White House sources tell CNN that convicted felon President Trump and his minions are concerned about the “optics” of the brutality ICE has been inflicting on innocent people in Minneapolis but not enough to actually order the fascist stormtrooper korps to stand down so much as trying to spin up some bullshit narrative that they’re doing more good than harm. The best idea Trump had for this was to show reporters a bunch of mugshots of the relative handful of actual dangerous criminals ICE has supposedly rounded up – and none of the otherwise innocent regular people rounded up.

“He wanted to do that briefing in large part because he himself wanted to bring out the mugshots that we had printed for him. He wanted to remind the world of why ICE is doing what they’re doing,” a minion said. Another told the network that “There’s an effort underway to come up with new ideas and new ways to amplify the good work they are doing. There have not been discussions about toning down the rhetoric. In fact there have been discussions on how to remind people more aggressively of why this happened in the first place.” Recall that Trump sent ICE to Minnesota because that little wiener Nick Shirley tried to enter a daycare center that he claimed was a front for a massive international fraud operation, none of which has any real nexus to illegal immigration.

CNN writes that “some administration officials believe there is too much focus on the tensions between ICE agents – and therefore the administration – and protesters, and have discussed how to extricate themselves from that narrative,” as if the “lib-owning” isn’t fun now that the outrages they deliberately provoked are proving to be wildly unpopular with all but the most hardcore.

It gets better, as the other problem is that getting out of Minneapolis without some way to declare a victory that’s actually credible with non-MAGAmerica will embolden other cities to resist ICE occupations even more effectively. There was a freaking general strike with thousands out on the streets in subzero daytime temperatures in downtown Minneapolis on Friday, just think of what Chicago or Philadelphia are going to look like come April or May if they surge into those cities.

It was either 150 percent, “Fuck your feelings” total annihilation of all resistance in the city or this kind of “It’s not as popular as we expected it to be” chickenshit. Now “toning down the rhetoric” or not means nothing when reporting like this is leaking out and the triumph of will is dissipating into defensiveness and half-assed admissions of “mistakes” that were supposed to be acceptable collateral damage. Renee Good is dead, her murder will not be forgiven or forgotten by the people in that city, nothing can legitimize ICE operations after that horror and all the other disgraceful fuckups that have followed. The agency’s image is destroyed and salvaging it would be an extremely difficult task for a competent team with standards of professional conduct as well as basic decency.

Let this summer be a cruel one for the regime and their brownshirts. They’ve earned it.