U.S. President-elect Donald Trump attends Turning Level USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024.
Cheney Orr | Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have blamed the lethal New Orleans truck assault on President Joe Biden’s border insurance policies although the attacker was a U.S. citizen.
“After I stated that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we’ve in our nation, that assertion was continually refuted by Democrats and the Pretend Information Media, but it surely turned out to be true,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social as data was nonetheless trickling out in regards to the ramming assault on Wednesday morning.
“The crime price in our nation is at a stage that no one has ever seen earlier than,” he wrote. “Our hearts are with all the harmless victims and their family members, together with the courageous officers of the New Orleans Police Division.”
Officers later recognized the attacker as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, of Texas, a U.S. citizen and an Military veteran.
Fox News had reported Wednesday morning that the suspect, who was shot and killed by police after he ran over a crowd of individuals on New Orleans’s well-known Bourbon Avenue, had crossed over the border from Mexico earlier this week. The network walked back its reporting later Wednesday, however not earlier than Trump and a few of his allies echoed it.
Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect’s eldest son, posted a information article in regards to the faulty report, saying, “Biden’s parting present to America — migrant terrorists.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., posted shortly after the initial segment, “New Orleans terrorist attacker is alleged to have come throughout the border in Eagle Cross TWO DAYS AGO!!! Shut the border down!!!”
Later Wednesday, Fox News quoted Trump’s Fact Social posted after which famous, “To be clear, the suspect was born in america.”
Regardless of Fox’s clarifications, Trump doubled down on his message Thursday in posts on Truth Social, saying that the Biden administration’s dealing with of the nation’s borders has led to “a violent erosion of Security, Nationwide Safety, and Democracy.”
“With the Biden ‘Open Border’s Coverage’ I stated, many occasions throughout Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and different types of violent crime, will develop into so unhealthy in America that it’s going to develop into exhausting to even think about or imagine,” he wrote in another post. “That point has come, solely worse than ever imagined.”
Different Republicans did not straight reference Fox’s unique report, however nonetheless appeared in charge the scenario on the border for the assault and used the chance to push the bigger GOP platform of a susceptible border harming nationwide safety.
FBI investigators arrive on the scene the place the white Ford F-150 pickup truck that crashed into a piece raise after allegedly driving right into a crowd of New Yr’s revelers within the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 1, 2025.
Matthew Hinton | Afp | Getty Photographs
In an look on Fox Information, Home Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Thursday additionally sought to painting the assault as a border safety failure, stated that congressional Republicans had been “ringing the alarms” about “the concept that harmful folks have been coming right here in droves and organising doubtlessly terrorist cells across the nation.”
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., wrote in response to images of the dead suspect on X Wednesday that the “open border,” the nation’s immigration system and Congress’ inaction on the difficulty “have created the proper storm to hazard Individuals.”
Equally, Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., shared on X a video of an interview he did Wednesday in regards to the terror assault and wrote, “We should safe the border & assure our native enforcement is empowered to implement the regulation and shield the American folks from these cowards!”
NBC Information reported earlier this yr that about 0.014% of migrants who had tried to cross the border in fiscal yr 2024, or fewer than 2 out of each 10,000, have been on the terrorist watchlist. The entire quantity who’ve tried to cross throughout the Biden administration is simply over 1,700. In the course of the Trump presidency, it was 1,400.
A consultant for Trump’s transition workforce didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Thursday. The places of work of Greene, Johnson, Gimenez and Crane additionally didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. Fox Information additionally didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
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