Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 28, 2026 (Madison Thorn/Anadolu/Getty)
EA on International Media: Recognizing the Trump Camp’s Execution of Alex Pretti
EA-Times Radio VideoCasts: Trump’s Authoritarian Regime and the Execution of Alex Pretti
EA-PoliticsJOE VideoCast: Will Trump Lose Support Over The Execution in Minneapolis?
In a 53-minute special, I joined The Focus’s John Bruni to analyze the Trump camp’s attempt to “break communities in Minnesota” with shock troops — including their killing of Renee Nicole Good and execution of Alex Pretti — and the wider prospect of authoritarianism in the US.
I take apart the Trumpist disinformation and highlight their use of violence to intimidate and harm not only immigrants but also US citizens. I point to those beyond Donald Trump, including J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller, who may be more important in the quest. And I consider if this can be pushed back across America.
Minnesota is a catalyst. The country where I was born and raised now has an authoritarian regime.
I know exactly what those words mean. I know how loaded they are.
But we have to call this out now.
The US is on a depressing downward path. What’s happening now is just another step along the way, and I have the feeling that only now are many people realizing where this is all headed. This also applies to many opinion leaders, journalists, and analysts. Just nine months ago, John Stewart laughed off the idea on The Daily Show that the US was already “pretty much Nazi.” Since I, as a regular political observer from abroad—essentially a civilian without an academic background in politics or history—have been watching the events since Trump’s first election, I’ve become increasingly concerned. For a long time in the US, and perhaps even today, these developments were taken rather lightly. The institutions will hold! That’s what I thought, too. Until I heard Fareed Zacharia explain—I think it was in 2019 or 2020—how an election loser can still move into the White House with relatively simple means, simply because the Electoral College and the electoral process are so incredibly weak. He failed on January 6th. But even then, nobody really took him seriously. People thought it was all over for him, they treated him with kid gloves legally, they thought the GOP would force him into retirement, or the voters would. Yet they could have known his character since the 80s, they survived his first term – and learned nothing from it. What Trump’s backroom strategists did learn, however, was that a creeping coup was possible, that there would be no resistance from the GOP. How to undermine and corrupt the state and its institutions. As an outsider, I’m shocked by how little resistance there was and is. Many seem to believe that a loud post on social media constitutes resistance and will achieve more than simply reassuring themselves about their activism. And I don’t even want to get into how Democratic voters put their own candidates through the wringer and, out of sheer principle, prefer not to vote because the candidate doesn’t fulfill all their personal wishes and thus crosses a red line. The American population is like a classic frog being slowly boiled. After Minneapolis, perhaps one could say: the population now knows they’re sitting in a pressure cooker at full blast. Greetings, a concerned citizen of Europe (exceptionally, this time with the help of an online translator).
Authoritarianism it is – and has been since day one’s flurry of executive orders. It’s just that now we have an entire year full of evidence. See my comment here, including a link to an overview of the behavior patterns and architecture holding up this authoritarianism: https://eaworldview.com/2026/01/trump-camp-execution-of-alex-pretti/#comment-395630