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“That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” Renee Nicole Macklin Good told Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross seconds before he shot and killed her in Minneapolis on Wednesday. Good’s last words are memorialized in newly released video footage seemingly taken by Ross on a cellphone as he circled her car. So are the last words Ross—or possibly another ICE officer—spoke to her as she lay dead or dying: “Fucking bitch.”
The video clearly portrays Good as a calm presence and ICE as a menacing one, which means it does not make good on the narrative conservatives have been spinning about Good’s death, claiming that she hit Ross with her car and he killed her in self-defense. And yet the leaked video was published by Alpha News, a right-wing media company based in Minnesota, that previously produced a falsehood-ridden documentary downplaying police culpability in George Floyd’s murder. Why would this kind of outlet decide to post a video that’s so sympathetic to Good?
In the days since Good’s death, the right has been trying to paint her as an agitator, a radicala violent domestic terrorist. Though she certainly does not come off as such in the video, the footage does make clear that she was on that street to protest ICE. To many on the right, this makes her a disposable casualty in Donald Trump’s war on immigrants. Conservatives can point to this video to say that Good refused to follow orders to “get out of the fucking car,” making her culpable for her own death. There is no rule of proportionality in the MAGA universe: Any left-leaning protest activity or civil disobedience is grounds for assassination.
But the real reason for Alpha News’ decision may lie in the second half of the video, after Good tells the officer she isn’t mad at him. Good’s wife, Beccais shown walking outside the car, filming Ross on her own phone. She identifies herself as a U.S. citizen and lightly mocks Ross for filming their license plates. “You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy,” she says. Then she makes a move to get in the passenger seat, seemingly in preparation for the couple to vacate the area.
Becca is a clockable queer woman. She establishes Good as a member of a minority currently being demonized by Republicans as dangerous to children and a threat to society. This brands Good and her grieving widow as marginal Americans, not citizens of the country Trump and his followers are trying to protect. The administration is waging a war on empathyand Good’s politics and identity placed her on the wrong side of the battle lines.
If you’re at all familiar with the language used by GOP leaders to dehumanize queer people—“groomer,” “tr***y”—it’s easy to view this video through the eyes of the MAGA faithful. You won’t see two mothers with full, precious lives who deserve to drive away from that street alive. Instead, they’re just a couple of brash dykes who got exactly what they deserved for standing in Trump’s way.
