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The US government’s reaction to the killing of Alex Pretti last weekend – and of Renée Good a fortnight earlier – was a grim reminder of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

In similar fashion, senior members of the Trump administration asked the American people to reject freely available video evidence of the two killings. They claimed that Pretti, a nurse at a local veterans’ hospital, was a “domestic terrorist”, that he was “brandishing a handgun”, and was “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents”. Good, a mother of three, supposedly “viciously ran over the ICE officer” who then put three bullets in her head.

Given that video evidence flatly contradicts those statements, this could yet prove a serious overreach on the part of Donald Trump and his lieutenants. Already border patrol commander Greg Bovino, who was in charge of ICE operations in Minneapolis, has been removed. And there’s speculation that Kristi Noem, US secretary of homeland security, is under serious pressure.

One of the more objectionable claims from some of the people looking to blame the victims, writes Andrew Gawthorpe, was the claim made by several Trump officials – and the president himself – that by carrying a gun, Pretti had been asking for trouble.

As you might expect, this drew a sharp reaction from both the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America. These two organisations, who are among Trump’s staunchest backers, reminded the administration of the........

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