The Media Research Center did its best to smear and denigrate Renee Good after she was shot and killed by an ICE officer. First up was Curtis Houck, who spent a Jan. 8 post dutifully repeating propaganda from Vice President J.D. Vance, who was accusing others of engaging in propaganda:
Vice President JD Vance took to the White House Briefing Room podium Thursday afternoon to answer questions about Wednesday’s deadly ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis, but not before launching into one of multiple take downs for the “irresponsible” liberal media outlets acting as “agents of propaganda” and “lying about” both the ICE officer and the facts borne out in multiple videos.
At one point, Vance called the behavior “one of the most disgraceful things I’ve ever seen” while, in another fiery statement, argued “some in the media are participating” alongside far-left demonstrators in “trying to incite violence against our law enforcement offices.”
Just prior to opening himself up for questions, he took issue with a loaded CNN headline that read “Outrage after ICE officer kills U.S. citizen in Minneapolis.” Vance sounded like one of us at NewsBusters in diagraming all that was left out with CNN “lying about this attack” and part of the wider media coverage he found to be “an absolute disgrace”:
At times, Houck seemed more interested in promoting his fellow right-wing ideologues an d attacking those who weren’t:
Our friend and MRC Bulldog Award winner Mary Margaret Olohan received the first question and read to Vance a quote from Democrat Governor Tim Walz comparing Minnesotans protesting ICE to Unionists at Gettysburg in the Civil War:
[…]The “new media seat” recipient came next, which was former Washington Post and Politico reporter Rachael Bade, now with her own independent site The D.C. Huddle (alongside Dan Turrentine and our friend Sean Spicer).
Vance replied “nobody wants an American citizen to be killed” and what took place with Renee Good dying was “absolutely a tragedy, but it’s a…making of the far left” and demonizing of ICE officers trying to enforce immigration laws:
[…]Following one question from Fox’s Peter Doocy asking him to explain more about “who…is behind this broader left-wing network” Vance said was behind the anti-ICE vigilantism in Minneapolis, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell lectured Vance for “describing [Good] as a deranged leftist, talking about very specific facts of these events when an investigation is just beginning.”
Vance wasn’t having this and reiterated Good was “trying to obstruct a legitimate law enforcement operation” by “aim[ing] her car at a law enforcement officer and press[ing] on the accelerator,” part and parcel of the “lunatic fringe” attacking “our law enforcement officers” when the real response should be “the ballot box” if one is opposed to ICE’s actions.
As we now know, Good did not aim her car at an ICE officer — she was trying to steer away from the officer, who was not in the path of the car when he shot and killed Good. Still, Houck continued:
Virulent Trump and MAGA hater Rachel Scott of ABC News was next and lamented the “heated rhetoric..from officials,” wondering “what responsibility” he and President Trump have “to defuse some of the tension.”
Vance reemphasized he’s “not happy that this woman lost her life” and “the best way to turn down the temperature is to tell people to take their concerns about immigration policy to the ballot box, stop assaulting and stop inciting violence”:
One might say that Houck’s hateful and denigrating language toward journalists who do not share his right-wing ideology is creating some of that tension.
Jorge Bonilla attacked Good’s purported radicalism in a Jan. 9 post:
In the case of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, there is a congealing media narrative of a wife, mother, and good neighbor being gunned down in cold blood by the evil fed. There were other, less convenient details to this story that became public today. However, the legacy media evening newscasts have not yet reported them.
There is more to Good’s story. Per this reporting, Good was more than an innocent bystander. She was, in fact, “an anti-ICE warrior:”
But the right-wing New York Post article Bonilla cites only “a mother nmed Leesa” — tyhat is, an anonymous source, which the MRC purports to hate — as a source for this claim. Nevertheless, Bonillla ranted:
None of the evening newscasts mentioned these details, which would inevitably alter public perception of the story. There is certainly the matter of timeliness, but this is no excuse. The story was published, then updated shortly before the evening newscasts went on the air. Time was tight, but the networks have demonstrated time and again that they will get late-breaking news into the newscast when they want to.
The details of Good’s advocacy are not convenient to the narrative of a terrified mother seeking to get away from the scary immigration agents. None of the evening network newscasts, despite there being time to squeak something in, included this vital detail. Nothing on ABC, CBS or NBC.
Bonilla didn’t explain why the Post’s anonymous source should be trusted automatically the way he does. Indeed, the accurate details of Good’s death are not convenient to Bonilla’s narrative.
Tim Graham added whataboutism to his repetition of Vance’s faulty narrative in his Jan. 9 column:
What is going on in The People’s Republic of Minnesota? The Democrat establishment in the Gopher State is nothing like it was back in the Reagan years, with ex-vice president Walter Mondale or Gov. Rudy Perpich. The insurrectionist echoes of their language about immigration-enforcement cops is eyebrow-raising in the same week the elitist media somberly mourned the attack on police at the January 6 riot.
On January 7, activist Renee Nicole Good used her car to try and block traffic to resist ICE agents. When she refused requests to step out of the car and instead drove her car into an ICE agent, he shot her. That’s a terrible thing. But so was the shooting of activist Ashli Babbitt by a policeman on January 6.
How is running over ICE agents not like threatening the Capitol Police on January 6? If you don’t believe ICE agents were in danger, then maybe you should read about how Cuban illegal alien Juan Carlos Rodriguez Romero “interacted” with ICE agents last December 21.
[…]Minnesota Democrats openly allied themselves with Somali-Americans who defrauded the federal government of billions of dollars. When Team Trump drew attention to this massive fraud, Walz called it “white supremacy.”
These radical stances underline the wokeness, or the “anti-racism” of Democrats and their affiliated media outlets, who see everything through a lens of oppressive “white privilege.” It’s precisely this wokeness that enabled the massive fraud in the first place, and which now seeks to disable any attempt at deportations.
As we’ve noted, the MRC has refused to fact-check any accusations of “Somali-Americans who defrauded the federal government of billions of dollars,” making his concern about that dubious at best.
Graham repated Vance’s faulty narrative again in his Jan. 9 podcast:
The network news can hardly notice the massive welfare fraud perpetrated by Somalis in Minnesota, and the media find nothing offensive about local Democrats telling ICE to ‘get the f–k out of Minneapolis’ (Mayor Jacob Frey) and threatening to deploy the National Guard against ICE (Gov. Tim Walz).
The latest numbers on NewsBusters from Bill D’Agostino showed that from December 1 through January 7, CBS Evening News offered almost 13 minutes on the largely Somali effort to defraud the federal government, while ABC’s World News Tonight offered only 35 seconds.
[…]It’s become apparent that our elitist media hate ICE, and don’t find anything offensive about attempting to harm them while they perform their duties. Is it implausible that activist Renee Good was going to run over an ICE agent?
Turns out it really was implausible. Neither Graham nor any other MRC writer has corrected their posts to reflect this information.
Houck returned to grouse:
Friday morning on NBC’s Today, correspondent Maggie Vespa misled viewers by telling them from the scene of anti-Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota that, a day earlier at the White House, Vice President JD Vance stated “without evidence” that the woman who died when she hit an ICE officer with her (which was confirmed Friday afternoon in a video released by Alpha News) was a radical leftist.
Vespa made the claim despite there having been reporting more than 12 hours earlier by the New York Post that said Good “was an anti-ICE ‘warrior’ and was part of a group of activists who worked to ‘document and resist’ the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota.”
Houck didn’t explain why he’s demanding that the Post’s anonymous source be trusted, beyond her parroting his preferred narrative — it wseems that he believes anyone who’s not as far-right as him is a “radical leftist.” Yet he accused Vespa of engaging in “disinformation” by discrediting Vance’s disinformation.