Trump Shifts Blame For Guardsman's Death, Then Makes Everything About Himself

 

Reuters has the facts about the gunman who killed one National Guard soldier in Washington, DC, and gravely wounded another on Wednesday, in case you've been hearing a fire hose of lies from the Malignant Fascist and his regime:

The Trump administration on Thursday blamed Biden-era vetting failures for the admission of an Afghan immigrant suspected of shooting two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., but the alleged gunman was granted asylum this year under President Donald Trump, according to a U.S. government file seen by Reuters.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, entered the U.S. on September 8, 2021, under Operation Allies Welcome. The resettlement program was set up by former Democratic President Joe Biden after the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 that led to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and the country's takeover by the Taliban.

 

FBI Director Kash Patel and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, both Trump appointees, said during a press conference on Thursday that the Biden administration had failed to conduct adequate background checks or vetting on Lakanwal before allowing him to enter the U.S. in 2021.

 

Neither official provided any evidence to support their assertion.

Patel said Lakanwal, who had worked with U.S. government forces during the U.S. war in Afghanistan, was improperly allowed to enter the U.S. because "the prior administration made the decision to allow thousands of people into this country without doing a single piece of background checking or vetting."

 

The program, which allowed more than 70,000 Afghan nationals into the U.S., according to a congressional report, was designed with vetting procedures, including by U.S. counter-terrorism and intelligence agencies. But the large-scale and rushed nature of the evacuations led critics to say the background checks were inefficient.

 

Under the Operation Allies Welcome program, Afghans evacuated to the U.S. were granted a two-year "parole" that allowed them to live and work legally and then apply for a more permanent status.

The document reviewed by Reuters said Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved on April 23 of this year, three months after Trump took office. Lakanwal, 29, who resided in Washington state, had no known criminal history, the official said.

 

The government file on Lakanwal said he had been vetted by the U.S. because of his work with U.S. government partners during the war in Afghanistan, and no potentially disqualifying information had been found.  (our emphasis)

 

West Virginia National Guard soldier Sarah Beckstrom, 20, was killed by the gunman and fellow Guardsman Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains in grave condition.  They were sent to Washington, DC, on the pretext of bringing "law and order" when, according to the Council on Criminal Justice,

Washington’s numbers shift depending on what time period and what types of crime you examine. But overall, there is an unmistakable and large drop in reported violence in the District since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, gun assaults, robbery, and carjacking...

There's no reason these two young patriotic Americans should have been in Washington, DC, except that they were the actors in a play that the Malignant Fascist and his coup-plotting team were staging there and in cities across America. They gave up their lives for someone who had this to say when asked about funeral arrangements (our emphasis):

Q: Do you plan to attend Sarah's funeral? 

 

TRUMP: I haven't thought about it yet, but it's certainly something I can conceive of. I love West Virginia. You know, I won West Virginia by one of the biggest margins of any president anywhere.

 

What a sick, psychopatic puddle of excrement he is.

 

(Photo:  Win McNamee/ Getty Images)