Right-wing streamer Zack Hoyt, known online as Asmongold, is an unabashed supporter of Immigration and Customs Enforcement who once said officers should use live ammunition on some protesters. And even he appeared shaken by footage of the shooting death of Alex Pretti by a federal immigration officer over the weekend.
In the past, Hoyt has promoted the idea of literally enslaving protesters and advocated that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz face execution for purported treason. He routinely uses his platform to attack critics of ICE.
But footage that emerged this weekend of federal officers fatally shooting Pretti numerous times after they had disarmed him has apparently jarred even some of the most jingoistic supporters of the president’s racist, authoritarian anti-immigrant crackdown.
And like podcaster Joe Rogan, who recently compared ICE’s tactics to those of the Nazi Gestapo, Hoyt apparently had a similar epiphany about the images of federal agents using violent tactics against observers and protesters.
“I think that it’s very important right now that if this guy did get shot when he was unarmed, that there is accountability for ICE for doing this,” Hoyt said at one point during his stream over the weekend.
The YouTube version of his stream cuts the portion (at around 8:48 at the link above) in which he made an explicit comparison to the Nazis:
I’m a big supporter of ICE. I think ICE is great. I think they should deport every illegal alien in the country. All that being said, you can’t have ICE — because I’m a supporter of ICE, that means that I need to have accountability for ICE. And let me explain what I mean by that. If you have a police department that’s not accountable, or a law enforcement agency that’s not accountable, that basically is the Gestapo. That is the secret police. That is the SS.
Whether it’s out of a legitimate horror over the growing death toll from Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, support for gun rights more generally or a concern about how the optics may affect the Republican Party electorally, Hoyt is among several notable conservatives who have signaled they’re unsettled by the Pretti shooting.
That Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is calling for ICE to recalibrate after the shooting seems like a clear sign of Republican worry.
Another is Substack writer Rachel Bade, who described the response to the shooting as the “biggest PR crisis” of Trump’s second term and criticized Democrats for “inciting protesters to provocation” and not allowing local law enforcement to assist ICE:
The calls for accountability don’t mean the conservative movement has abandoned its support for the Trump administration’s authoritarian tactics. But it is a sign that even someone like Hoyt, one of ICE’s loudest cheerleaders online, has started to realize what the polling indicates: that the American majority is turning against Trump’s anti-immigration tactics.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.