The vice president, who made his critiques in a rare appearance in the White House briefing room and on social media, was the most prominent example yet of the Trump administration quickly assigning culpability for the death of 37-year-old Renee Good while the investigation is still underway. Good was shot and killed by an ICE officer while she tried to drive away on a snowy residential street as officers were carrying out an operation related to the administration’s immigration crackdown.

Vance said at the White House that he wasn’t worried about prejudging the investigation into Good’s killing, saying of the videos he’d seen of the Wednesday incident, “What you see is what you get in this case.”

Vance said he was certain that Good accelerated her car into the officer and hit him. It isn’t clear from the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Wednesday that video of the shooting shows arguments that the officer was acting in self-defense were “garbage.”

The vice president also said part of him felt “very, very sad” for Good. He called her “brainwashed” and “a victim of left-wing ideology.”

“I can believe that her death is a tragedy, while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement — a lunatic fringe — against our law enforcement officers,” Vance said.

His defense of the officer, at times fiery, came as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Donald Trump likewise said the officer’s actions were a justified act of self-defense. Trump said Good “viciously ran over” the ICE officer, though video footage of the event contradicts that claim.

Trump has made a wide-ranging crackdown on crime and immigration in Democratic cities a centerpiece of his second term in office. He has deployed federal law enforcement officials and National Guard troops to support the operations and has floated the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act to try to stop his opponents from blocking his plans through the courts.

Trump officials made it clear that they were rejecting claims by Democrats and officials in Minnesota that the president’s move to deploy immigration officers in American cities had been inflammatory and needed to end.

“The Trump administration will redouble our efforts to get the worst of the worst criminal, illegal alien killers, rapists and pedophiles off of American streets,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday before Vance spoke.

She called Good’s killing “a result of a large, sinister left-wing movement.”

Vance was selected as Trump’s running mate last year partly for his ability to verbally spar, especially with the media. He opened his remarks by condemning headlines he saw about the shooting, at times raising his voice and decrying the “corporate media.”

“This was an attack on law and order. This was an attack on the American people,” Vance said.

He accused journalists of falsely portraying Good as “innocent” and said: “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Every single one of you.”

“The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace,” he added. “And it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day.”

When asked what responsibility he and Trump bore to defuse tension in the country over the incident, Vance said their responsibility was to “protect the people who are enforcing law and protect the country writ large.”

“The best way to turn down the temperature is to tell people to take their concerns about immigration policy to the ballot box,” he said.

Vance also announced that the administration was deputizing a new assistant attorney general to prosecute the abuse of government assistance programs in response to growing attention to fraud in childcare programs in Minnesota.

He said the prosecutor will focus primarily on Minnesota, and will be nominated in coming days. Vance added that Senate Majority Leader John Thune told him he’d seek a prompt confirmation.

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Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin, Will Weissert and Jonathan J. Cooper contributed to this report.

The embattled 29-year-old artist, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, reported to the Metropolitan Detention Center in his native Brooklyn on Tuesday to serve out his latest stint behind bars.

He drove up to the gates of the jail in a luxury van with internet personality Adin Ross and a camera crew streaming live as he turned himself in.

The facility is the only federal jail in New York City but is so troubled that some judges have refused to send people there and others have described it as “ hell on earth ” for its poor conditions and constant violence.

It currently houses Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, as well as Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing Brian Thompson, the leader of the country’s biggest health insurer.

Over the years, MDC Brooklyn has housed a constellation of other infamous inmates, including music stars R. Kelly and Sean “Diddy” Combs and longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Hernandez’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Tuesday, but have said previously that the rapper looked forward to serving out his sentence so he could resume his music career.

Hernandez admitted last year to assaulting a man and possessing drugs, in violation of the terms of his supervised release in a gang-related case.

He was sentenced in December to serve three more months in federal custody. He was previously slapped with a 45-day sentence in 2024 for breaking the terms of his supervised release.

Hernandez shot to fame with the 2017 release of his song “Gummo,” but the following year he pleaded guilty to his involvement with a violent New York-based gang, the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods.

He was sentenced to two years in prison in 2019, followed by five years of supervised release for his cooperation in the racketeering case against other gang members.

He was released from federal prison several months early during the height of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Hernandez’s latest sentence is related to small amounts of cocaine and ecstasy found at his Miami home during a police raid. Prosecutors say he also punched a man who taunted him at a Florida mall over his cooperation against gang members.

Denmark’s ambassador, Jesper Møller Sørensen, and Jacob Isbosethsen, Greenland’s chief representative to Washington, met on Thursday with White House National Security Council officials to discuss a renewed push by Trump to acquire Greenland, perhaps by military force, according to Danish government officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting.

The envoys have also held a series of meetings this week with American lawmakers as they look to enlist help in persuading Trump to back off his threat.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to meet next week with Danish officials.

Trump, in a New York Times interview published Thursday, said he has to possess the entirety of Greenland instead of just exercising a long-standing treaty that gives the United States wide latitude to use Greenland for military posts.

“I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do with, you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document,” Trump told the newspaper.

The U.S. is party to a 1951 treaty that gives it broad rights to set up military bases there with the consent of Denmark and Greenland.

Meanwhile, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, told reporters that European leaders should “take the president of the United States seriously” as he framed the issue as one of defense.

“What we’re asking our European friends to do is take the security of that landmass more seriously, because if they’re not, the United States is going to have to do something about it,” Vance said.

But the administration is starting to hear pushback from lawmakers, including some Republicans, about Trump’s designs on the territory.

In a floor speech Thursday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, warned that the rhetoric from some in the Trump administration is “profoundly troubling.”

“We’ve got a lot ahead of us in 2026,” Murkowski said. “Greenland – or taking Greenland, or buying Greenland – should not be on that list. It should not be an obsession at the highest levels of this administration.”

Danish officials are hopeful about the upcoming talks with Rubio in Washington.

“This is the dialogue that is needed, as requested by the government together with the Greenlandic government,” Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told Danish broadcaster DR.

The island of Greenland, 80% of which lies above the Arctic Circle, is home to about 56,000 mostly Inuit people.

Vance criticizes Denmark

Vance said on Wednesday that Denmark “obviously” had not done a proper job in securing Greenland and that Trump “is willing to go as far as he has to” to defend American interests in the Arctic.

In an interview with Fox News, Vance repeated Trump’s claim that Greenland is crucial to both the U.S. and the world’s national security because “the entire missile defense infrastructure is partially dependent on Greenland.”

He said the fact that Denmark has been a faithful military ally of the U.S. during World War II and the more recent “war on terrorism” did not necessarily mean they were doing enough to secure Greenland today.

“Just because you did something smart 25 years ago doesn’t mean you can’t do something dumb now,” Vance said, adding that Trump “is saying very clearly, ‘you are not doing a good job with respect to Greenland.’”

Right to self-determination

Earlier, Rubio told a select group of U.S. lawmakers that it was the Republican administration’s intention to eventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to using military force.

“Many Greenlanders feel that the remarks made are disrespectful,” Aaja Chemnitz, one of the two Greenlandic politicians in the Danish parliament, told The Associated Press. “Many also experience that these conversations are being discussed over their heads. We have a firm saying in Greenland, ‘Nothing about Greenland, without Greenland.’”

She said most Greenlanders “wish for more self-determination, including independence” but also want to “strengthen cooperation with our partners” in security and business development as long as it is based on “mutual respect and recognition of our right to self-determination.”

Chemnitz denied a claim by Trump that Greenland is “covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”

Greenland is “a long-standing ally and partner to the U.S. and we have a shared interest in stability, security, and responsible cooperation in the Arctic,” she said. “There is an agreement with the U.S. that gives them access to have bases in Greenland if needed.”

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has denounced the “law of the strongest” that is making people “wonder if Greenland will be invaded.”

In a speech to French ambassadors at the Elysee presidential palace on Thursday, Macron said: “It’s the greatest disorder, the law of the strongest, and everyday people wonder whether Greenland will be invaded, whether Canada will be under the threat of becoming the 51st state (of the United States) or whether Taiwan is to be further circled.”

He pointed to an “increasingly dysfunctional” world where great powers, including the U.S and China, have “a real temptation to divide the world amongst themselves.”

The United States is “gradually turning away from some of its allies and freeing itself from the international rules,” Macron said.

Surveillance operations for the US

The leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the U.K. joined Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Tuesday in defending Greenland’s sovereignty in the wake of Trump’s comments about Greenland, which is part of the NATO military alliance.

After Vance’s visit to Greenland last year, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen published a video detailing the 1951 defense agreement between Denmark and the U.S.. Since 1945, the American military presence in Greenland has decreased from thousands of soldiers over 17 bases and installations on the island, Rasmussen said, to the remote Pituffik Space Base in the northwest with some 200 soldiers today. The base supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.

The 1951 agreement “offers ample opportunity for the United States to have a much stronger military presence in Greenland,” Rasmussen said. “If that is what you wish, then let us discuss it.”

‘Military defense of Greenland’

Last year, Denmark’s parliament approved a bill to allow U.S. military bases on Danish soil. The legislation widens a previous military agreement, made in 2023 with the Biden administration, where U.S. troops had broad access to Danish air bases in the Scandinavian country.

Denmark is also moving to strengthen its military presence around Greenland and in the wider North Atlantic.

Last year, the government announced a 14.6 billion-kroner ($2.3 billion) agreement with parties including the governments of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, another self-governing territory of Denmark, to “improve capabilities for surveillance and maintaining sovereignty in the region.”

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Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.