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Donald Trump and his Republican allies have seized on the New Orleans terrorist attack to blame Joe Biden and deliver a final burst of criticism of his policies in the last weeks of his presidency.
The incident, in which at least 15 people died, and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas have also fuelled Republican narratives claiming that crime is spiralling out of control — and that only Trump’s new national security team and a crackdown on immigration will fix it.
“With the Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy’ I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe. That time has come, only worse than ever imagined,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday morning.
Trump and other Republicans initially claimed — falsely — that the New Orleans attacker was an immigrant from across the southern border. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the suspect authorities said had been inspired by the Isis terror group to carry out the attack and who was killed during it, was a 42-year-old US military veteran from Texas who had worked for financial services groups including Accenture and Deloitte.
On Thursday, the FBI said he acted alone. The agency also said it had established no link between the New Orleans attack and the Cybertruck explosion in Nevada, which killed one person and injured seven others.
But Trump’s allies still doubled down on claims Biden’s immigration policies — or immigration in general — were behind the violence, echoing attack lines that Trump deployed in defeating vice-president Kamala Harris in the 2024 US presidential race.
“Islamist terrorism is an import. It is not ‘homegrown’,” wrote Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller, on X. “It did not exist here before migration brought it here.”
Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, told Fox News the US had been “lax” on national security, emboldening groups such as Isis. “President Trump is going to come in office and we’re going to secure that border. We’re going to run a deportation operation. We concentrate and prioritise public safety threats and national security threats.”
Republicans close to Trump are also trying to capitalise on the attack to inject momentum into their campaign to secure quick Senate confirmation for some of the president-elect’s senior national security jobs.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice to be secretary of defence, Tulsi Gabbard, his pick to be director of national intelligence, and Kash Patel, his nominee to lead the FBI, are all controversial picks facing battles to secure Senate approval in the coming weeks.
“The US Senate must confirm President Trump’s national security team as soon as possible. Lives depend on it,” John Barrasso, a Republican senator from Wyoming, wrote on X shortly after the attack in Louisiana.
“This is why getting President Trump’s cabinet in is so important,” Mike Waltz, the Florida congressman tapped by Trump to be his national security adviser, told Fox News on Thursday. “That has to be in place day one, guys, because this is a moment, in transition, of vulnerability.”
The deep scepticism from Trump allies of US federal law enforcement agencies has also resurfaced after the New Orleans attack. Lawmakers close to the president-elect criticised the FBI for focusing too much on “diversity, equity and inclusion” and for their role in Trump’s prosecution by the justice department.
Mike Collins, a Georgia Republican, questioned why Alethea Duncan, the FBI’s special agent in charge in New Orleans, initially said the attack was not a “terrorist event”. Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson called on Christopher Wray, the FBI director, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, to testify about the attack in Congress.
“The FBI needs to regain the trust of the American people. That means FULL transparency & accountability throughout this investigation. It also means eliminating DEI & woke distractions & solely focusing on countering threats to protect Americans,” Hinson wrote on X on Thursday.
Biden spoke on Wednesday about the attack in New Orleans and the investigation from Camp David, and convened his homeland security team to discuss the latest developments on Thursday.
From Trump’s side, Waltz has been in touch with Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, but said they were not counting much on the outgoing administration.
“They are trying to piece together information. But we’re not waiting on what we’re just getting from this White House. Everybody has their feelers out so that we keep president Trump as informed as possible,” he said.
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