he and Trump played in calming tensions, Vance suggested people take their concerns to the ballot box, suggesting the administration had no interest in reflection or restraint. Instead, it would double down on the very operations that led to Good’s death in the first place.
