CNN host Jake Tapper masterfully destroyed the specious argument of Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin that Renee Good had been shot by an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis earlier this week when the senator contradicted himself and wound up looking like a complete fool.
Good was shot three times in the head and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who some say told her to “drive away” even though another officer allegedly ordered her to “get out of the car.” When Good attempted to leave, Ross fired three shots into the 37-year-old mother of three children.
According to Mullin, Good was to blame.
“She purposely tries to accelerate and run over… I don’t know if she purposely tried to run over the ICE agent, but there was an ICE agent positioned in front of her vehicle. She accelerated to them. At that point, that vehicle becomes a lethal weapon, and the agents have the right to defend themselves, and they did so.”
That’s when Tapper pounced on the blatant contradiction in Mullin’s remarks.
“You yourself, just now, asserted that the woman clearly tried to run over the guy, and then you said, at the very least, she was going forward while he was in front.”
“I think that does illustrate the fact that this is, at the very least, a widely disputed incident full of ambiguities and interpretations. How can anyone be confident that she was trying to attack the officer instead of trying to flee the scene?” Tapper added.
Mullin tried to bolster his argument by suggesting that Ross would have been justified in killing Good even if she had merely been attempting to flee. He also said he suspected that Good was a paid protester.
“Fleeing the scene, it doesn’t make any difference!” Mullin boomed. “It’s mind-blowing to me why we are defending someone that was acting in this manner when it was clearly that she hit an ICE agent, and in hence, law enforcement that’s enforcing our nation’s laws… Those that are paying for professional protestors to obstruct the justice of law enforcement, they need to start being held accountable.”
“We don’t know that she was being paid,” Tapper noted.
What we know with absolute certainty is that a woman is dead and three children are now orphans. That alone suggests that the ICE agent acted in a way that demands further investigation and criminal charges if the evidence shows he acted irresponsibly.
