The establishment has lined up to attack ICE and eulogize Renee Good. All the best people tell us that the ICE agent murdered Good: Governor Tim Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey, as far as I have seen all other Democratic Party politicians, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Minnesota Star Tribune, various television networks, and so on. The most nauseating instance of the phalanx of anti-law enforcement sentiment may be the Minnesota Timberwolves, who observed a moment of silence on behalf of Ms. Good before their game last night.
As usual, it is a case of, “Who you gonna believe? Us our your lying eyes?” Anyone who saw the just-released video from the agent’s phone can see that his shooting of Good was entirely justified. But of course, the unhinged are going to remain unhinged.
But what do most people think? Are they swallowing the company line? Are they being bullied into disbelieving the evidence of their own eyes? I don’t think so. Here’s why.
My organization, Center of the American Experiment, has a weekly podcast. Each week we create eight or so clips from the program and put them out on social media. Typically, at least one of those clips will be viewed more than one million times. Yesterday, following the Renee Good incident and Governor Walz’s multiple pronouncements about it, we didn’t do a new podcast but just released some clips on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
In a press conference, Walz, seeking to avoid responsibility for Good’s death, alleged absurdly that he has never used any inflammatory language in talking about ICE. This clip pointed out the falsity of that claim. It has been seen one million times on social media in the last 28 hours:
Within six hours after being released, this clip, on the same subject, was viewed 4.2 million times on Facebook alone, with many more on X and Instagram:
This one has been viewed 1.1 million times on Facebook, along with many more views on other platforms:
This one has 936,000 Facebook views since yesterday afternoon:
The two other clips we released on the same subject have nearly a million views between them.
The adult population of Minnesota is roughly 4.2 million. No doubt some of the views of these clips on social media over the last day have been in other states, but still: there is an enormous appetite among the general public for learning the truth about the Renee Good incident and the war on law enforcement in general. And I don’t think most people are swallowing the left-wing line. People are hungry for facts and for sane perspectives. Happily, in today’s world they can find them quite easily.
