This Terror Attack Shows Why World Needs Trump Picks, Says Trump Pick

Our incoming national security adviser thinks we should respond to the attack that killed 14 in New Orleans, and the seemingly unrelated Cybertruck explosion that injured seven in Las Vegas, by fast-tracking all of Trump’s Cabinet picks. “This is why getting President Trump’s Cabinet in is so important,” Republican Representative Mike Waltz said on Fox & Friends Thursday morning. “We need Governor [Kristi] Noem at DHS, we need Kash Patel at FBI, we need Pete Hegseth at DOD; this is an across the government look,” he told the network. “Marco Rubio at State and of course Ratcliffe at CIA and Gabbard at DNI. That has to be in place day one guys, because this is a moment in transition of vulnerability and President Trump is going to project, because he is a leader of strength. The narrative that we project on day one will be just important, and that’s having our people in place.”

Waltz is suggesting that all of Trump’s nominees should be able to bypass the normal (and frankly needed, given Hegseth’s and Patel’s questionable histories) vetting process because they would be that much better equipped to handle the current situation.  

Senator-elect Bernie Moreno had similar sentiments on New Year’s Day. “After what appears to potentially be an ISIS inspired terrorist attack last night in New Orleans, it’s even more vital that we quickly confirm all of President Trump’s nominees,” he wrote on X. “Every single national security nominee should be confirmed & ready to protect America by January 20th.”

Most of Trump’s nominees, especially Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel, are expected to have testy confirmation hearings. The GOP using such devastating attacks for their own political benefit could potentially backfire, particularly as more information emerges; Matthew Livelsberger—the man identified as having shot himself in a Tesla Cybertruck before it exploded in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas—was a Trump voter, The Daily Beast reported Thursday afternoon.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has thrown himself into the H-1B visa feud between Elon Musk and the far-right’s MAGA acolytes.

Musk and some of Donald Trump’s more ardent supporters have gone head-to-head over the last several weeks, with the world’s richest man arguing that the work visa program offers a solution to a “permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent” in the United States. Opponents of the immigration program—and Musk’s position—claim that the H-1B visa disincentivizes companies to hire American labor. Some of the most vocal opponents are people such as “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, who probably aren’t happy that some of the visa recipients aren’t white.

But on Thursday, Sanders pointed out a quiet, fundamental catch to the Silicon Valley leader’s argument: Musk’s business interests dramatically benefit from open access to inhumanely cheap labor.

“Elon Musk is wrong,” Sanders posted on X. “The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad.

“The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make,” he said.

In a formal statement, Sanders’s office noted that in 2022 and 2023, “the top 30 corporations using this program laid off at least 85,000 American workers while they hired over 34,000 new H-1B guest workers.

“There are estimates that as many as 33 percent of all new Information Technology jobs in America are being filled by guest workers,” the statement reads. “Further, according to Census Bureau data, there are millions of Americans with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math who are not currently employed in those professions.”

The H-1B visa program has an annual cap set by Congress, admitting 65,000 foreign workers per year. In 2023, it was estimated that there were more than 700,000 H-1B visa holders in the U.S., according to data from the American Immigration Council.

Extending Donald Trump’s 2017 tax plan—as his MAGA acolytes want to—could raise the national deficit by as much as $5 trillion. In response, Republicans are floating some rather extreme options to offset the cost, including raising tariffs on foreign goods, repealing clean energy programs, and axing some of the nation’s largest federal agencies, such as the Department of Education.

Trump’s tax plan, which overwhelmingly benefits corporations, would balloon the national debt, which currently sits at $36.2 trillion. Nonpartisan groups that have assessed the president-elect’s agenda predict that Trump’s second term could cost the nation much more, possibly increasing it by as much as $15 trillion, reported The Washington Post.

At the top of the list of options to offset costs is a broad tariff plan, which could spare the nation some $2.7 trillion over 10 years by adding levies on goods from China, Mexico, and Canada. (The plan has sent the latter of the trio into a tailspin, with Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s former deputy prime minister and minister of finance, resigning just hours before releasing the nation’s first economic plan in response to Trump’s “America First” policies.)

But what’s good for Trump isn’t necessarily good for Americans: In a joint letter released before the election, nearly two dozen Nobel Prize–winning economists formally warned against Trump’s economic plan, arguing that the MAGA leader’s stiff tariff increases and tax cuts would spell disaster for the average American.

Republicans have also proposed nixing the nation’s clean energy programs, including dismantling the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022—one of President Joe Biden’s chief legislative victories—saving some $700 billion from the federal deficit. Doing so, however, would kill tax credits for electric vehicles and spur fossil fuel production on federally protected land.

A different path forward to scrimp and save includes cutting “unauthorized” spending, or money that Congress has not explicitly authorized. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the assumed co-chairs of the Department of Government Efficiency (which does not yet exist), have claimed that slashing this category would save $516 billion. But it would also come with major cuts to veterans’ health care, the State and Justice Departments, and NASA.

Another cashflow could come from eliminating the Department of Education, which would save some $200 billion from the deficit—while simultaneously dismantling the nation’s education system, which locally relies on billions from the federal government to support low-income and low-performing schools.

The man who allegedly detonated fireworks inside a Tesla Cybertruck in front of Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, was reportedly a supporter of the president-elect.

Law enforcement officials identified Matthew Alan Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret, as the deceased driver of the Cybertruck in Wednesday’s incident, according to CNN.

A senior law enforcement official told The Daily Beast Thursday that Livelsberger was a “big” Donald Trump supporter, a fact that had been uncovered through conversations with Livelsberger’s family and loved ones.

Dean Livelsberger, the uncle of the deceased, told The Independent Thursday that his nephew “loved” Trump.

“He used to have all patriotic stuff on Facebook, he was 100 percent loving the country,” said Dean Livelsberger.

“He loved Trump. He was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American. It’s one of the reasons he was in Special Forces for so many years. It wasn’t just one tour of duty,” he added. Livelsberger had served as an operations master sergeant in the Army Special Forces, on active duty in Germany, but was on leave at the time of his death, three officials told CNN.

Online, Livelsberger once criticized John Bolton, Trump’s ex-national security adviser, who wrote a scathing rebuke of his former boss in his memoir.

“Bet Bolton got a hefty chunk from the DNC and other slimy donors to put the book out,” Livelsberger wrote in a Facebook comment under an article about Bolton, according to The Daily Beast.

While the symbolic nature of the incident appears to refer to the partnership between the president-elect and Elon Musk, Livelsberger’s motive is still unknown. Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill suggested Thursday that the incident, which injured seven people, was likely a suicide.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts echoed Donald Trump while hitting back at critics who’ve suggested that federal judges may have political biases.

In his 2024 Year End report on the federal judiciary, published Tuesday, Roberts conflated violence and intimidation with genuine criticism of the courts’ decisions. He listed suggestions of political bias among doxxing and disinformation as some of the “illegitimate activity” that threatens independent judges.

“Public officials, too, regrettably have engaged in recent attempts to intimidate judges—for example, suggesting political bias in the judge’s adverse rulings without a credible basis for such allegations,” Roberts wrote.

“Within the past year we have also seen the need for state and federal bar associations to come to the defense of a federal district judge whose decisions in a high-profile case prompted an elected official to call for her impeachment,” Roberts continued, likely referring to Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who tossed out the classified documents case against the president-elect last year.

At every turn of that case, Cannon slowed proceedings, and ultimately defied precedent. Her shocking final decision resulted in the dissolution of charges against a political candidate who then reportedly put her on the short list for attorney general (he would later find even worse candidates).

“Attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed,” Roberts continued. “Public officials certainly have a right to criticize the work of the judiciary, but they should be mindful that intemperance in their statements when it comes to judges may prompt dangerous reactions by others.”

Last year, Trump was so persistent in “suggesting” that New York state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw his hush-money trial, and his family were politically biased that he was landed with a hefty gag order. This, however, earned no mention from Roberts, but probably only because it had to do with a state case, not a federal one. No other reason.

Roberts’s remarks echo those of Trump, who, impossibly, complained about publicly criticizing judges and has suggested it should be illegal to do so.

“They play the ref, they start screaming about ‘The judge is no good,’ and ‘This one’s no good,’ and ‘They’re slow’ and ‘They’re lousy judges’ and ‘The judge should be impeached,’ and all of this crap, when you have a brilliant judge that’s doing the right thing,” Trump ranted during an 11th Hour Faith Leaders Meeting in Concord, North Carolina, in October.

“I really believe it’s illegal what they do, and I know there’s some great lawyers in there who are gonna look at it, because what they do is so obvious, what they’ve done to the Supreme Court, even with the protection of their houses, you’re not supposed to be allowed to march in front. They didn’t stop it,” he continued.

Trump has also claimed that judges would often “give a bad ruling” in an attempt to silence critics, but unsurprisingly gave no evidence to support that claim.

In any case, it’s difficult to imagine how Roberts, terrified of suggestions of political bias, will weather the coming four years under Trump, who intends to utilize the highest court in the land to make sweeping changes to the schema of rights and continue to deregulate the federal government. Trump will likely get away with everything he wants—in many such cases, he already has.

Last year, Roberts found himself behind the steering wheel of the most conservative court in a century for the decision in Trump’s presidential immunity case. The Supreme Court’s ruling in that case single-handedly opened the door for Trump’s return to the White House and cemented this court’s conservative lean for decades to come.

Elon Musk’s recent increase in political activity coincides with further troubles for his struggling car company. Shares of the billionaire’s Tesla Inc. fell after the company experienced its first annual decline in deliveries this week, causing it to miss multiple quarterly delivery goals in 2024.

There seems to be a drop in demand for Musk’s product—Tesla registrations across Europe dropped 24 percent in October. Slashed European subsidies and more electronic vehicle competition from the United States and Chinese developer BYD may have also contributed to the uninspiring quarterly earnings, The Guardian reported Thursday.

But Musk’s close relationship with President-elect Donald Trump has Tesla investors remaining hopeful. The richest man on earth donated millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign and, in return, may be the beneficiary of Trump ending the Biden-era tax credit for E.V. buyers. That may cause E.V. companies who aren’t leading the domestic market like Tesla to fall back, making more room for Musk to reap the benefits.

Musk will have much to think about as he attempts to balance co-leading DOGE and interfering in European politics with being the CEO of a major E.V. company.

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.