Jamie Raskin explains why his political rhetoric is not inflammatory
He’s just attacking Trump’s policies, of course!
Bert Peterson | April 28, 2026
ollowing the latest attempt on President Trump’s life, Dana Bash asked U.S. rep. Jamie Raskin if he had had any second thoughts about Democrats’ “heated rhetoric.”
His answer:
I mean, I talked about the policies of this administration, the authoritarianism we saw on display in Minneapolis, where two of our citizens were gunned down in the street simply for exercising their First Amendment rights. Renée Good, Alex Pretti, and others, you know, have died in custody. I’m talking about policies. I don’t personalize it.
Oh, now it’s suddenly all clear. It’s not Trump that Raskin is attacking; it is his policy of “gunn[ing citizens] down in the streets simply for exercising their First Amendment rights.” Who wouldn’t be opposed to a policy like that?
But is that really Trump’s policy? In either of the first two examples he refers to, is that really what happened?
Renée Good, by blocking traffic, was obstructing the enforcement of immigration law. There’s no constitutional protection for that, and even if there was, that’s not why she was shot. She was shot because she was gunning a car that, inadvertently or not, was headed directly toward an armed Iraq War combat veteran ICE agent. She may have veered off, but the agent did not wait to find out, and there was no constitutional requirement that he do so. Had he, not Good, been killed, Raskin and all the others wouldn’t be talking about him today.
As for Alex Pretti, neither was he, at the time of his killing, exercising First Amendment rights. In fact, it did not appear that he had done much of anything to provoke any ICE response. About a week earlier, however, he had kicked out the taillight of a departing ICE vehicle, filled with ICE agents. The vehicle did not stop, but it’s possible that one or more of the agents saw him do it (and may have recognized him from previous encounters, so that others also came to know that he had done it as well).
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/jamie_raskin_explains_why_his_political_rhetoric_is_not_inflammatory.html
