MS NOW cut off Vice President JD Vance's aggressive speech, where he blamed the Minnesota mother fatally shot by an ICE agent for her own death, and started fact-checking him on the live broadcast.
Vance had suggested that federal law enforcement agents would have immunity over fatal shootings and attempted to justify the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a mother and poet shot dead in her Honda Pilot just after dropping off her 6-year-old child at school.
That's when MS NOW host Chris Jansing muted Vance and cut to a discussion with a panel about his claims, including his accusations that the media has contributed to the escalated rhetoric over ICE agents and heightened immigration tactics targeting American citizens.
"While there are these calls to turn down the temperature, the vice president of the United States just called Gov. Tim Walz 'a joke,' suggested he may have committed crimes himself, and again, blamed the victim, seemed to blame the victim in this terrible shooting," Jansing said.
The move from Vance and the Trump administration was strategic, MS NOW reporter Laura Barron-Lopez reported.
"Yeah, Chris, I mean, I think you really hit the nail on the head here when you were breaking down what the vice president is doing here, which is often the administration in situations like this, goes on the attack," Barron-Lopez said. "They are attacking the press. And it reminds me, actually, of prior comments made by a number of the president's allies, including Steve Bannon, who said, who is the real opposition? The media is the real opposition. And in cases they try to flood the zone."
Vance was using the moment to try and distract — pulling attention away from the administration, she added.
"And right now the vice president is at the podium in the press room saying that they are going to create a new position, a new assistant attorney general position that would look into fraud because they are taking what were very clear examples in cases of fraud dating back to the Biden administration in Minnesota," Barron-Lopez said. "And over the course of the last, more than the last month or so, they have started to use those very specific cases of individual cases of fraud to go after the Somali community, the legal immigrant community in Minnesota. And that is why they increased the number of ICE agents of CBP agents on the ground in Minnesota at the start of this year."
