Trumpy Sen. Markwayne Mullin contradicted himself on live television while defending a federal immigration agent who fatally shot a Minneapolis mother.
During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, the Oklahoma Republican rallied behind ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who fired three shots into a vehicle in Minneapolis, killing 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.
“The fact is that Renee Good was interfering with police activity. There’s no question about that right now,” Mullin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.
“Once she blocked the ICE agents from doing their job, they exited the vehicle. Gave her verbal command, she wasn’t listening, and then she purposely tries to accelerate and run over,” he said.
Mullin almost immediately tried to walk back that assertion.
“I don’t know if she purposely tried to run over the ice agent, but there was an ice agent position in front of her vehicle. She accelerated to them. At that point, that vehicle becomes a lethal weapon.”
Tapper was quick to note the inconsistency.
“You just asserted that the woman clearly tried to run over the guy, and then you said, at the very least, she was going forward while he was in front,” Tapper replied.
“I think that does illustrate the fact that this is, at the very least, a widely disputed incident full of ambiguities and interpretations. How can anyone be confident that she was trying to attack the officer instead of she was trying to flee the scene?”
Mullin responded that, in his view, the distinction did not matter.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “Police officers are doing their job, and she was interfering in their job.”
The shooting—captured on video from multiple angles—sparked immediate tensions in the city and a political firestorm over ICE enforcement tactics.
Good left behind three children: a daughter and a son, ages 15 and 12, from her first marriage, and a six-year-old son from her second marriage, which ended with her husband’s death.
When Tapper pressed Mullin on whether Good’s actions warranted her being killed, the senator said yes, repeatedly insisting that her vehicle was being used in a so-called “lethal manner.”
Tapper then pointed out that video footage appears to show Ross firing at the side of Good’s car—what Tapper described as “out of harm’s way” from the vehicle. Mullin dismissed the footage.
“Well, that’s very selective imaging that you guys are using there,” he said.
Footage of the shooting that has circulated widely on social media shows ICE agents shouting at Good—who had reportedly just dropped off her six-year-old son at school—through the window of her SUV while it remained stationary on a Minneapolis street, blocking one lane of traffic.
Good does not appear flustered in the video. The last words she can be heard saying before being shot are, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you. I’m not mad at you.”
Moments later, as a woman believed to be Good’s wife, Rebecca, confronts an officer recording the scene, a pickup truck pulls up nearby. ICE agents are then seen quickly approaching Good’s vehicle and ordering her to step outside.
“Get out of the f--king car,” an agent says.
After failing to open the passenger-side door, Rebecca shouts, “drive baby, drive.”
An agent is unable to open Good’s locked door. She then attempts to leave the area—first reversing briefly, then turning and accelerating forward. As the vehicle moves, three shots ring out, and Good’s SUV crashes into another car parked along the residential street.
Moments after the crash, while Good is dying from a gunshot wound to the head, an ICE agent is heard muttering, “f--king b---h.” The video obtained by Alpha News cuts off shortly thereafter.
The White House has maintained that Good was attempting to ram Ross, with Trump claiming he was run over, hospitalized, and that it was “hard to believe he was alive.”
But critics say the footage is damning for the administration—especially since it confirms that an agent’s immediate reaction was not pain from an injury that supposedly hospitalized him, but instead to say a slur.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Mullin for additional clarification.
