Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino looks on at a gas station, as immigration enforcement continues after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good on January 7, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 21, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Customs and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino stunned an analyst on Sunday after what the analyst described as "one of the most Orwellian" Sunday morning interviews in recent memory.
Bovino joined CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" on Sunday morning, where the two discussed the recent killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, who was shot by CBP agents in Minneapolis on Saturday. During the interview, Bovino said the CBP agents were the real victims in the affair, and told a narrative about the event that Sam Stein, managing editor for The Bulwark, found completely unbelievable given the evidence available in the public domain.
Stein responded to Bovio's CNN interview in a new video on The Bulwark's YouTube channel.
"This morning, Bovino went on CNN with Dana Bash to talk about the incident, and it was honestly one of the more Orwellian interviews I've seen in a long time on a Sunday show," Stein said. "Basically, he asked you to just ignore your own eyes."
Pretti attended a protest against President Donald Trump's immigration agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, when he was gunned down. The Department of Homeland Security has said Pretti "approached" officers with a loaded handgun, although that explanation seems to be contradicted by available video evidence from witnesses.
"He basically defied fact and truth and presented a narrative around the shooting that you would more or less have to have never seen the video and have no functioning ... ability for rational thought, an independent rational thought at that, to understand or to believe what Bovino was saying," Stein said.