Ben reacts to the tragic New Year’s Day car attack in New Orleans and the Cybertruck fire outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. He provides responses to the New Orleans attack from key figures, including Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and others, and explores the current state of ISIS, examining their recent activities, stances, and relationships in the Middle East.
Chapter 1: What happened in the New Orleans car attack?
Hey folks, well it's very difficult to begin the new year with such terrible news out of New Orleans. I wanted to bring you the latest breaking news from the authorities at this point. So what we do know is that by various reports, somewhere between 10 and 15 people have died in New Orleans at this point. Another 35 have been wounded by a terror attack. The terrorist's name...
Chapter 2: Who is the suspect in the New Orleans attack?
is apparently Shamsud Din Jabbar. Now, normally I don't mention the names of mass killers. The difference is that the authorities are actually seeking more information about this person. And so if you have information about this person, it's actually relevant to know his name. He's a 42-year-old U.S. citizen from Texas. Apparently, according to the FBI, he was driving a Ford pickup truck.
which appears to have been rented. There was some early reporting that it had crossed over the U.S. southern border via the Eagle Pass crossing. That does not mean the person inside was an illegal immigrant or anything like that. Apparently, this car was rented.
It last crossed through that Eagle Pass crossing back in November, so it's quite possible the person who owned the vehicle went to Mexico and back into the country. In any case, What we do know is that at 3.15 a.m. Central Time, an individual drove a pickup truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
Chapter 3: What evidence suggests ISIS involvement in the attack?
After hitting the crowd, the suspect then exited the vehicle and fired on local law enforcement. Law enforcement returned fire and killed the suspect on scene. There was, in fact, an ISIS flag in the vehicle. the FBI did ask for citizen help in determining if there were any other associates. They are investigating other known associates.
They're operating under the assumption this person did not act alone and that this may, in fact, have been part of a terrorist cell. Presumably, one of the reasons for that is that there were IEDs that were found in the vehicle. There were also IEDs that were found, apparently, on the street. And those were apparently detonated a little bit earlier today.
There are questions that have been raised about why exactly Bourbon Street wasn't better protected, why there weren't steel bollards that were up, why there weren't barriers that would have prevented some sort of terrible automobile attack like this one. Obviously, this is not the first time that you've seen an Islamic terror attack of this nature.
Chapter 4: Why was Bourbon Street vulnerable during the attack?
Almost every year, there's a Christmas market in Europe that is attacked by some member associated with ISIS. So what the hell happened here? Well, apparently, according to New Orleans City Council member Jean-Pierre Morel, he said on Wednesday the barriers on Bourbon Street were in the process of being repaired. The suspect actually drove over the sidewalk to avoid that particular area.
He said even had the bollard barriers been up, the circumvention by riding on the sidewalk would have defeated them. Apparently, according to that city council member, the suspect was staying in an Airbnb before the attack. Again, a horrible, horrible attack. Details are still emerging. The officers who were involved in killing the suspect, two of them received gunfire.
Chapter 5: What details are known about the suspect's background?
According to the chief of police, they will be okay. What we do know about the suspect at this point, Jabbar was an Army veteran, possibly had been discharged. Unclear exactly at this point whether that would be an honorable or dishonorable discharge. There is some tape apparently floating around of the suspect doing things like diversity training on behalf of the military.
He apparently, again, was born in Texas and that he was raised in Texas as well. We don't know if he went abroad and was recruited abroad or if he was trained abroad or anything like that at this time. Again, what we do know, according directly to the FBI, is that he was driving a Ford pickup truck, which was rented. They're working to confirm how the suspect came into possession of the vehicle.
Chapter 6: What is the FBI's stance on the attack being terrorism?
And again, there was an ISIS flag that was located in the vehicle. The FBI says they're working to determine the subject's potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations. Now, very early on, the mayor of New Orleans immediately called this a terror attack, and the FBI immediately tried to walk that back and said, well, we don't know if it's a terror attack or not.
We're not going to care. And then they came back and said, we're investigating it as a terror attack. They're going to sort of pretend away the fact that they denied it was a terror attack at the outset. But this is pretty clearly an Islamist terror attack.
Chapter 7: Are there connections to other explosions or attacks?
So presumably the FBI is going to spend the next hours and days trying to retrace exactly what happened to this person, who this person was, who this person was associated with, and if there are other suspects who are out there right now. Meanwhile, there are other explosions that are happening. Unclear whether these are related, whether it's an accident or anything else like that.
It would be very weird if it were an accident, what just happened outside of the Trump Vegas hotel. Apparently... A Cybertruck blew up in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. It was a fairly large explosion. No reports of any casualties. It did rock the area. We have no other information on this at the time. Maybe somebody put fireworks in the Cybertruck.
Maybe this was a message about Elon Musk and Donald Trump. We don't know anything like that at this moment. President Trump has issued a statement. He issued a statement very quickly on this, did President Trump.
President Trump's statement lamented the amount of crime under Joe Biden to quote, when I said that criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the fake news media, but it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody's ever seen before.
Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. The Trump administration will fully support the city of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil. JD Vance also put out a statement in solidarity with the people of New Orleans at this time.
Is it heartbreaking violence last night in New Orleans? Such a beautiful and great American city. May God bless the victims and their families. Okay, so what exactly is going on here? Well, this person was an ISIS affiliate. We know that ISIS tends to recruit over the internet. We know that ISIS has agents all over the world.
Very often, these are people who are born domestically inside the West and then are recruited because they are radical Muslims into ISIS. We also know that ISIS has been flexing its muscle somewhat in Syria. the decline of the Assad regime in Syria, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, and its replacement with HTS, which is an Islamic Jihad break-off group.
It's a break-off group from originally Al-Qaeda and then also from ISIS. That break-off group says they now oppose al-Qaeda and they oppose ISIS, but we know that ISIS also has been attempting jailbreaks in the Kurdish areas of Syria. Could this have something to do with the situation in Syria, the caste in Syria? Totally unclear at this point.
Again, it could be another one of these ISIS quote-unquote lone wolves. Again, it appears this person was a domestic American citizen, a person born in the United States and who's recruited into ISIS. Islamic terrorism remains a serious threat to the American public. Pretending that away by suggesting that the real threat in America is right-wing quote-unquote white supremacism.
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