MAGA’s Propaganda Machine is Trying to Whitewash the Minnesota ICE Killing

I had a front-row seat to January 6. I’ve seen this happen before.

Credit: The White House

Unfortunately, I can say I saw the horror of January 6 unfold up close and personal. I was deputy press secretary in Donald Trump’s White House then, and I stood beside the stage as he implored his followers to “show strength” at the Ellipse. While they marched to the Capitol to bludgeon police officers, I headed back to the West Wing, where I witnessed Trump’s response to the grisly carnage unfolding before our eyes. I resigned that same day.

In the weeks, months, and years that followed, the MAGA propaganda machine kicked into high gear to explain away the attacks, downplay their significance, or make them seem like a harmless, patriotic endeavor. Trump set the tone from the top, inventing wild theories about January 6 being an inside job, just another part of the “rigged” and “stolen” election plot perpetrated by Democrats.

All at once, the MAGA movement rushed to confirm this narrative. Right-wing influencers and news personalities used their platforms to push the lie. MAGA politicians came to see toeing the party line as a litmus test for staying in office. Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, or anyone else who broke ranks was swiftly purged. Trump’s fabrications went from conspiracy theory to gospel truth seemingly overnight, and any assertion to the contrary became Democrat propaganda.

January 6 was not hidden or disputed in the moment. It unfolded live, on television, recorded from every angle. What came afterward was the insistence that Americans disregard what they had just watched. That insistence reflects the dynamic George Orwell warned about in 1984: power asserting itself not by suppressing reality, but by requiring people to deny it.

We’re now seeing the same process play itself out in miniature in response to the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. The facts of the case are patently clear to anyone who’s seen the video at this point: Good was driving away from the officer when he fired multiple shots, killing her. This was a horrific, unnecessary killing, and the kind of thing that good cops have been warning would happen in response to Trump’s mass deployment of ICE agents to US cities.

But the MAGA propaganda machine is doing everything in its power to whitewash the whole situation. First, we got Trump’s social media posts calling Good “very disorderly” and alleging that she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.” Trump went on to double down on these lies, saying “she didn’t try to run him over, she ran him over.” From the Oval Office, he had his aide pull up the video while he continued to repeat the lie.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called Good a “domestic terrorist” who was “stalking and impeding” ICE agents. Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Good “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.” Vice President JD Vance called it “classic terrorism” and told the media they should be “ashamed” for “repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis when a law enforcement officer shot at her.”

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took to the podium to say: “Let me be clear. President Trump and his entire administration stand fully behind the heroic men and women of ICE, and will always uphold law and order in the United States of America. The deadly incident that took place in Minnesota yesterday occurred as a result of a larger sinister left-wing movement that has spread across our country.”

The right-wing ecosystem has taken this line and run with it, with Fox News personalities and online influencers spreading these claims to their audiences. It’s these people’s job to lie, spin, and deflect to protect Trump. And they are very, very good at it. That’s why these kinds of tragedies now follow a familiar, depressing arc: A horrific tragedy unfolds on social media, the president invents a lie to shield himself from blame, and the MAGA propagandists go to work.

I know how this system operates because, for a time, I was inside it. A deputy White House press secretary’s job is supposed to be straightforward: communicate the president’s agenda and the work of government to the American people. But in Trump’s orbit, that role is reshaped by two iron rules—never admit fault and never apologize.

Any acknowledgment of error is treated as weakness; accountability is framed as betrayal. That ethos flows downward, shaping how every crisis is handled. Over time, I watched an honorable responsibility be twisted into something else entirely: serving as the president’s personal mouthpiece, defender, and spin master. I ultimately left because I refused to keep playing that role. But Leavitt and her ilk have embraced it.

The appropriate response to all of this from people of goodwill—who still care about things like democracy—is to meet this pack of sinister lies with the truth. The MAGA propaganda machine wants to grind you down, to exhaust you, to tell so many lies in such rapid succession that you simply give up, and stop pushing back. Our response must be to do what Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey did, and call this out for what it is: “bullshit.”

Sarah Matthews was deputy White House press secretary, and resigned on January 6. She is an Advisory Board Member and Spokeswoman for Home of the Brave, an initiative dedicated to exposing this administration’s corruption, cruelty, and lawlessness.