Hey everyone, it's Michael Shermer. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show. This is Shermer Says Number 5. Number 5 was supposed to be released on Tuesday, which is the publication date of my new book, Truth, What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters. But I thought I better make a comment, a short commentary on the shooting in Minneapolis of Alex Jeffrey Prettee. Pretti, a U.S. citizen with no criminal records. I'm reading here from the New York Times. Interestingly, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have pretty much said the exact same thing. So that's encouraging that we're getting a fairly accurate portrayal of who he was and what happened and so forth. He was 37 years old, registered nurse who worked in the intensive care unit at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Minneapolis, according to interviews and public records and lived in an apartment in Minneapolis, a short drive away from where he was killed. He had a firearms permit required by state law in Minnesota to carry a handgun, officials said. Colleagues and acquaintances of Mr. Preddy were stunned by his death, recalling a friendly neighbor and hardworking professional who was devoted to his patients. Let's see, a colleague said they'd worked together closely for years, and he was, Mr. Freddie was competent and friendly, kind of person who cared deeply about his work and his patients. He was really a great colleague and a great friend, he said. The default look on his face was a smile. Family members of Mr. Freddie declined to comment on Saturday. Michael Freddie, Mr. Freddie's father, told the Associated Press that he had warned his son to be careful in Minneapolis. Quote, we had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage. Do not do anything stupid, basically, Michael Preddy said. And he said he knows that. He knew that. Mr. Preddy received a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota in 2011. A spokesperson said he graduated from high school in Green Bay, Wisconsin, 2006, listed on the honor roll. And so on, next-door neighbor said he lived alone with his dog, saw him walking the dog frequently, engaged with him several times a week, friendly person and so on and so forth. Okay, so yeah, this is tragic. You know, he's just a dude probably seeing all the things on the news and becoming agitated and wanting to do something about it. Riffing now on my previous commentary on Renee Good. You know, it's a really risky thing to do that. Yes, they have a right to protest, but according to the federal government and the Department of Homeland Security, the ICE agents have a right to be there to perform their actions of deporting illegal aliens. Now, I'll come back to this later because I'm not a huge fan of all this stuff that's going on. I was born and raised here in Southern California. I've known illegal aliens and worked with them most of my life. None of them that I know of are criminals. unless you want to define it that way, by coming here illegally, by coming here not through the proper channels, which I agree, you should do that. But here they are. They're not committing crimes otherwise, and so I don't really care. Most of the gardeners I've had are probably illegal aliens. I don't know. I don't ask. So what I want Department of Homeland Security and ICE agents to do is to round up the really bad ones that are committing actual crimes beyond coming here illegally and depart them. Let ICE do its job if that's what it's doing. But the question is, is that all it's doing? And there is the gray area, which should be sorted out in the courts. You know, Trump and the administration, they get sued all the time, almost daily for various things. And, you know, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. Some of them are still pending. and they pull back and stop doing what they're doing when they lose these lawsuits. So that's the way to handle it. Unfortunately, that's not the way it's been unfolding. And so I thought I would read a few of these comments that I made this morning. And I still think I'm being misinterpreted, although I'll read you some of the critical comments of what I said. Okay, first of all, just the generic one. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have both visual timeline frame by frame analysis of the shooting of Alex Freddie that contradicts the Department of Homeland Security's claim that he threatened them with a gun. That was the initial statement that they made before we even had seen, I think, the second video. Now that we've seen the second video, it's pretty clear that is not what happened. Here's what I wrote. No ambiguity this time in response to my previous tweets about Renee Good and that this falls in this ambiguous information zone where you can't quite tell what's going on. You know, the young woman, old woman, the rabbit in the duck, you know, these reversible figures you see in psych illusions, something like that. He was on the ground. His phone was in his hand. The gun was in his back belt. They disarmed him, then shot him 10 times. OK, so I'm going to have to make a correction on this from some response from people. My opinion, this is another example of a forward panic, which I talked about in the last, Sherber says, in which agents controlled rational responses snap. And there's a phase transition into panicked violence on the ground, tussling and hitting him and others with whistles and screams, utter chaos resulting in a tragic death. Everyone is analyzing the videos frame by frame as if the brains of these agents could process all that information in a rational manner. That's not what happens in a forward panic. And here I cite Rodney King beating by the cops in what looks like a feeding frenzy, panicked violence. Anyway, this forward panic is something sociologists study where a group of people who are acting rationally and going through all their steps that they've been trained to do, cops I'm talking about here, and then something happens and they snap, and then they just go berserk. They're just wailing away on Rodney King. Or in this case, you could see them tussling with Alex Breddy on the ground. Now, since then, there's been some more ambiguity. There is ambiguity. Colin Wright writes check out the claims about the accidental discharge of Preddy gun after it was confiscated The video evidence is extremely convincing Seems that the officers reacted to yells of gun gun that was immediately followed by an accidental discharge which the officers responded to as though the shot was fired by Preddy. Okay, and then I had several other people post that that particular kind of gun, a SIG, S-I-G, has been known to just discharge, Maybe when it's being moved around or maybe it's a hypersensitive, super sensitive trigger. Whatever it is, we don't know, but we'll find out more about that. Somebody else here posts there's tons of ambiguity. We can see him reach for a gun in this shot, and then they have a screenshot there. And he has something black in his hand, which could be a magazine or a knife. I'm pretty sure that was his phone. Clearly not someone willing to drop their weapons. OK, well, he probably didn't. It was probably his phone because it does look like the gun was in his back. It does look like they pulled the gun out of his back pocket and start to move away. And maybe that's where there's the discharge and, you know, the words gun, gun. You can hear that being said, OK, all this is analyzed, you know, frame by frame, you know, millisecond by millisecond. And the entire thing, just a few seconds as if, again, these agents, you know, you can imagine them in court. OK, what were you thinking at, you know, second three point four? What were you thinking at second three point eight? What were you thinking in second four point one when you're when you discharged your fire? So as if this is all like some calculation, these guys have have snapped and they're just in a panic mode. And and so, OK. OK, so then I posted about this idea of extreme or radical responsibility. His own father cautioned him to go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid. Not only was Petty armed, multiple media reports, and since then I've double-checked that, that he had two magazines of bullets with him. So he's got a fully loaded gun plus two additional magazines of bullets. Some people have said, oh, that's perfectly normal. Really? I mean, you're going to a protest armed where there will be armed agents there. And you're bringing extra bullets? Why? What do you imagine is going to happen? Okay, continue. He should have never been shot. Right. I'll double down on that. And there should be an investigation and, if appropriate, charges filed against the agents. But I have to agree with his father that it was a stupid thing to go down to the ICE agent with a loaded gun and two additional magazines of bullets in case why? walk out in the middle of the street and film agents with his phone amidst whistleblowing, screaming protesters and hope that they all keep their cool rationality and don't panic and snap. Their defense will probably be that they mistook his phone for a gun, which the video clearly shows is not correct, or maybe. We'll see. Some people are commenting that that might be what happened. Okay. That's what an investigation will show. But what good is it to pretty now that he's dead? OK, it was a very risky thing to do, but he chose to take that risk and paid the ultimate price. That was tragic. OK, so several people comment here. Anton Fletcher rule of thumb, don't forcefully forcefully resist federal agents with a loaded gun ever, no matter what, period. So I retweeted that because I agree. Somebody else. Bogdan Adolfovich says, I agree. Just because you have a legal right to do something, it doesn't mean you were you aren't taking unnecessary and frankly irresponsible actions that directly endanger you. Not justifying or excusing the officers, just pointing out that the deceased contributed to his demise. I just reposted that because I agree with that. somebody named Christopher Young posts. This is tragic, but the root cause of the problem is the notion that there is a right to actively interfere with a law enforcement operation. Imagine what would happen if a state trooper was doing a traffic stop and you came up and started blowing a whistle in his face. And I responded to him, I'd likely get my ass kicked even if it wasn't, even if it was my constitutional right to blow a whistle in a cop's face while he's issuing a traffic traffic ticket. I'm actually not sure about that. I know that there are some laws, I think here in California, that you can't interfere with a police officer in their line of duty. The gray area there, what constitutes interfering? Again, don't test that rule, okay? I would be a stupid fool to do so, and I would have to own my own actions and consequences regardless. That's all I mean here. Okay, somebody named Andrew Dumitru says, Says he never brandished a weapon to he was carrying legally. Gun was in a holster in his lower back. That's true. It's perfectly legal to carry a gun to a protest in Minnesota. It's for personal protection as per to a second amendment. Yes, he was disarmed before he was shot. That definitely appears to be the case. So I agree. And five, it's murder with premeditation. I don't think that's the case because how would you show premeditation that, you know, they they plan to kill him, you know, like an hour before or five minutes before. No, I don't agree with that. I said in response to this. Well, that's what I said that, you know, all those are correct except the premeditated part. Somebody else, Gabe DeVega said, man, what happened to Michael Shermer? I wrote in response, I matured and realized that we're all responsible for our life outcomes. In an ideal world, protesters would not be shot for these acts. Right. We don't live in an ideal world. Ice agents are people with emotions who occasionally snap under pressure and lose control. All right. Just think about that. Again, these are not Elon's robots that he's making these perfect computers and calculators. These are just people. You know, here it is, what, nine in the morning this happens. You know, this guy's been out there maybe an hour or two, these agents. Maybe they missed breakfast. Maybe they're hungry. We know how that low blood sugar affects people's emotions. Maybe he had a fight with his wife the night before. Or, you know, maybe he's agitated about something else, kids or mortgage payment. You know, who knows what's going on. And then they're out there doing their job. Okay, if you think they shouldn't be doing their job, that's not your decision. That the federal authorities that the state authorities that has to be worked out in court They think they doing their job They have bosses The bosses have bosses All the way up to Tom Holman. And then he's got a boss, Trump. So the idea that you're going to go down there and protest, which you absolutely have a right to do it. Fine. Go ahead. What do you think is going to happen? So you're blowing the whistle, screaming, getting up into their face. These people like Freddie. He was in the middle of the road filming. Okay, that's one of those gray areas on the sidewalk, for sure, peacefully protesting by just holding signs or filming. Walking around in the middle of the road where there's cars and federal agents doing something, some kind of action to apprehend a charged person. That's pretty risky. I'm not even sure that's legal, but let's just say in the ideal, that it's legal. Let's say that's all fine. We don't live in an ideal world where nothing bad will ever happen, where that guy doesn't snap. When I see these videos, and there's hundreds of them online with the protesters out there screaming at the top of their lungs, hysterical, just cursing, expletives flying in the face, right in the face of these guys. I couldn't do it. I feel I would snap. Like, wow. So they have good training that the fact that this doesn't happen more often. And anyway, so continuing. Let's see. Hey, point out where he was violent or confrontational. I'll wait. That's not what I said. I said he put himself in the middle of an ice raid and gambled that nothing bad would happen. Even if he was completely in his right to be in the middle of the road filming, it's a risky thing to do. Be careful. Be cautious. Somebody else writes, this is no excuse for first degree murder. Of course. Agreed. No excuse for murder. Not my point at all. It's so simple. His own father warned him to not be stupid and engage. He engaged. He's dead. He wouldn't be if he stayed far away from the ICE action. That's a choice. Even if it's totally legal and everything is on the up and up with what he did, it's still a choice. Curse of Gab, whoever that is, translates my post as translation. The officer should be investigated, but that goddamn son of a bitch got what he deserved. No, no, he did not get what he deserved. That's not an accurate translation of what I said. No one deserves to die for protesting. No one in their right mind would vote for capital punishment for protesting. For the umpteenth time, he placed himself into a high risk, emotionally charged his situation and was shot. And that is a tragedy. Mr. Strange writes, what happened to you? You're no longer a skeptic. He's allowed to have a gun and ammunition. He's allowed to have a phone and film people. He's allowed to be there and help the woman that, let me see, what was the rest of that tweet? That was attacked. You're basically, oh, because there was a woman that was getting pepper spray. You're basically saying if you don't want to be shot, then submit. Okay, no, I'm not telling anyone to submit. I'm saying do all these things legally if taking such risk is that important to you. But if things go south, which they are want to do in such highly charged situations, some of the responsibility for what happens to you is on you. No, bad things should not happen, but bad things happen. Okay. And one of these posts, I made the analogy, you know, in an ideal world, I should be able to drive my car down to, let's say, South Central L.A. You know, the worst part of, let's say, gang-infested L.A. And park my car there, put the keys up on the hood, and walk away and leave for the night and come back the next day, and my car should still be there. Okay. And if it's stolen, then the police should go track down my car and get it back and arrest the thieves for grand theft auto and put them on trial and throw them in prison. Okay. But who's responsible for that? I am. What an idiot. Who in their right mind would do something that dumb? Okay. Because we don't live in an ideal world. Right? So be rational. Be reasonable. Okay. A couple emails. here. One from David Tolaris, who's been right emailing me thoughtful commentary. I see you're catching hell on Twitter again on X, and you seem to think it's that people don't understand your argument. That's not the problem, he says. That's not why you're catching hell. He says, suppose a car hits you in California when you're riding your bicycle on one of your big exercise johns. Well, your fault riding the bicycle. And I guess the driver doesn't need to be charged with anything, Right. OK. No, I would be in my legal right to do so. And if somebody, say, hit me, he was drunk driving, they should be charged. Absolutely. Again, if the ICE agents are doing something illegal, everybody's filming them. So we've got all the evidence we need. They should be investigated and if appropriately, and if appropriate, charged. OK, now, maybe you don't trust the Department of Homeland Security to do that. I'm not sure I do either. But certainly the state, you know, like Governor Waltz is no fan of ICE, that's for sure. Surely he's in a position, or the mayor of Minneapolis, to do something legally, get lawyers and investigate it, file lawsuits if necessary, and so on. That's the way to handle it. Okay, since David mentioned the bicycle analogy, I'll give you an analogy. Okay, so two Thanksgivings ago, I think it was, we were doing our Thursday morning group ride. But it was Thanksgiving, so there was 10 times the size it usually is. So there's like 30, 40 guys out there. We rode from Santa Barbara down to Ventura and back. And there's a stretch between Rincon, sort of south of Carpinteria, and the north part of Ventura. and there's sort of a big wide road that parallels the interstate highway 101 and it's it's a beautiful road and there's like 30 40 of us out there and it was supposed to be a friendly ride it's just a conversational ride right anyway so the speed picks up and we're in a draft we're drafting in a peloton if you don't know what that is so peloton is a group of cyclists that are just so close to each other, you know, inches away from the tire in front of you. You have to be pretty careful about this because if the tires overlap like this and this guy comes over, he's moving his bike and takes out your front wheel, you're going down. Anyway so we were doing probably 30 35 miles an hour And the guy in front of me I was two back from the front we take poles so he took his pole from the just there was one person in front of him and his wheel overlapped with the front guy and down he went the guy right in front of me he just went down in a heap and I hit him square on at 30 35 miles an hour flipped right over the handlebars you know just mash my left shoulder, hit my head right into the pavement, cracked the helmet. And, uh, and, you know, a bunch of other people went down. So we're just lying. There's carnage on the side of the road. And, you know, somebody calls 911, the ambulance has come, the police come and so on. And, uh, and so I just, it's kind of a crazy story, um, that, um, I, so I had to be taken to the hospital. I was sitting there, I got up and then all of a sudden I start feeling woozy and nauseous and I thought, eh, you know, and, you know, the ambulance guy goes, you know, probably because you cracked your helmet, we should take you to the ER and get a head scan there, make sure, you know, everything's okay. So I did that. I had to get in the ambulance. The police took my bike and took it to the local station. The ambulance took me to the cottage hospital here in Santa Barbara, got the brain scan, everything's fine. Okay. Went back and got my bike and so on. In the meantime, while I was sitting there on the side of the road, just sort of assessing things, a cop was standing there over me. It's like, oh, dude, we're going to get you the help you need. The ambulances are coming. And I'm like, all right, what's your name? Michael Shermer. What's your address? I give my address. And all this, oh, that's so nice. Two weeks later, I got a ticket in the mail. I got a ticket for following too close. It's like, that's what we do on purpose. Anyway, I did not challenge it because I didn't feel like driving to Ventura twice, wants to get a court date and wants to actually confront the cop in the court, you know, because I didn't want to give this guy any more of my time, so I paid the couple hundred dollars. Fine. A couple of the other guys did do it, and they got their tickets erased because that's a bullshit charge. You know, serve and protect. Come on. You know, so I'm not a big fan of cops all the time either. Okay. That was not a cool thing to do. Give me a ticket when he pretended to be helping me? But my point of the story, whose fault was it? I know exactly whose fault it was. Technically, whoever is the guy that goes down because he overlapped wheels, it's his fault, right? But no, it's not his fault. It's my fault because I chose to be out there, okay? I know the risks of riding at high speed, inches away from other cyclists going at high, you know, in a high speed chase like that. It's a crazy thing to do. But I chose to do it. And I had to buy a new helmet. You know, did I want the guy in front of me that took me down to buy me a new helmet? No, this poor guy, I mean, he doesn't have two nickels to rub together. But even if he did, I wouldn't ask him to do that. This is on me, right? And the ambulance to charge for the ambulance and the brain scan and all that. You know, did I want to ding this guy for that? I didn't even ask him. Even if he had money, I wouldn't ask him because I chose to put myself there. Right. Again, David, if it was a drunk driver. Yeah. OK, that would be that would be something different. But that has to do with legal things, not just personal responsibility, which is my point of this little commentary. I don't think these things should happen, of course. And it's tragic that they do. if you really feel the need to protest. I get it. It's like I'm not a mayor. I'm not a police chief. I'm not a governor. What can I do about any of this? I'm infuriated watching these videos. I want to do something. Okay, yeah. But what are you going to do? I mean, are you just imagining these ICE officers are going to go, oh, that's a really good argument. The whistleblowing, oh, wow, I guess I'm going to go to my boss and tell him, you know, boss, I can't, we can't go arrest that guy because, you know, these people are blowing whistles and it's really bothering me. You think the boss is going to go, hey, in that case, let's just back off and go home. No, that's not going to happen. It's never going to happen. And the more of these incidents like this, you know, the Trump administration is going to double down. They're not going to back off. So, you know, that's not going to happen. The only way to stop that would be legally through the courts. Okay, so that's all I mean by taking responsibility. It's really sad that this guy fortunately didn't have kids, that Renee Good had three children, two of which she had already lost custody to. But the young girl, six-year-old daughter, you know, is now orphaned. I mean, this should never happen. So if you go, stay on the sidewalk and, you know, don't be obnoxious. Don't engage. And just let the ICE officers do their job. If they're just arresting criminals, I mean, real criminals above and beyond being an illegal alien, which technically is a crime. Yeah. And I mentioned this before. You know, my wife and I went through the whole legal process. You know, it's a big pain in the neck. But we did that. And that's technically what everybody should do. Have they done that? No, no. Millions. It looks like 10 to 14, maybe even more million people have come here illegally. yeah okay you know deport the the bad the bad hombres as they say leave the gardeners alone for god's sakes we okay i know technically that's correct you should charge the gardeners and get rid of them too but with millions of them you can't do it anyway so why not be very selective and just pick out and deport the bad ones the actual criminals the sexual predators and so on that the Department of Homeland Security has posted on their website. These are the people we got. Here are their crimes. Okay, assuming all that's true, then that's good. We don't want them here. Okay, so I think if that was more focused, then I think some of this tension would dissolve. Okay, all right, I guess that's enough for now on this. It's just really tragic, I guess. Probably there'll be more commentary in the coming days. Maybe there'll be more video presented from other angles, or there'll be more frame-by-frame analysis about that gun discharging. That would obviously change things a little bit. But all it does is it doesn't really change that panicked moment when all that happened within just a few seconds. And, you know, again, just legally, if there's an investigation, fine. Otherwise, take responsibility for your own actions. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be dropping this on. I've recorded this on Sunday afternoon, the 25th. We'll drop this on the 26th. And the 27th, my new book comes out. Check it out. Truth. I'll have a whole commentary on this. I'll give you a brief kind of an overview of the book and tell you, you know, why I wrote it and so on. All right. Thanks for listening.
