CNN’s Anderson Cooper highlighted the double standard President Donald Trump has shown regarding gun rights. On Saturday, Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, who was filming them. At one point, an agent pushed a woman to the ground. The video shows Pretti trying to help her before being surrounded by agents, who took his holstered gun, which he was legally allowed to carry. After disarming him, the agents shot him 10 times, killing him.
On Monday’s AC360, Cooper reported live from Minneapolis.
He pointed out that the Trump administration’s statements about Pretti, especially right after the killing, were not supported by the videos of his death. Cooper also played a clip where FBI Director Kash Patel said, “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded with multiple magazines, to any sort of protest that you wanted.”
It’s important to note that Minnesota allows people to carry handguns openly if they have a permit.
There’s no law against carrying a gun during a protest, which Pretti wasn’t doing. Instead, he was filming the agents.
Cooper then showed a 2021 clip of Patel asking for donations for Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people during a protest in 2020.
Rittenhouse was later acquitted of murder, claiming he acted in self-defense. He had met with Trump, who called him “a nice young man.”
Cooper also read from a post on Trump’s Truth Social account, where he shared a photo of Pretti’s gun and asked, “This is the gunman’s gun (with two additional full magazines!)
, and ready to go – What is that all about?”
Cooper said, “Now, again, this is from a president who, until this weekend, hardly stopped talking about his love for the Second Amendment,” before playing clips of Trump discussing the Second Amendment.
TRUMP: I’m gonna save your Second Amendment.
TRUMP: The Second Amendment is under siege. Believe me.
TRUMP: We’ll ensure Americans have the means to protect themselves in this age of terror. I will be always defending the Second Amendment.
TRUMP: We are going to be so strong with our Second Amendment. We’re not letting our Second Amendment go.
TRUMP: If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other constitutional freedoms.
WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: The president has also made it clear he’s always going to protect the constitutional right, Second Amendment, constitutional right of Americans to own guns.
COOPER: Now, he supports the Second Amendment – just not all the time, depending on who’s carrying the gun and who gets killed. Alex Pretti was apparently not his kind of gun owner.
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