Video verified by ABC News showed Pretti holding his phone to record CBP agents as a masked agent knocked a woman to the ground, then pepper-sprayed Pretti when he stepped between them. Shortly after, multiple agents pulled him to the ground before two agents fired approximately 10 shots at Pretti, killing him.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and figures from the Department of Homeland Security quickly made public statements claiming Pretti had intended to “massacre law enforcement,” commit “an act of domestic terrorism,” and “inflict maximum damage” — despite video evidence directly contradicting their claims. 

In the hours following the shooting, Fox News began running with the Trump administration's narrative and parroting its talking points. Network figures and guests quoted or aired the administration's misleading and false statements at least 22 times in 24 hours after the news broke.

Media Matters reviewed Fox News programming from January 24-30 and found that network guests and personalities made at least 75 claims attacking Pretti — either falsely claiming Pretti was violent toward federal agents or blaming him for his own killing.

Fox’s weekend shows airing just after the shooting made the most claims attacking Pretti. On January 24 alone, network figures and guests made at least 32 such claims. As video evidence became harder and harder to refute into the week, shows hosted by Will Cain, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham aired the most claims attacking Pretti among all of Fox’s weekday programming.

The number of daily claims against Pretti declined over the following days until footage of a January 13 incident involving Pretti and DHS agents resurfaced on January 28. Fox personalities seized on the footage to once again cast Pretti as an aggressor against federal agents, with the network airing at least 10 additional attacks even as his family stressed that “nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex's killing at the hands of ICE.”

Despite their pleas, Fox host Jesse Watters told viewers that in the new video, Pretti “looks like a dangerous, hostile, unhinged male nurse with a loaded weapon who went back for more a week later.”

Figures on Fox News repeatedly argued that Pretti’s decision to carry a gun justified his killing, with anchor Jon Scott asking why anyone would go to a protest with “a semiautomatic handgun and a couple of magazines,” and former acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey even claiming the agents “very well could have prevented a major mass shooting of multiple officers.”

Fox News contributors and guests also repeatedly contradicted video evidence by insisting Pretti had behaved aggressively or brandished a weapon. Fox contributor Paul Mauro claimed agents were only “trying to subdue him without using deadly force” when Pretti “pulls out that 9 mm,” former DHS official Charles Marino asserted that Pretti “showed up to this protest, intended to obstruct and confront law enforcement agents, and it turned out badly for him,” and right-wing activist Chris Rufo described him as “a violent leftist agitator … seeking armed conflict with the police.”

Former prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky described the shooting as “essentially a suicide-by-cop type of scenario,” claiming, “It's long been known if you're going to fight with cops and resist in situations that are escalating like this, it is a death wish.”

Not all Fox personalities embraced the Trump administration’s narrative. Late on January 24, contributor Ted Williams broke with the prevailing Fox coverage, saying that the administration put out a “misrepresentation” of what took place in the video. He continued, “This man is dead, he has a family, and to go out and call him a domestic terrorist without giving any more information is just unacceptable.”

Fox contributor Trey Gowdy even compared Pretti to Kyle Rittenhouse, adding, “Alex Pretti's firearm was lawfully being carried. It's lawful to carry a gun in Minnesota. He never brandished it. He didn't point it at the cops. … We certainly should not be labelling him as a domestic terrorist who's going to execute cops. There's no evidence to support that.”

But many others on the network continued to churn out false statements and justifications for Pretti’s killing.

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for the term “Pretti” or any variations of any of the terms “Pretti” (including misspellings), “Minneapolis,” or “Minnesota” within close proximity to any of the terms “ICE,” “CBP,” “agent,” “DHS,” “Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” “Homeland Security,” “Customs and Border Protection,” or “border patrol” or any variation of the term “Fed” and also within close proximity of any variations of any of the terms “defense,” “kill,” “shot,” “murder,” “shoot,” “gun,” “assassin,” “terror,” “protest,” or “agitate” from January 24, when Customs and Border Protection federal agents killed Minnesotan Alex Pretti, through January 30, 2026.

We included claims, which we defined as instances of uninterrupted block of speech from a single speaker that promoted views or made claims that contradicted video evidence of the CBP-related shooting that killed Minnesotan Alex Pretti or blamed Pretti for his own death. For host monologues, headlines, and correspondent reports, we defined a claim as the speech between read quotes and played clips. We did not consider the speech within read quotes or played clips unless a speaker in the segment positively affirmed said speech either directly before or after the quote was read or the clip was played.

We defined claims that contradicted video evidence or blamed Pretti for his own death in the following ways:

Claims that contradicted video evidence:

• Suggesting that Pretti attacked, lunged at, or physically assaulted federal agents before he was shot.
• Suggesting that Pretti was attempting to “massacre,” “ambush,” or “do maximum damage to” law enforcement.
• Suggesting that Pretti “brandished” his legally carried firearm or approached federal agents in an aggressive manner.
• Suggesting that Pretti was trying to interfere with or obstruct federal law enforcement.
• Suggesting that Pretti was not attempting to observe or record federal law enforcement actions.
   

Claims that blamed Pretti for his own death:

• Suggesting that Pretti should not have carried a weapon into a protest or criticizing Pretti for legally carrying a firearm at a protest.
• Suggesting that the existence of a weapon on Pretti's person justified CBP agents in shooting him.
• Suggesting that agents were justified in shooting Pretti because he stepped between them and a woman they had thrown to the ground.
• Suggesting that prior incidents between Pretti and federal agents justified their shooting of him.
• Describing Pretti as an “assassin,” “gunman,” or “domestic terrorist.”

We also searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for any of the terms “Miller,” “Noem,” “Bovino,” “Patel,” “DHS,” “Homeland Security,” “CBP,” “Customs and Border Protection,” “Border Patrol,” “ICE,” “Immigrations and Customs Enforcement,” “FBI,” or “Federal Bureau of Investigation” within close proximity to any of the terms “statement,” “post,” “maximum damage,” “domestic terrorist,” “brandish,” “massacre,” “magazines,” “kill,” “violently resisted,” “impeded,” or “attacked” from 11 a.m. ET on January 24, when news broke on Fox News that federal agents killed Minnesotan Alex Pretti, through 11 a.m. ET on January 25.

We included claims, which we defined as instances of uninterrupted block of speech from a single speaker that clipped or quoted a single false statement from federal officials regarding the Border Patrol-related shooting of Alex Pretti.

We included clips and quotes from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Department of Homeland Security social media accounts, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem later in the day that mischaracterized the events that lead to federal agents' killing of Alex Pretti.