Senior Trump aide Steven Cheung responded to a Wednesday night shooting in Minneapolis with a hateful X post aimed at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
The White House communications director picked up on an allegation that a federal agent had been struck with a snow shovel to post a picture of Walz with a shovel in his hand as he broke ground on a manufacturing plant in the state.
“Thugs assault a law enforcement officer with a shovel after a traffic stop in Minneapolis of an illegal alien RELEASED BY BIDEN,” Cheung wrote.
“Perhaps they took some inspiration from Loser Tim Walz continually going after officers day in and day out.”
A week after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, a federal agent shot a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg after a traffic stop in the city on Wednesday night.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that the suspect was attempting to evade arrest, fled the scene in his vehicle, and crashed into a parked car before fleeing on foot, and that the officers involved in the traffic stop were left “fearing for their life.”
A DHS statement said that an agent caught up with the suspect on foot but the man “began to resist and violently assault the officer.”
It went on: “While the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.
“As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick.
“Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life. The initial subject was hit in the leg.
The three then ran off and barricaded themselves in the apartment block. “The attacked officer and subject are both in the hospital. Both attackers are in custody,” DHS said.
The incident came after days of protests, both in Minneapolis and around the country, which saw thousands of Americans take to the streets to protest Good’s killing.
President Donald Trump has yet to comment on the shooting, only sharing a post earlier in the evening insulting Minneapolis. The official White House-affiliated account @RapidResponse47 did share the statement from DHS on X, however, adding, “Just so we’re all clear: these criminals in Minnesota have been embolden by @GovTimWalz and @MayorFrey to evade arrest and attack law enforcement officers. This is a result of their sick, unhinged rhetoric.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Gov. Tim Walz’s office for comment.
The Trump administration has targeted Walz, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election, for several months, with the 79-year-old president making generous use of offensive slurs when describing the 61-year-old governor.
In a late-night Truth Social post shared on Thanksgiving, the president called Walz “seriously ret---ed.” He doubled down again a month later when the official @RapidResponse47 account reshared the post in response to one of Walz’s own social media posts, blurring the entire message except for the offending sentence.
In a December press conference, Walz revealed that since the president’s post on Thanksgiving, people had been driving by his home and shouting the slur at him.
”And I’ll tell you what, in my time on this, I’ve never seen this before: people driving by my house and using the r-word in front of people. This is shameful, and I have yet to see a Republican elected official say, ‘You’re right, that’s shameful. He should not say it.‘”
Walz’s daughter Hope also discussed the impact the president’s post had on her family, disclosing in a since-deleted TikTok video that the post had “unleashed a f---ing s--tstorm” for her family.
