11/29/25

THERE ARE TWO VILLAINS IN THE D.C. SHOOTINGS:
THE GUNMAN, WHO PULLED THE TRIGGER; AND A PRESIDENT, WHO TURNED SOLDIERS INTO TARGETS

TRUMP, at a Mar-a-Lago press conference on Thanksgiving Day, at which he called a reporter a "stupid person" for questioning his version of the D.C. shootings. PHOTO CREDIT: Screenshot of PBS NewsHour video

DONALD TRUMP DID NOT KILL SARAH BECKSTROM, the West Virginia National Guard specialist who died on Thanksgiving Day. 
     Nor did Trump shoot Andrew Wolfe, the Air Force staff sergeant, who as of this writing, was in critical condition with his wounds.
     The man who allegedly pulled the trigger on Nov. 26 was Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan refugee who helped the Central Intelligence Agency during the Afghanistan war, 
     But President Donald John Trump, the commander-in-chief,  put Beckstrom and Wolfe in harm’s way when he brought 2,000 National Guard troops into Washington, D.C. last August.
      What’s more, military commanders knew that Trump was placing the Guard’s men and women in peril.
     The Guard, which was supposed to boost crime-fighting in the capitol, would be “a target of opportunity” for terrorists and others, the experts said
     And it was no secret. Military officials had outlined their worries in memos that surfaced in a court case against the D.C. deployment of the Guard.
     Trump, of course, is taking no responsibility for any of this.
     Quite the opposite.
     He’s exploiting the tragedy, spreading the blame to lots of other people, while stirring hatred and fear throughout the country.
     There’s his favorite scapegoat, former President Joe Biden, whom he charges with  allowing Lakanwal and other Afghans, who helped the U.S. war efforts, into the U.S.; there’s a reporter who questioned Trump’s version of events, calling her a “stupid person;” and there’s the thousands of immigrants Trump is branding as security threats to the U.S.
     It gets more alarming and absurd.
     Trump has ordered 500 more Guard troops into Washington, so now there will be even more "targets of opportunity."
     And, according to the Washington Post, apparently the National Guard forces will be “paired” with Washington, D.C. law enforcement personnel – in other words, the local cops will be protecting the Guard, instead of the other way around.

LIKE LOTS OF OTHERS, I was expecting trouble when Trump sent the  National Guard to Washington, Los Angeles and other cities. But I figured it would come from missteps by the Guard itself, along the lines of the long-ago Kent State University shootings.
     That was in 1970, when four students were shot to death and nine others wounded as the Ohio National Guard turned its guns on innocent people during a Vietnam War protest.
    But according to the New York Times and other news sources, the military this time was worried – correctly – that Trump’s deployments would make the Guard’s men and women targets.
     Commanders warned that the soldiers were now in a “heightened threat environment.” The Times  reported a memo that said that “nefarious threat actors engaging in grievance based violence and those inspired by foreign terrorist organizations” might see the National Guard as “a target of opportunity.”
     The memo showed up in a lawsuit against the deployment by Brian Schwalb, the District of Columbia attorney general. The Times said that second memo warned that Guard’s presence “presents an opportunity for criminals, violent extremists, issue motivated groups and lone actors to advance their interests.”
     We don’t know what category Lakanwal fits into, if, as seems likely, he turns out to be the shooter. 
     He is reported by the Times and others to have been part of a “Zero Unit” which worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, protecting American interests. Human rights groups say such units used extreme and illegal tactics, which the CIA has denied.
     The units helped the U.S.’s chaotic withdrawal in 2001, and Lakanwal and thousands of others were brought to the U.S. during the Biden years, and he was granted asylum by the Trump administration in April. News reports say Lakanwal was vetted several times.

AT HIS MAR-A-LAGO ESTATE, Trump was at his most vicious and disingenuous on Thanksgiving Day as he met the media, including Nancy Cordes of CBS News, whose questions inflamed the president. 
     This transcript is from a video posted on YouTube by the PBS NewsHour:

     REPORTER: A question about this tragic shooting in Washington, DC. U.S. officials say that the suspect worked very closely with the CIA in Afghanistan for years, that he was vetted and the vetting came up clean. 
     TRUMP: He went cuckoo; I mean he went nuts, and that happens, too. That happens too often with these people.  You see them, but look, this is how they come in. This is how they're, they're standing on top of each other and that's an airplane. (Trump holds up a photo of the interior of an overcrowded airplane) 
     There was no vetting or anything. They came in unvetted, and we have a lot of others in this country. We're going to get them out. But they go cuckoo. Something happens to them.
     REPORTER: Your DOJ (Department of Justice) IG (inspector general) just reported this year that there was thorough vetting by DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and by the FBI of these Afghans, who were brought into the U.S. So why do you think that the Biden administration (is to blame)?
     TRUMP: Because they let him in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came in to, on a plane, along with thousands of other people that shouldn't be here, and you're just asking questions because you're a stupid person. 
     And we, there's a law passed that it's almost impossible not to, to get them out. You can't get them out once they come in. And they came in, and they were unvetted, they were unchecked, there were many of them and they came on our big planes. And it was disgraceful. And if you look, you'll see there was a law passed that makes it almost impossible not to let them in, not to certify them, so to speak, once they come in. And they came in and they shouldn't have come in. 
     And frankly, the whole thing was a mess. The whole Afghanistan situation was a mess. We shouldn't, it should have never have taken place.

WHAT SHOULDN’T HAVE TAKEN PLACE was the shooting of the two members of the National Guard.
     The soldiers shouldn’t have been in Washington at all.
     The shootings were monstrous, and the gunman deserves the full punishment of the law. 
     But just as culpable is the president of the United States, who turned soldiers into targets and now is exploiting their fate in order to bring more chaos and shame to the country.

These news sources were used in preparing this post:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2C0pTh7x9o
  
• https://people.com/trump-snaps-at-cbs-nancy-cordes-are-you-stupid-person-11858607
• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/us/guard-shooting-suspect-profile.html
  
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/28/national-guard-dc-police/
  
• https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/national-guard-was-target/685089/
  
• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/us/guard-troops-officials-worried-safety.html?smid=url-share