The MAGA-approved video of an ICE killing

The clips are filmed from different angles. Some are zoomed in, making them indecipherably grainy, and others are slowed down. Some are 20 seconds while others are longer, sandwiched by commentary from users on social media platforms like X, Bluesky, Reddit, and TikTok. Each video — depicting the moment an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shoots and kills a woman in Minneapolis — is ever so slightly different, but the gunshots ringing out and the wailing bystanders are the same.

The shooting occurred just days after federal officials said they were sending thousands of immigration agents to Minnesota, following a viral YouTube video alleging fraud in social services. (The video provided little evidence of its claims.) Even before it was clear what had happened in the shooting, federal officials had readied their version of events. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said it was “an act of domestic terrorism” on the part of the woman who was shot. Noem claimed that ICE agents were trying to push their vehicle out of the snow when the woman “attacked them” and “attempted to run them over” with her car. On Truth Social, Donald Trump claimed, without evidence, that a woman who was screaming in the clip was a “professional agitator” and that the deceased driver, later identified as 37-year-old Renee Good, “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

The video attached to the Truth Social post is a grainy 13-second-long clip that is slowed down. It appears to be captured from above ground — possibly from a balcony or upstairs window — and a large tree blocks most of the frame. The footage is filmed facing the passenger side of Good’s car, and an ICE agent is near the driver’s-side headlight. As Good’s car pulls away and shots are fired, the ICE agent moves with the car, but it’s not clear whether he is hit by the vehicle or if he is reacting to it moving.

There is no shortage of footage and photos from the scene of the killing, but the specific video shared by Trump has become the smoking gun for the far right. Megyn Kelly shared versions of the same clip at least a dozen times on X, and the Libs of TikTok account described it as “the video the Democrats don’t want you to see!” Even in the president’s own social media post, the clip has the watermark of a local TV station. The clip is low quality compared to other videos from the incident to begin with, but as it is reshared, screen recorded, edited, slowed down, cropped, and zoomed in, it begins to take on a deep-fried quality — but no matter. In an era of hyper-partisan media that bleeds into propaganda, where X users earnestly tag the nonconsensual deepfake porn generator to ask if a claim is true, MAGA needs some piece of evidence to point to as incontrovertible proof. They found it in a short video with an obstructed view of the killing.

Many clips of the moments leading up to Good’s killing refute what the Trump administration claims happened. One video from a witness filmed from a different angle shows two other agents approach Good’s car, one of them yanking on her driver’s side door handle and barking at her to get out of the vehicle. (A neighbor who recorded the incident said agents told Good to leave.) Good puts the car in reverse and begins to turn away from the ICE agent near the front of the vehicle; a New York Times analysis of footage shows that the agent wasn’t in the path of the car when he fired three shots into Good’s vehicle. (In slowed-down clips, the agent appears to be filming Good on a phone before he pulls his weapon.) As the shots are fired, her car accelerates down the street before ramming into parked cars. The agent who shot Good slowly walks toward her crashed car and drives away from the scene shortly after.

We have been worrying about what an AI-in-everything world might do to our shared sense of reality — that the wide availability of generative tools would create an era of post-truth as deceptions take hold. To be sure, AI has played a part in the aftermath of Good’s killing, especially on X, where some users attempted to use Grok to “unmask” the ICE agent that shot and killed her. (In videos, the agent is wearing a neck gaiter pulled up above his nose, concealing half his face.) These fake AI re-creations of the shooter — along with an unconfirmed name that somehow caught on — have popped up on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms. But by so confidently claiming that one blurry clip shows evidence of domestic terrorism, the Trump administration is asking the public to disbelieve their own eyes, despite mounting contradictory evidence. Who needs AI manipulations when your preferred angle will do the job well enough?

Five years ago, a mile from where Good was shot, the public bore witness to another video clip that circulated around the world: police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on the neck of George Floyd. The footage of Floyd’s murder was captured by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, and the video triggered the largest protest movement in US history. Chauvin was convicted of Floyd’s murder in 2021, but still there was hand-wringing about the crime — whether Floyd was an innocent enough victim, whether the resulting racial reckoning across American society was warranted, whether the response to his death was dignified enough.

In a surreal image captured by the Times during an hourslong conversation with Trump this week, an aide holds up a laptop with the MAGA-approved grainy video of Good’s shooting. When pressed about the administration’s claims, Trump deflects. His base will see what they want to.