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Jan 3, 2025

Republicans SLAMMED For Playing 'Political Games' With Terror Attacks

Rep. Troy Carter called out Republicans for playing "political games" after the New Year's Day terror attack in New Orleans.
  • 11 minutes
You have president elect Trump and Speaker Johnson talking about open borders in some sort of proximity to what happened in New Orleans. And we should not play games with the American people to try and imply [00:00:17] that it was something that it wasn't. No time for political games or or trickery to suggest somehow that one party or the other may be responsible. The families of the loved ones who have died, and those who are in the hospital [00:00:34] fighting for their lives, and our law enforcement agents from the federal, local and state deserve better. That is Congressman Troy Carter, who represents New Orleans, which, of course, was the site of one of the two terror attacks over the New Year's Eve holiday. 14 people died in that particular instance. [00:00:51] It's about as serious as a bit of news an event in the United States can be. And so I and I think most of you probably can totally understand why he would be horrified by the fact that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, politicians, including Donald Trump, decided the important thing in that moment [00:01:08] was to score as many points as possible politically, and let's not wait to find out what actually happened. Let's just take what we would like to have happened, what we imagine would be awesome to have happened, and then just state it as a blanket fact. And when it turns out we're wrong, we're not going to take it back, [00:01:23] we're not going to correct it or anything. And that's what's happened. And so there were claims that both of these attacks were committed by migrants. Not true at all. The assailant, in the case of New Orleans, Shamsuddin Jabbar, reportedly became radicalized and did support ISIS, but was not an immigrant. [00:01:40] He was from Texas. But regardless, there was a ton of fear mongering. Take a look at a sampling. But we all. Know that for the last four years, the Biden administration has been completely derelict in its duty. The congressional Republicans, we here in the House and the Senate have repeatedly asked the DHS under the Biden administration about the correlation, [00:01:59] the obvious concern about terrorism and the wide open border. And yet they're coming into this country free. They've handled at the border. Now, Cheryl, if only 10% got through that we didn't know about. 55,000. That's 5500 special terrorists, potential terrorists that are [00:02:17] in this country in Mayorkas and company. As you know, they said we've got operational control of the border. He's been saying that forever. They're not doing their job, and Americans are paying the price for that. The first day of President Trump's administration, he's going to secure the southern border. And part of the issues that we have, even though this may not have [00:02:35] come from the southern border, is that we've got 2 million people that we don't know who they are, where they are, or why they're here. We got over two men gotaways known Gotaways on our southern border. Border patrol has arrested people from 180 countries. Many of these countries sponsored terror. [00:02:50] They've arrested over 300 people on the terrorist watch list. Under Trump, we had 14. So I won't hang his hat on. You know, these tasks being done by US citizens. It's coming. Okay, so again, they all just rush out and look, if I often get cynical [00:03:05] and say that in politics, nothing changes. But what you saw in this event shows that some things do change. You know, if this was ten, 12 years ago, the Republicans would have been perfectly happy to just focus on the fact that the guy was affiliated with ISIS and he was a muslim. That would have been more than enough for them to fear monger. [00:03:22] But now that's old fashioned. It has to be a migrant. They have to have just crossed the border. And so they leap immediately to that. And by the way, they talk about how it's all Biden's fault because people came across the border. We desperately need Donald Trump to secure the border. [00:03:37] Of course, we can relitigate the fact that they blocked the border bill earlier this year, including Mike Johnson, who was in that video. But also, I don't know if anybody's, like, checked border crossings in the last few months. It's just about exactly at the level that it was prior to the pandemic under Donald Trump. So was he responsible for all the crime of the people that still got through [00:03:54] back when he was in charge, following four years of his leadership? This is a ridiculous game, and a game is all that. It is the actual people who died, the event that actually happened that is way in the rear view mirrors of these guys they've got points to earn, was, what do you make of this? [00:04:11] It feels like they're just stuck in between, you know, wedge issues, right? Like they know that immigration was a big or is a big issue in the minds of many of our fellow citizens here in America. And they know that terrorism used to move the needle [00:04:29] like people used to think that, you know, the Muslims were crossing the southern border and we're going to strangle our babies in their, you know, in their cribs while we sleep. And it was so scary. And but it doesn't that doesn't compute anymore. [00:04:44] People just don't care about terrorism as an everyday American citizen concern. And obviously nobody is stupid. They can put this guy's picture up. It's just a black dude from Texas, born and raised. [00:05:00] Like there's videos of this guy all over the internet doing TikToks about his real estate business. What's more American than that? He's like, he's clearly an American homegrown guy. So this idea that he snuck across the border with his, you know, his icky [00:05:17] Muslim cooties is just ridiculous. And it's just obvious that they're grasping at straws and don't have anything. And instead of, you know, just talking about how we could better secure, you know, crowds at large events like the college football playoffs [00:05:34] and in places like Bourbon Street and the French Quarter in New Orleans, instead of talking about how we can do those things to be better, it's just, you know, playing politics with like an obvious tragedy. And the sad thing is, like, their rhetoric is not going to, you know, make the families of these victims warmer at night. [00:05:51] Man, these people are grieving. And, you know, I hope that they're able to find some measure of peace in all of this. I would say that it's, it's not just that people don't care anymore about politics. I think people don't care about exploitation because the exploitation, [00:06:06] it used to be that, oh, if Democrats said anything about gun control in the wake of a mass shooting, oh, you're exploiting the tragedy. And yet, literally hours after this, there's Donald Trump and other Republicans not only exploiting this for their game about migrants, [00:06:21] but also lying about it and showing that, in my view, the Republican Party is all about racism and bigotry and xenophobia. Because Tawas point, I mean, migrants and all the data shows this. Even if you want to talk about migrants crossing the border, all the data shows [00:06:39] that migrant communities commit fewer violent crimes per capita than people who are born in the United States. And oh, by the way, Donald Trump says, well, you know, crime is the worst that we've ever. No. Violent crime is down to its lowest levels in 50 years. So crime is down. [00:06:55] Migrant communities are safer than actually communities here in the United States. So to me, this is purely about because this guy is a black guy with a muslim name or Muslim religion. They're going to target him or they're going to make this association that he must have been a subversive threat just because he was a muslim. [00:07:11] And we should have never let Muslims into this country to begin with. So we have to somehow shut off the southern border. It doesn't make any sense except in the context of absolute hatred, which is what is on display. Yeah. And meanwhile we had the other attack, which thankfully didn't claim lives other than the attacker, although it did injure people. [00:07:28] And to the extent that they said anything about it and most of them didn't, it was thank God it was a Cybertruck that channeled the explosion or whatever. They don't. You're not you're not interested in that guy. I mean, he was in the military, too. You seem interested in this case, but that was a white guy. [00:07:43] That was a Maga guy. You don't you don't care about that now? Of course you don't. Not interested whatsoever. And again, I just I love the, the need to get something out of this. So Lindsey Graham, he's been around for a long time. So coming out of this, he's like, well, why are people saying [00:07:59] this is just a crime? This is an international war on Islam because he wants to invade Iran after this. Like he's like, hey, what are we doing? Everybody? The Muslim just killed people. We get to invade a country now. And all the other Republicans, the new MAGA are like, well, no, we don't want to do that. [00:08:14] Because like, you know, we pretend to be anti-war, even though we did way more bombing on Syria and we're definitely gonna invade Mexico and all that. But we got to get something. Maybe we can persecute them here, though. That'll be fun because the future is in private prisons and concentration camps, I [00:08:30] guess more so than in defense contractors. The entire thing is just utterly ridiculous. But I will say, I do think that we need to learn lessons. I've been very resistant to that. And so I, for a very long time, have had a policy of only blaming politicians for [00:08:47] things where it rationally makes sense. But but they're teaching me that you don't have to do that. So the first terror attack that happens after January 20th, we're just doing a full show. I think about how Donald Trump is responsible for this, because we've been taught now. And by the way, I don't even have to say for the reason that makes sense. [00:09:05] They're saying it's about migrants, even though it's not. So I'm going to say the first terror attack that happens that Donald Trump's tariffs blew up Boston or whatever it is that's going to happen because you could just make it about whatever you want. That's how American politics works. And if it turns out I'm wrong, I'm just going to tweet. [00:09:21] John was right about everything and I'll probably become president because that's how America works. Well, in America works now in a post-factual world where there's no arbiter, there's no agreement on what the truth is. And what's so scary to me about all of this, and I sang this a minute ago, [00:09:36] is that there will be a sizable portion of Donald Trump's followers who will believe that this guy was maybe not from Texas. That's just the media claiming the fake news media that this really was a migrant, that he really did cross the border. There will be people who believe that just because Donald Trump says so. [00:09:53] And we're in this such perverse world now where you can find whatever you want to support your point of view. And I think Donald Trump knows that. He knows there is no consequence right now for lying, because there'll be a sizable number of people who will agree with him no matter what the media says. Yeah. So, you know, there's been a lot of chatter out there, John, [00:10:11] about turns to the right rightward turns. I'm gonna make my own rightward turns here, right here on the power panel, and I'm going to go full Vivek Ramaswamy on these folks. He wants to change the American culture by switching it out [00:10:27] for East Asian and Indian sort of tiger mummification of the culture. That's what he would like. Hey man, I've been to South America, y'all. I've been to Colombia. The food, the people, the community, the dancing, the singing. [00:10:43] We need more of that in America. Let those borders wide open. Change the entire culture of the country. John, I want to change American culture for migrant culture. How about that? I'm with you. It'll make America safer, too. [00:10:59] Evidently it would. By the way, I love that they're doing a version of Great Replacement, which is we have an American terrorist, and they're replacing it with a fictional migrant terrorist. No, no, no. That's us. We get credit for that. How dare you give that to someone from outside the US to make. [00:11:18] America great again? Come on, John, maybe. It's time to have an honest discussion, though, about open borders between Texas and Louisiana. Build the wall. Build the wall.