A TV host defended federal immigration agents who shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti by holding up his own phone like a gun. During a recent episode of Greg Kelly Reports, the host tried to explain why agents might have confused Pretti’s phone for a weapon before the deadly shooting in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Alex Pretti was an intensive care nurse. Video footage of the shooting shows he was holding his phone normally. However, host Greg Kelly showed an image of Pretti with his phone and suggested the agents might have been confused. “In a weird way, that phone, I think, can be mistaken for a gun,” Kelly said on his show, according to HuffPost.
Kelly asked his producer to remove Pretti’s image from the screen. He then held up his own black phone sideways and pointed it in the air like a gun. “Does that look like a gun?” he asked viewers. “I think it does a little bit. It’s a phone. It’s black, like most phones. That’s crazy stuff.”
The phone demonstration ignored what actually happened
But Pretti was never seen holding his phone that way in the video footage. While Pretti did have a gun in his holster, Kelly’s demonstration was meant to justify why agents might target a phone. The incident has sparked widespread concern as people are joining a TikTok trend in response to ICE operations.
Kelly also blamed Pretti for being at the event where he was killed. He called Pretti’s decision to show up at the protest “a very, very, very stupid thing.” This shifted blame onto the victim for simply being in a public place. The worst moment came when Kelly played a clip describing Pretti’s good qualities.
The clip said Pretti was an “avid outdoorsman,” a “competitive cyclist,” and a former Boy Scout. Instead of showing respect, Kelly compared the nurse to serial killer Dennis Lynn Rader, also known as BTK. Kelly said Rader also “liked to hunt, he was a family man, everybody liked him, his mother liked him – all that stuff.”
A side-by-side image of Pretti and Rader appeared on screen, labeled “Dennis Rader and Alex.” Kelly defended the comparison, saying “I’m sorry, but I can’t just pretend because you’re dead, you’re, like, this superior person.” He added that people are “kind of projecting positive qualities on somebody they don’t know.”
Another commentator, Megyn Kelly, also blamed Pretti for his death, saying she had no sympathy for him and explaining, “Do you know why I wasn’t shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations.” Following the shooting, Democrats are planning drastic steps to address ICE operations.
Published: Jan 28, 2026 01:21 pm