Right-Wingers Think the New Orleans Attack Is DEI’s Fault

Conservatives are somehow blaming the horrific New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans on DEI, or “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives. On Wednesday, an attacker drove an ISIS flag–decorated truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street, killing 15 people before exchanging fire with law enforcement. The suspect has now been identified as U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar.

“The priority of the last four years has been DEI, not IEDs,” New York Republican Representative Dan Meuser told Fox News on Thursday. “You talk to anyone who’s willing to speak within these agencies, that’s what their focus has been.… President Trump’s a serious guy, he’s bringing in serious people. It’s not about DEI; it’s about the safety and security of the American people.”

Conservative commentator Robby Starbuck, who’s been railing against diversity and inclusion for months on X, likewise blamed DEI for the attack: “6 months ago the New Orleans FBI office was doing DEI hiring events. Maybe they should have been more focused on hiring the best people who are good at catching terrorists instead? Hiring solely to ‘increase diversity’ is a threat to national security for everyone. DEI must end.”

Right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson also piled on. “An FBI Agent with a nose ring who can barely speak coherent English sentences told the media that a terrorist driving a truck with an ISIS flag killing 10 Americans is NOT a terrorist attack!?!” Johnson wrote on X. “Seriously. Listen to this. We need Kash Patel NOW!”

The video in question is of FBI Special Agent Alethea Duncan, who happens to be a Black woman with a nose ring, speaking perfect English as she simply debriefs reporters in New Orleans, noting that the FBI had not classified the attack as a terrorist act yet. The agency did so later as more information came out.

These commentators are talking as though “DEI hires” were the ones to drive a truck through a busy crowd. There’s a clear pattern in the racist dog whistling: delegitimizing and attacking any Black person working in a professional capacity.

Fox News is pulling the plug on the right’s conspiracies about the New Orleans terrorist attack.

Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones pressed Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on Thursday, asking the MAGA state leader to explain how the American people can have confidence in how the investigation is being handled when conservative leadership is spreading so much misinformation about the attack.

“I hate to jump on you, but there’s conflicting information,” Jones said. “On one hand you’re telling the people that it is safe, but then you have co-conspirators that are out there. And then to layer on that of getting all the information, we just had your attorney general—your chief law enforcement officer—she says she hasn’t even been briefed about those people they brought into custody.

“So, if your chief law enforcement officer is not being briefed about the people that are out there, how can the people have confidence?” Jones continued.

“Well look I can tell you this, I am in the city right now, I’m going to attend the Sugar Bowl this afternoon, I will be around. We are going to be briefing the media, hopefully, about mid-morning. I don’t know about the comments the attorney general made. Again, that’s part of why we try not to engage in speculation,” Landry said.

The harsh critique was leveled after Landry told the network he was “convinced” the city was safe, despite reports from the FBI that the suspect, U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, did not act alone.

“Look, I think one of the most important things is to make sure that each one of those victims did not die in vain,” Landry said on-air. “All of them had come to the city in order to enjoy the city, in order to enjoy some entertainment and bring in the new year.

“Y’all had a guest earlier who was an eyewitness who said the same thing, is that we can’t live in fear,” he added.

The governor is also facing backlash for a tone-deaf social media post he made in the wake of the attack, sharing a photo of himself giving a thumbs-up at a local steakhouse just 10 minutes away from the scene of the crime.

Elon Musk might be about to start suing any news outlet that fails to clarify that the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded in front of Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas this week did not simply explode, but rather contained exploding fireworks.

The billionaire technocrat was quick to clarify Wednesday that the car had not suffered a catastrophic malfunction.

“We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself,” Musk wrote on X. “All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion.”

A few hours later, he weighed in on the media’s characterization of the so-called Cybertruck explosion, which documented, for all intents and purposes, a smoldering Cybertruck that had clearly experienced an explosion.

Anti-trans filmmaker Robby Starbuck posted on X lamenting the press’s coverage of the incident, suggesting that Musk ought to take legal action over headlines for simply using phrases such as “Tesla Cybertruck explosion,” without clarifying that the truck itself had not spontaneously exploded.

“Honestly @elonmusk should consider suing outlets who framed the story like this. These headlines are sabotaging @Tesla’s brand by making people think it caught on fire. There’s about 1 Tesla fire for every 130 million miles traveled. Other cars have 1 every 18 million miles,” Starbuck wrote, including a screen shot of a headline from Business Insider.

Musk reposted Starbuck, writing, “Maybe it is time to do so.”

The technocrat seems to be mulling whether to pick up a trick from his buddy Donald Trump, who has decided that he will sue any news outlet that says something he doesn’t like.

Starbuck and Musk are part of the same postliterate internet ecosystem built on reactionary responses to the headlines of articles users don’t actually bother to read. Lawsuits over the dispassionate, often 60-character, abbreviated versions of events that are later expanded upon in the body of the article simply suggest poor reading comprehension more than anything else.

Apparently nothing is above politics for Louisiana Senator John Kennedy, who chose a terrorism press conference for the deaths of 15 people as an opportune platform to make some jabs at his political foes.

The MAGA lawmaker took a swipe at the media during a Wednesday press conference on the New Year’s Eve attack in New Orleans, quickly reminding Louisianians—in the midst of a national tragedy—of the news media’s assumed political bent. While identifying which outlets the attending reporters were with, Kennedy referred to NBC’s placement “on the right” of the podium.

“That’s an unusual position,” Kennedy said.

When the reporter said they didn’t understand the comment, Kennedy added, “You wouldn’t.”

Kennedy’s comments, which detracted from local and federal authorities sharing details on the attack, were roundly criticized as tone-deaf. The ongoing investigation is rushing to identify the perpetrators of a multipronged domestic terrorism scheme that involved a pickup truck mowing down a crowd of people on New Orleans’s Bourbon Street. But the off-color remarks didn’t just frustrate members of the media working to share developments in the case—Kennedy’s comments also angered some on the right, including the X account Republicans Against Trump, which lambasted the senator as a “disgrace.”

“For these asses it’s only and always about the politics,” wrote former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. “An attack on the citizens of his community and Sen. Kennedy think it’s cute to take a political jab at the press.”

Early on Thursday, Donald Trump pushed an obviously incorrect theory that the attack was the result of the nation’s “open borders” policy. The FBI’s suspect for the attack, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, is a U.S. citizen born in Texas.

Elon Musk’s foray into politics is going global. The billionaire has announced that he’ll be hosting a live conversation on his social media platform X with Alice Weidel, co-chair of the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party. While the discussion has no official date yet, an AfD spokesperson stated that it would “definitely” be before the country’s election on February 23. This event will likely be very similar to the sit-down that Musk had with Donald Trump on the app in August, an affair that was riddled with technical difficulties.

This announcement comes as Musk was accused of election interference on Monday by the German government after writing a pro-AfD opinion column for a German newspaper, in which he stated, “Portraying the AfD as far-right is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Come on!” He also proclaimed, “Only the AfD can save Germany” on X in December.

Musk has also been commenting on U.K. politics, posting “Free Tommy Robinson!” on X on New Year’s Day. Robinson is a popular far-right, Islamaphobic activist and founding member of the British National Party. He was imprisoned for breaching an injunction regarding his repeated racially charged libel of a 15-year old Syrian boy via social media posts. Musk has had his eye on the U.K. for about a year now, calling it a state where “civil war is inevitable.”

The world’s richest man seems to have his sights set on becoming its most powerful unelected official too.

Technocrat billionaire Elon Musk finally owned up Wednesday to restricting his critics’ X accounts. But the self-described “free speech absolutist” doesn’t see anything wrong with it.

Last week, Musk began stripping the verifications from far-right accounts run by people who challenged his support for H-1B visas, after he and his co–DOGE czar Vivek Ramaswamy went to war arguing that Asian workers were far better than American ones. Obviously, the pro-white American far right didn’t take too kindly to that messaging.

Among those who received disciplinary actions were Laura Loomer, the far-right activist and self-described “proud Islamophobe” whom Donald Trump ferried around during his presidential campaign, and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, whom Musk had invited back onto the platform just over six months ago.

By taking away their verifications and knocking them out of X Pro, it seems that Musk has rendered several large accounts unable to receive ad revenue from X. Verification makes an account more visible too, so he has curbed their potential audiences.

Musk also suspended some smaller accounts, according to Mediaite. He defended his decision Wednesday via his favorite medium: replies on X.

“People getting demonetized for their inexcusable behavior then complaining about free speech is hilarious to me,” wrote Nicole Behnam, a journalist. “You can say whatever you want. You just can’t get paid for it. Hope this helps.”

“Exactly,” replied Musk. “The first amendment is protection for ‘free speech’, not ‘paid speech’ ffs.”

In response to a post from Fuentes claiming, “Twitter censorship is back,” Musk replied, “Claiming censorship while simultaneously getting millions of views is the clearest possible evidence that Fuentes has 💩 for brains.”

This kind of logic must be new to Musk, who, if memory serves, spent several months last year fundraising and pamphleteering on behalf of Trump and JD Vance—both of whom ceaselessly whine about censorship while also having the biggest platforms in the country.

Of course, it’s not the users’ racism or hate speech that Musk is opposing—the technocrat billionaire recently backed Germany’s ethnonationalist party and has been known to elevate hate speech at the cost of shareholder value—but, rather, it’s punishing dissent within the party he intends to take over.

An Islamic State–inspired U.S. Army veteran killed 15 people when he drove a pickup through New Orleans’s crowded Bourbon Street on New Year’s Eve—and President-elect Donald Trump has decided that immigrants should shoulder the blame for the horrifying attack.

In a lengthy Truth Social post early Thursday, Trump claimed that the domestic terrorism incident was the result of open borders, distracted authorities, and the Democratic establishment.

“Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World! This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership,” Trump wrote. “The DOJ, FBI, and Democrat state and local prosecutors have not done their job. They are incompetent and corrupt, having spent all of their waking hours unlawfully attacking their political opponent, ME, rather than focusing on protecting Americans from the outside and inside violent SCUM that has infiltrated all aspects of our government, and our Nation itself.”

Fact check: The FBI’s suspect for the attack, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, is a U.S. citizen born in Texas. And choosing to undermine the reputation of investigative agencies looking into the attack is a hair-raising choice for the man about to retake the White House in 18 days.

“Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen to our Country,” Trump continued. “The CIA must get involved, NOW, before it is too late. The USA is breaking down—A violent erosion of Safety, National Security, and Democracy is taking place all across our Nation. Only strength and powerful leadership will stop it. See you on January 20th. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Even Fox News issued an on-air correction for Trump’s incendiary statement, reminding viewers that Jabbar served in the Army and was not an immigrant. But Trump has since doubled down on his perspective, insisting that “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!”

The post echoed some of Trump’s more violent comments on immigration. In 2023, the MAGA leader leaned on appalling language that recalled Adolf Hitler’s fascistic rhetoric designed to dehumanize his enemies. Trump referred to his political rivals—the GOP-anointed “Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs”—as “vermin,” and claimed that immigrants are “destroying the blood of our country.”

Embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to make it a lot harder for his colleagues to get rid of him.

House Republicans unveiled a new set of rules Wednesday that will govern the incoming 119th Congress, including a rule that would make it more difficult to oust whoever is in charge.

The key change would raise the threshold for a motion to vacate, by which any lawmaker can force a vote on ousting the speaker. Currently, only one person needs to file a motion to vacate. But under the new rule, a lawmaker from the majority party must be joined by eight other co-signers from that party.

So if the rule passes, Johnson can only be ousted by nine Republicans.

This is a significant change in proceedings, as historically motions to vacate can come from any individual lawmaker from any party.

“Their proposed changes would, for the first time in American history, shield the speaker from accountability to the entire chamber,” Democratic Representative Jim McGovern, the ranking member on the House Rules Committee, told Axios.

“The American people did not vote for whatever the hell this is—and you better believe that Democrats will not let Republicans turn the House of Representatives into a rubber stamp for their extremist policies,” McGovern added.

This change comes as the result of a deal struck in November, but takes on a new, bitter flavor, as Johnson has come under fire from members of his own party. It seems that Johnson could be in major trouble Friday, when he is set to be reelected or ousted from his position. It might only take two GOP defections to sink his bid, according to The Hill.

Congress will also vote on its new rules package Friday, which would also dissolve the Diversity and Inclusion Office and change the name of the House Oversight Committee, among other shallow Republican priorities. If Johnson is reelected and the new rules approved, then he may have found a way to keep his gavel indefinitely.

Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to keep his witness list top secret just blew up in his face.

U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman said on Monday that the court had “neither directed nor permitted” Giuliani’s December 23 witness list “to be filed under seal,” ordering the list to be unsealed for the public docket. The filing includes a retired priest who played a critical role in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in New York. It also named Monsignor Alan Placa, Ryan Medrano, Michael Ragusa, and Giuliani’s rumored girlfriend Maria Ryan, according to Law & Crime.

Giuliani is headed to trial next month to determine whether he must hand over his multimillion-dollar Florida condominium to a pair of 2020 Georgia election workers he repeatedly defamed while pushing Donald Trump’s lie about a stolen election. Giuliani owes the mother-daughter duo, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, some $150 million in damages, but he’s still working to worm his way out of the payments.

Earlier this year, Giuliani claimed that the condo was his permanent residence, granting it homestead protection from debt collection proceedings under state law. But his legal opposition has argued that Giuliani was less than forthcoming during the discovery process, suggesting that the disgraced politico wasn’t being honest about how he utilizes the property.

In November, the former gang-busting federal prosecutor tried on a new legal defense to keep his stuff, arguing in a Manhattan courthouse that he couldn’t possibly hand over his assets to Freeman and Moss because he simply didn’t know where they were. Some of those assets include his Manhattan penthouse, a famously immovable object, as well as his Mercedes convertible, which he was seen driving in Florida on Election Day. In response, Judge Liman said that the idea that neither Giuliani nor anyone else in the world has knowledge about the location of his assets was “farcical.”

The ex–New York mayor has been besieged with legal woes since he opted to join the MAGA movement.

Over the past couple of years, the former Trump attorney unsuccessfully filed for bankruptcy, lost his accountant over his insurmountable debts, begged Trump for help settling his seven-figure legal fees (he refused), had his WABC radio show canceled for spewing 2020 election lies, and miserably started his own coffee brand, “Rudy Coffee,” in an effort to funnel in some extra cash. He ultimately lost his bankruptcy case due to his outlandish spending habits, with the presiding New York judge branding the former city mayor a “recalcitrant debtor.”

Giuliani is also under the gun for a lawsuit from his former legal representation, who accused him of failing to pay his bill and allegedly only dishing out $214,000 of nearly $1.6 million in legal expenses. Giuliani, meanwhile, claimed he was stiffed by his favorite client, Trump, to the tune of millions of dollars.

But wait, there’s more: The MAGA henchman is also one of 19 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case (in limbo but not yet dead) and was named in April in an Arizona indictment charging another slew of Republican officials and Trump allies for their alleged involvement in a scheme to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. In October, an Arizona judge torched a legal filing Giuliani made in the case, ruling that the ex–Trump aide had “not one scintilla” of evidence to question the legitimacy of a grand jury assigned to his lawsuit. And Giuliani’s own legal representation in the Freeman and Moss case ditched him in November, declaring in a motion in federal court that they had reached a “fundamental disagreement” with Giuliani.

Democrats lost the White House, the House, and the Senate—but that’s apparently not enough cause for them to rejigger their playbook.

Earlier this month, Representative Gerry Connolly bested New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to become the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. It was a battle of establishment Democratic politics versus new wave progressivism, and the Democratic caucus opted to vote against the future of the party by a margin of 47 votes.

But when pressed on why a 74-year-old with a recent esophagus cancer diagnosis deserved a shot at arguably one of the most influential positions in the House, Connolly couldn’t muster up a response deeper than having paid his dues. Speaking with CNN on Monday, Connolly’s rationale boiled down to simple entitlement.

“The decision about leadership ought to always be based on a proven record, skill set, competence, capability, and your plan for moving forward,” Connolly told the network. “I’ve never had my chance to be a ranking member or a chairman of a full committee. This is it.”

“I’ve got the bona fides and the credentials over 16 years that my colleagues looked at, examined, validated, and decided that’s what we need,” he continued. “And that’s what the Democratic caucus overwhelmingly decided to do.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reportedly entrenched in the process of getting Connolly to lead the key investigative body for the purpose of keeping Ocasio-Cortez away from the fulcrum of power.