Maggie Haberman on Thursday predicted Donald Trump will continue to manipulate the New Orleans truck attack into a narrative that supports his anti-immigration agenda in the coming weeks as he takes office.
“What’s behind it, Pam, is that Trump has a pretty firm anti-immigrant box in which he fits most things, and this is no exception,” the prominent New York Times reporter told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Source.”
“They’re tripling down. His communications director, Steven Cheung, sent me a statement … loosely tying this incident to examples where immigrants have crossed the border who had ISIS ties.”
“They were relatively small in number compared to the number of border crossings there are daily,” she added.
“But you are going to, I suspect, see President-elect Trump continue to push this, because he has said … that on day one, he is going to seal the border, and I think you are going to see him use this as a reason why.”
The journalist said she was “not surprised” with the direction Trump took, despite there still being “so much we don’t know” about the attacker who killed at least 14 people by plowing through Bourbon Street in a truck on New Year’s Day.
The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of terrorism.
On Wednesday, before the FBI had identified its suspect publicly, Trump linked the attack to immigration failures.
But when the suspect was identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas, Trump did not back down, continuing his tirade against “OPEN BORDERS.”
Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, provided a statement to HuffPost on Thursday akin to the one Haberman described when asked if the president-elect intended to amend his misleading comments following the identification of the suspect.
“President Trump rightfully highlighted that criminals crossing the border have committed some of the most heinous crimes this country has witnessed in its history. That is a factual statement,” he said in part, adding, “It is also true that radical Islamic terrorism and its warped ideology have crossed into our country and infected those looking to spread hate and violence.”
Elected Republicans have also seized on the violence as an opportunity to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies and tout the incoming administration’s immigration plans.
Trump, who made undocumented immigration a core issue of his election campaign, has vowed a sweeping mass deportation effort and immigration crackdown when he takes office.