President Donald Trump walked into the Mar-a-Lago ballroom like a conquering hero to the rousing tune of “We Are the World.”
No matter that it was an ’80s anthem urging help for victims of famine, of little import to Trump’s dissolution of USAID, and the untold suffering in the developing world it caused.
All happening in a cheery, festive room, its tables piled with Thanksgiving food, much of it left uneaten.
Before the night was over, the president was busting out his signature dance, his elbows awkwardly glued to his ribs, cankles swelling, his clenched fists punching the air. Even his moves to “YMCA” are all about winning.
He doesn’t drink. But Trump woke on Black Friday to a big headache that no hangover cure could ever fix.
As much as he wanted to label the man who ambushed two National Guard members and shot them in cold blood outside a D.C. Metro station as a terrorist who should never have been allowed into the country, that was not the case. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, had protected Americans from terrorists.
As a soldier working with the CIA in Afghanistan, Lakanwal heroically helped U.S. troops as they scrambled to leave the country from Kabul Airport ahead of the Taliban.
By any normal vetting process, he deserved to be here.
If there was any breakdown in the immigration process—and there is no evidence of one—it occurred under Trump, not Joe Biden.
The death of National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, 20, means her family can never celebrate Thanksgiving again without grieving. Her colleague, Andrew Wolfe, 24, is still fighting for his life in the hospital after they were gunned down two blocks from the White House on Wednesday.
Had Trump not ordered the National Guard into the nation’s capital, this retaliatory violence could have been avoided. They were there to fight crime, but they became the targets. They stand in pairs outside Washington’s Metro stops, watching commuters and tourists go about their business.
“We have a very safe city now,” Trump said before the shootings. “The country is going to be safe. We do it one at a time.”
However, a Reuters review of public records showed that while some crimes, especially those involving guns, were down, overall crime hadn’t changed much with soldiers on the streets.
While some types of crime—especially gun offenses—have become less frequent since Trump ordered troops into the city, overall violent crime hasn’t changed that much.
Even Wednesday’s shooting will not derail Trump’s insistence that he has made D.C. safer.
He will have more trouble blaming everyone else for the actions of the Afghan shooter.
Trump has never missed an opportunity to blame the shambolic U.S. departure on his predecessor. Now, he’s again referencing the messy withdrawal to shovel blame for the Washington shooting onto the Biden administration.
But Lakanwal’s case is far more complicated than that. And Trump must share some of the blame.
The shooter, a father of five from Washington state, had been recruited to Unit 03 of the Kandahar Strike Force, known as the Scorpion Forces, which operated under the CIA, his former military commander told the BBC.
That same commander said Lakanwal, a GPS tracker specialist, bravely helped the U.S. forces fleeing Kabul and then helped protect the airport for six days before finally being airlifted to the U.S.
Asylum would seem to be a reasonable request considering Lakanwal’s actions, and it was duly granted under Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome, which provided sanctuary in the U.S. for 77,000 Afghan refugees from the Taliban.
Afghan people climb atop a plane as they wait at the Kabul airport in Kabul on Aug. 16, 2021.
Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty
“The Biden Administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the US Government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement to CBS.
Lakanwal was allowed into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds in 2021 on “parole,” allowing him to live and work legally and then apply for a more permanent status.
He didn’t apply for asylum to remain permanently until December 2024, according to Reuters.
FBI Director Kash Patel claimed that the gunman was wrongly allowed into 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.”
But Trump was in the White House when the Afghan veteran was permitted to stay in the country in April this year. He had no criminal record, and his vetting was apparently successful, although he had not yet been granted a Green Card.
As a retaliation to the shooting, Trump has demanded a “re-examination” of all Afghan nationals who entered the U.S. during the Biden administration. The Trump administration suspended all immigration applications by Afghan nationals on Wednesday night.
“This animal would’ve never been here if not for Joe Biden’s dangerous policies, which allowed countless unvetted criminals to invade our country and harm the American people,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
It is a political tactic to deflect the blame, and it feeds neatly into Trump’s immigration narrative.
But as much as Trump, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, want to blame Biden, the issue is way deeper than that, with its origins in the West’s decision to wage war on the Taliban.
One year ago, Trump was dancing at Mar-a-Lago with Elon Musk at the prospect of his return to the White House.
Twelve months on, he feels he has much to celebrate. He claims to have solved countless wars, illegal immigration, crime, and the price of eggs.
But 2,459 Americans and around 200,000 Afghans lost their lives in the fight for freedom in Afghanistan.
America’s war on the Taliban dates back over four presidencies, from Bush through Obama, Trump, and Biden. There is plenty of blame to go around.
It is not becoming for a president to be dancing on their graves. It was a complicated war with a problematic outcome.
And it is not the time to score political points.
The post Why Trump Can’t Dance His Way Out of Blame for D.C. Shooting appeared first on The Daily Beast.
