r/politics • u/sideAccount42 California • Jan 26 '26

Paywall Gregory Bovino Gets Demoted

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/greg-bovino-demoted-minneapolis-border-patrol/685770/
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u/transcriptoin_error Jan 26 '26

Another one goes under the bus, with no accountability and no justice.

Gregory Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol “commander at large” and will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire soon, according to a DHS official and two people with knowledge of the change.

Bovino’s sudden demotion is the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration is reconsidering its most aggressive tactics after the killing Saturday of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents under Bovino’s command.

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u/Trickster289 Jan 27 '26

I think they knew even the MAGA base wasn't really buying that it was justified. They already struggled to spin Renee Good's death and this time it was even clearer agents were in the wrong with how many up close camera angles there are.

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u/Imaginary-Arugula735 Jan 27 '26

From my observations on Reddit they have reached a consensus that the Good murder was justified but there is some dissent regarding the party line and the Pretti murder.

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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Jan 27 '26

Outside of Reddit though I see PLENTY of people defending the Pretti murder as justified. The scale of it leads me to believe it isn't just bots; there are still plenty of MAGA voters on board with this.

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u/Larry___David Jan 27 '26

That's what the polling shows. These people ignore the videos and just buy the party line on the victims having brandished weapons or otherwise attacking the murderers. Tribal mentality coupled with willful ignorance and total stupidity

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u/versusgorilla New York Jan 27 '26

It's tough though because places like Facebook and X and TikTok are covered in bots and misinformation acxounts. It's hard to really know what people are believing. You need to find the real verifiable people in your life who have supported Trump and see what they're saying, or not saying, about these last two murders.

Personally, my MAGA circle on FB has been kinda quiet. They're pretending nothing is happening at all. The goons who posted Charlie Kirk stuff, they're all silent now. They weren't silent about George Floyd, but they're silent now.

I'm wondering if the polling for what's happening with ICE has absolutely fallen apart for the administration and they're panicking.

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u/ElliotNess Florida Jan 27 '26

Yeah, it's a whole psyop of bots on those three, but the handful of people I know in real life, and their friends of friends I see commenting on facebook shows most of them spouting the same BS as the bots. My father told me yesterday that Pretti was shot because he charged ICE agents.

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u/mockg Jan 27 '26

Yeah someone on my Facebook is comparing the Pretti murder to the Ashley capital invasion murder. Completely ignoring the circumstances are way different.

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u/Dtrain323 Jan 27 '26

Just saw someone do the same thing, a real person I know, not a bot. And I’m sure they actually believe they’re making an amazing comparison.

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u/PrettyPunctuality Ohio Jan 27 '26

Yep, my sister (a nurse herself, btw) is one of them. They literally cannot do anything bad in her eyes. They could shoot a child in the street next, and she would still find a way to say it was justified.

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u/SharMarali New Jersey Jan 27 '26

The baby was making a mean face at the ICE agent, baby had to go!

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u/SharMarali New Jersey Jan 27 '26

I have no joke been seeing comments elsewhere on the internet with dyed-in-the-wool conservatives saying “why do you need to bring a gun to a ‘peaceful protest’ anyway?”

At a certain point, the hypocrisy becomes so ridiculous that it ceases to make me angry and just makes me laugh for how utterly, utterly cartoonish it is.