‘Insane!’ Morning Joe Co-host Trashes ‘Partisan Hacks’ Pushing New Pretti Clip to ‘Find a Justification’ for Shooting

Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist slammed “partisan hacks” he said were pushing new footage that appears to show Minneapolis shooting victim Alex Pretti in a previous altercation with federal immigration agents in a bid to “find a justification” for his later killing.

The video, which was published late Wednesday by The News Movement and examined in corroboration with fact-checkers at BBC Verify, appeared to show a confrontation from January 13 in which Pretti kicked an immigration agent’s vehicle and spat at an agent before being thrown to the ground.

The incident happened two weeks before Pretti was shot dead by federal agents in a separate altercation.

Speaking about the new footage on Thursday’s Morning Joe, host Mika Brzezinski detailed what happened as she asked whether people were using their “platform” to “spread this hatred” that Pretti “somehow deserved” to be killed.

Geist then unloaded on unnamed “partisan hacks” he said had seized on the video in a “desperate search” for “justification” for the shooting of Pretti:

In the desperate search by some partisan hacks to find a justification for the shooting death in the streets of Alex Pretti some of them think they’ve found something in the video that you just played and described. That was 11 days before Alex was shot. It was also in Minneapolis. It does look like him, based on his clothes and his appearance, the BBC says they’ve all but verified 97% that it’s him. All those things are true, and maybe not the way you or I would have behaved at a rally or a protest or whatever it is.

But my God, are you suggesting because he heckled officers and then kicked in their taillights that 11 days later he deserved to be effectively executed in the streets of the city? Is that the case you’re making? That’s insane. Right?

How, in good faith, how can you make that case? And it also shows 11 days earlier those agents, when confronted by Alex Pretti, they subdued him, they got him on the ground and then they released him. They did not fire 8 to 9 shots into his body.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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