Ex-president avoids naming Trump but says ‘Minnesotans have suffered enough at the hands of this administration’
Joe Biden has joined other former Democratic presidents in condemning the fatal shooting of the 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, saying that it “betrays our most basic values as Americans”.
In a statement that alluded to the constitutional right to due process, Biden said: “We are not a nation that guns down our citizens in the street. We are not a nation that allows our citizens to be brutalized for exercising their constitutional rights. We are not a nation that tramples the fourth amendment and tolerates our neighbors being terrorized.”
He continued: “Minnesotans have reminded us all what it is to be American, and they have suffered enough at the hands of this administration. Violence and terror have no place in the United States of America, especially when it’s our own government targeting American citizens.”
In a barely veiled reference to Donald Trump, who is facing a mounting backlash over his administration’s federal immigration enforcement tactics, Biden said: “No single person can destroy what America stands for and believes in, not even a president, if we – all of America – stand up and speak out.
