Tom Bevan, on Monday’s edition of the RealClearPolitics podcast, said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is doing more harm than good with her aggressive response to a second deadly shooting by federal agents during protests against deportation operations in Minnesota. “Kristi Noem is now a part of the problem, and part of the reason this is becoming a political liability for the administration,” Tom Bevan said about Noem’s comments, like calling Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist” hours after he was shot dead by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis. “She got out there immediately and said a bunch of crazy sh-t that even people who want to defend the administration find indefensible, like the idea that this guy was some sort of assassin.” He said longtime “Border Czar” Tom Homan is the best person to recalibrate the operation from a public relations perspective. “He’s been doing this for 35 years. Kristi Noem has no experience.” “Vice President Vance was there last week trying to offer an olive branch, but it clearly didn’t work,” he said. “We still have this situation where the governor of Minnesota and the mayor of Minneapolis are urging people to insert themselves into law enforcement operations and resist.” “It’s like an insurgency, to a degree, in terms of how organized it is and the way they’re going about disrupting these law enforcement operations,” he also said. “It leads to tragedies like this, and, I think, undermines the Trump administration’s efforts here in terms of arresting people who are in this country illegally and who’ve committed crimes in their mass deportation program.” “Everybody saw the video, and this guy was not trying to kill anyone, nor did the agents go out in the streets looking to kill this guy. It was a confluence of bad events.” “It was a perfect storm of awfulness that led to his death, but the administration needs to get a grip on this, and do it fast because this seems to be a breaking point with the media,” Bevan said. “With Barack Obama and the Clintons and all these folks are coming out now, they are behind the news on this.”
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