Name: WSJ Opinion: The Minnesota Shooting Aftermath and How Long Will Trump Run Venezuela?
Uploaded: 2026-01-08T19:10:00Z
Duration: 22 min 15 s
Description: An ICE agent shoots and kills a woman in Minneapolis and both the right and the left are quick to blame the other side. Was a deadly incident like this inevitable? Plus, President Trump says the U.S. may run Venezuela for at least a year.

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An ICE agent shoots and kills a woman in Minneapolis and both the right and the left are quick to blame the other side. Was a deadly incident like this inevitable? Plus, President Trump says the U.S. may run Venezuela for at least a year.

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260108/f553af03-e4a5-45ee-8dea-1579037bdf6b/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

WSJ Opinion: The Minnesota Shooting Aftermath and How Long Will Trump Run Venezuela?

An immigration and customs enforcement agent shoots and kills a woman in Minneapolis and right and left both retreat to their familiar quarters and blame the other side. We'll talk about the legal and political fallout. Plus, President Trump says the US may run Venezuela for at least a year, maybe longer, but what does he mean by "run"? Since the people who ran the country with Nicolas Maduro are still in charge, even though he's in a jail in Brooklyn.

Announcer: From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

These are our topics for Potomac Watch today, our daily podcast for Wall Street Journal Opinion. I'm Paul Gigot, editor of the opinion pages, and I'm here with my colleagues, Kyle Peterson and Mary O'Grady. Let's start with the tragic shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good. An ICE agent fired and killed her on a Minneapolis street, and the facts and the justification for the shooting are in dispute. She and her wife were there to monitor and protest the presence of ICE in the neighborhood. The dispute is whether she was trying to run over the ICE agent or merely get out of the way before the ICE agent turned and fired his gun. Kirsti Noem, the DHS Secretary Department of Homeland Security commented on it. We'll listen to her followed by the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, with very different interpretations of the event.

ICE officers and agents approached the vehicle of the individual in question who was blocking the officers in with her vehicle, and she had been stalking and impeding their work all throughout the day. ICE agents repeatedly ordered her to get out of the car and to stop obstructing law enforcement, but she refused to obey their commands. She then proceeded to weaponize her vehicle and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over. This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism. The ice officer, fearing for his life, and the other officers around him, and the safety of the public fired defensive shots.

What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust. They're ripping families apart. They're sowing chaos on our streets, and in this case, quite literally killing people. So they are already trying to spin this as an action of self defense. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is . This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.

Well, there you have it, Kyle, the one side saying it was a justifiable act of self-defense. Another saying it was a reckless use of a weapon to kill somebody who was innocent. We'll have investigations, clearly, that will go forward. The FBI says it will conduct one. The state also says it will conduct one, but this is where our politics are now, where no, very few, even want to wait for what an investigation like this shows and you have the videos, which are really awful to watch, but you don't really, you can't tell for sure who's right here about what the driver was intended, what she was told, and was she trying just to get out of the way or, as the administration claims, was she really trying to ram the agent?

And the awful thing about these kinds of tragedies is often there are also a lot of things that can be true at once. You can believe that she was turning her steering wheel to the right and trying to get away from these agents. And you can also think that the agent who is standing belly up to her hood reasonably may have feared for his safety or his life. One of the shots, the bullet holes went through the front windshield, which suggests that at least at one point he was in front of the vehicle when he was firing on her. You know, I think that there's an effort here to try to score some political points. The mayor of Minneapolis saying, "ICE doesn't belong here, get out of my city." President Trump, also, I think doing these kinds of mass deportation raid in a pretty escalatory way, sending 2,000 federal officers to Minneapolis in recent days as a show of force, seemingly related to these stories in the news about fraud in state healthcare and state welfare programs, that led governor.

By immigrants.

Right, often involving Somali community. And it led to Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, saying in recent days that he's not gonna run for reelection.

Yeah, I mean, it's just as a simple legal matter in terms of the facts of of the case. Those will play out. I was just struck by the adult in the room here, Tom Holman, the president's borders czar, not known for his lack of passion about immigration enforcement saying, "Well, I'm not gonna rush to any judgment here. I'm gonna wait to see how the facts play out." Contrast that with Kirsti Noem who says, "This was an act of domestic terrorism." Now, whatever you say about Renee Nicole Good, she doesn't fit the model of a domestic terrorist. I mean, she's, it wasn't some kind of mass protest, but so I think that that's just over the top rhetoric on the part of the, of Noem. On the other hand, she says, Nome says, that a lot of anti-ICE protestors, not just in Minneapolis but around the country, do use their cars to obstruct ICE officers as they're attempting to do their legal and federally mandated work. And so cars are sometimes used to obstruct and maybe the officers feel sometimes they're dangerous enough that they pose a risk.

Right, and these clashes are extremely volatile and dangerous. I mean, you could hear on one of these videos, at least one officer telling her, "Get out of the car," which is a pretty clear order from law enforcement. There have been some reports that maybe there were some conflicting orders given to her to get her car out of the way. That's, I think, what is Holman is leading the way on saying, "Let's wait for the investigation to unfold." We're probably gonna have other video. I don't know if there were any local law enforcement there that had body cameras that might shed some other light on the situation. But it's a very dangerous and difficult situation where you end up having protestors sometimes or civilians that are clashing with law enforcement officers. That's where these kinds of things happen. And the key thing to understand, I think, from the standpoint of a jury who would look at a case like this is the question I think is what did the officer believe was the danger to him in that moment? I mean, it's easy to second guess after the fact and see, "Well, we have a video from this angle, we can clearly see that the car's wheels are turning away from the officer," but we don't know if he was able to see that, you know? You can raise questions after the fact about why did the officer put himself in front of that car in the first place?

But that's--

Yeah, exactly.

That's not the kind of thing that a jury is generally asked when they get a use of force case like this.

Yeah, it's just still, you have to ask yourself the, you know, would a NYPD police officer who are trained to deal with much more volatile situations than this and really aggressive criminals who are attempting to often escape, would he have really taken out his gun and fired those shots? I think, I tend to think not, but again, it's hard to make a judgment here from this distance about those particular actions. The political implications of this, both sides using it for their own purposes. But the president's been very aggressive in his use of ICE. It's the implement of his mass deportation agenda. I think when you think about the amount of, the number of officers that he's sending here and doing this, and then the hostility and directly going into cities run by Democrats, and then they, which are often hotbeds of left-wing activist folks, and you get these protests, probably this was inevitable. Something like this is gonna happen. You know, you get people who are gonna make a bad judgment in the moment and something like this happens. What are the implications here for Trump's policy? Do you see any chance that he might pair back his aggressive use of ICE?

To some degree, I think it depends on what happens now, what this investigation shows. I mean, I do agree that this has been a risk that the Trump administration is taking in using ICE in this aggressive manner. And there was always a chance that, you know, whether it was a confrontation with protestors or a detainee, maybe a woman detainee, a pregnant woman or something like that video come out, he was always taking a risk that the public would sour on his approach to the immigration issue. So I think some of it depends on the results of the investigation. Then also what happens on the ground in Minneapolis? Is there gonna be more unrest? Is there gonna be the kind of unrest that we saw in the George Floyd riots during COVID? I think that mayor phrased rhetoric in that vein is pretty unhelpful because if there is that kind of unrest, President Trump, I think is just ready to send in federal forces, maybe citing the Insurrection Act. It seems like that's the kind of conflict that the White House has been courting.

Well, yeah, the Insurrection Act is an important point because if there is violence, the president could use that violence as a justification to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he hasn't done so far, but that would allow him to send actually combat troops, not just National Guards, but combat troops into cities to restore order. And then you, who knows what we'll get in terms of the violent response to that. All right, it's a bad situation all around. All right, let's turn to Venezuela. After the Saturday snatching of Nicolas Maduro flawless military operation, and days later Venezuela is still under control of Maduro's aids, henchwoman, Delcy Rodriguez, now former vice president, now president running it, the security official still in charge. And Mary O'Grady the president of the United States saying that he is, he's gonna still be running Venezuela for at least a year, particularly when it comes to the oil industry. But there's a lot of ambiguity to that word "run" that the president use when he use that word. And we hear reports of cracking heads in the streets by some of the pro-Maduro thugs. The opposition has stayed largely in their homes. And the president says he is getting along great with Delcy Rodriguez, who is doing everything that he wants. What do you make of the president's assertions here?

Well, Paul, I think you've outlined it pretty well there. I mean, we've removed one guy, he was the top, you know, the leader, the dictator. But after that, everything else remains status quo. And that's pretty ugly. As you mentioned, the repression in the streets and against anybody who might be considered a member of the opposition has been fierce in the last few days. And I don't know, if I were President Trump, I wouldn't want my name on that. But it may be, I mean, I think we can hope that behind the scenes the conversations with Delcy Rodriguez are leading in the right direction. I'm not sure what that would mean, but we haven't seen any material evidence of that yet.

Yeah, the immediate focus of the president seems to be oil. He said that Venezuela is now going to give 30 to 50 million barrels to the United States, and he personally will supervise that supply of oil. Unsure how that mechanism will work. There's a report out of the oil industry in Venezuela, as you know, that they'll sell the oil, those barrels, but Trump seems to suggest that they'll be granted to the US and then he's going to run the oil industry. The US is gonna bring in American companies, revive the oil industry. Chris Wright, the energy secretary, kinda laid out a general plan to do that. The question is, if you're an American oil company, you make long-term bets on your investment. It's measured in decades, not in just years. Would you invest in Venezuela with the same old crowd in charge?

Well, let's first talk about the 30 to 50 million barrels. I mean, you know, there's no timeframe on that. Is he saying that they're gonna give us this oil over five years, over five months, in the next six weeks? I think what I'm picking up from my sources on the ground is that there's some oil that's stuck in storage because of the embargo that the US put on exports by Venezuela. And that may be 20 to 30 million barrels, and that's maybe what he thinks he's gonna scoop up. Then after that, there's oil that is gonna be brought up from the ground. PDVSA, the state-owned oil company pumps about maybe let's say 800,000, 900,000 barrels a year. So if he's taking some of that, he's taking you know, a fraction of what their output is. Is he gonna let them sell the rest of it? Is he gonna let the regime continue to do what they've been doing, but just minus, you know, a 30 million barrels a year? That doesn't sound like a very good deal for democracy in Venezuela. So the terms of that are very unclear. And as you mentioned, PDVSA put out a communicate, I think it was yesterday or the day before yesterday saying there are negotiations with the Trump administration about this, about the possibility that they're gonna sell the oil to the US. So again, that seems like a disconnect between what the president is saying and what the regime says it plans to continue doing.

Well, in his typical fashion, the president kind of talks in maximalist terms about everything; "We're gonna run it, we're getting along fabulously with Delcy Rodriguez, she's been great," but his goals aren't all that clear. I mean, Marco Rubio has elaborated a bit about what he, the US wants from them, from these leaders. One is he wants, we want no more drug trafficking. Two, they want foreign influence of the Cubans, the Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese out of the country. And then, of course, the oil industry control. But one thing you don't hear is any immediate requirement for a political transition. Now, the president says, well, we can't do that right away. The circumstances aren't right for it. I suppose that could be true. On the other hand, you wouldn't mind if they actually said once in a while, yeah, "We should have an election there and there should be a transition," instead of trashing the opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, as the president has, it's all pretty ambiguous. I guess it could turn out well. On the other hand, if the regime doesn't do what he wants and stays in power, the president, I think, is gonna end up saying, taking responsibility for something that he has not put in place the authority or the ability to really dictate. And that's a pretty dangerous situation in terms of his credibility. Now, maybe it'll turn out all right, they are continuing the oil embargo, so that will squeeze the regime's resources and then there's the president's threat that we could have a second wave of military intervention. But there's no clear path here, is there Mary?

Well, I think there's a sequencing problem also. I mean, I don't see major investments from US oil companies or for that matter, you know, Repsol, the Spanish oil company or anybody else going in there and sinking in serious amounts of money when the regime as is remains because they've been burned so many times in Venezuela, first in the 1970s, and then again under the Chavez and Maduro adminis-- regimes. And so they want some certainty in terms of their property rights. And I don't think Donald Trump saying, "Come on, everybody rally around me, we're going into Venezuela," is gonna be enough for them. So, you know, people talk a lot about democracy as if, you know, it's about an election being held and a majority of the people voting for a new leader. I mean, that would be important, but you need to have the institutions that would protect the property rights to get serious investment in the oil industry. And in the meantime, Donald Trump seems to be saying that they're gonna cooperate. Now if cooperation is, "Send drugs anywhere you want, but just not to the US and no more human trafficking of migrants and take back, you know, the ones that we send you and give us, you know, 30 million barrels of oil a day and we'll be fine," I mean, that's hardly a regime change in Venezuela or even a step in the right direction. I mean, I think that under those circumstances, everybody, all of the bad guys are just biding their time. They're just waiting 'cause Trump's gonna be distracted by something else at some point. There's gonna be less emphasis on Venezuela and in the meantime they'll just wait him out. And I think that's what's going on.

Yeah, that's going to be fascinating to watch. It gets to my point about oil company investment being measured in decades, not years.

Yeah, I'll just say one other thing, which is, there's some talk that there will be a second, what he called a second stage when he did that, a press conference in Mar-a-Lago, and the Venezuelans have to be a little bit worried about that because what happened on Saturday night, I think, was a lot more shock and awe than we are able to capture right now. I mean, I think eventually it'll come out, but they really flattened them and they took them by surprise. I mean they had, I think they had insiders who helped them, but they really, you know, delivered a blow to the Venezuelan military that has them stunned. And I think under those circumstances, a second stage, as Trump calls it, or second strike or the threat of a second stage might get them to change, a little bit, their behavior, that's what we have to keep an eye on.

Certainly that was some demonstration of force and will on the part of the American president willing to take that risk. But I think we're gonna have to see some actions here before I'm convinced that, in fact, they are heeding the president's orders and then, you know, doing that shortlist of things you described is not the same as negotiating any kind of a political transition that could end up with a regime that is actually a pro-American regime in the region. Alright, let's leave it at there. Thank you Mary O'Grady, thank you to Kyle Peterson. Thank you all for listening. We are here every day on Potomac Watch. Please join us tomorrow.

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