The terrorist attack that killed 14 people in New Orleans is unacceptable, inexcusable and emblematic of a failing nation whose president ranks as the worst in history, according to President-elect Donald Trump.
Having held President Joe Biden to that standard, Trump is now at risk of having his withering verdict flung back at him should a comparable attack happen on his watch, which starts in just 17 days when he takes the oath of office.
In social media posts, Trump suggested that a porous border gave rise to the massacre on Bourbon Street, allowing criminals to freely enter the country and do harm. As he described it, the attack jibes with his long-held position that undefended borders invite violent crime.
“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” he wrote on New Year’s Day, hours after the man plowed into a crowd of revelers. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that when he asked the FBI’s counterterrorism chief Thursday whether there was “any foreign nexus whatsoever” to the attack, the answer was no.
Mass killings have grown sadly commonplace in the United States, spanning Republican and Democratic administrations alike. The perpetrators’ motivations vary, leaving elected officials groping for solutions and often finding none. Trump’s denunciation of Biden could boomerang if there are copycat crimes or similar tragedies when he’s back in the White House and Biden is no longer around to blame.
