Sam Stein: The Government is Telling You Not to Believe Your Eyes

Bulwark Takes

The Bulwark

News, Society & Culture, Politics, News Commentary

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2026

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Stein, The Bulwark's managing editor, takes on Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino’s Orwellian inversion of reality in the aftermath of the killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and intensive care nurse. Sam digs into Bovino’s Sunday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, where Bovino reframes the victim as the aggressor and dismisses what videos of the killing show.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. To me, Sam Stein, managing at the bulwark. It is Sunday morning. We are one day
0:06.1	removed now from the shooting of Alexander Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse in Minneapolis.
0:14.6	You almost undoubtedly have seen coverage of this. Ice agents firing multiple rounds into him, and then you probably
0:24.1	have seen the aftermath of it. But this morning, Bovina went on CNN with Dana Bash to talk
0:29.9	about the incident. And it was honestly one of the more Orwellian interviews I've seen in a long
0:36.2	time on a Sunday show.
0:42.1	It, uh, basically he asked you to, uh, just ignore your own eyes.
0:48.0	Uh, and he basically defied fact and truth and presented a narrative around the shooting that you would more or less have to have never seen the video and have no functioning thought,
0:55.4	ability for rational thought and independent rational thought at that to understand
1:00.1	or to believe what Bovino was saying.
1:03.2	Let's start, we could start with any of these clips.
1:06.1	I have four that I want to play, so just bear with me.
1:09.1	But I think it's worth watching all of these clips.
1:12.0	With respect, it feels as though in some ways you're blaming the victim here.
1:17.7	The victims are the Border Patrol agents. I'm not blaming the Border Patrol agents.
1:21.5	The victim are the Border Patrol agents. The suspect put himself in that situation.
1:27.4	The victims are the Border Patrol agents there.
1:29.5	Okay.
1:29.9	The reason to start with that one is it just sets the tone for everything.
1:34.3	In his recollection and his telling, it's not the person who was shot and killed who's the victim.
1:41.3	It's the person who shot and killed the person. It is a galling way to look at this.
1:48.6	One thing Bovina could have done is just said, we are letting this investigation proceed. We're not going to comment on it.
	...

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