Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.) criticized President-elect Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for their remarks in the aftermath of the deadly New Orleans truck attack, saying “this is time that we should be united.”
“Brianna, it’s unfortunate that both the president-elect and Speaker Johnson has chosen to make this a partisan issue. This is an American attack,” Carter, who represents Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District, comprised of nearly the entire city of New Orleans, said Thursday in an interview on CNN. “This is an attack on our democracy. This is an attack on our freedoms.”
“This person was radicalized, but he was an American citizen, a citizen of Texas, and someone who was honorably discharged from the United States Army,” he told anchor Brianna Keilar. “And we should not play games with the American people to try and imply that it was something that it wasn’t, which is somehow suggest that this was a Democrat or Republican issue.”
Carter added, “And we have to be a more mature and more direct and fair and honest with the American people. This is not the time to play political brinksmanship or gamesmanship.”
His remarks came as both Trump and Johnson were critical of the Biden’s administration’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border following the attack that killed at least 14 people and injured dozens more. The president-elect pinned the blame on President Biden’s “Open Border’s Policy.”
“With the Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy’ I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe,” the president-elect wrote on Truth Social.
“That time has come, only worse than ever imagined,” Trump added.
The suspect behind the attack was Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen who served in the Army from 2007 to 2020. Jabbar plowed a rented Ford pickup truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street in on New Year’s Day. He was later shot and killed by law enforcement after he opened fire on the officers.
Officials said they found an Islamic State (ISIS) flag in the vehicle and posts on social media sympathizing with the U.S.-designated terrorist group. The FBI also noted Thursday that they believe he acted alone.
The Pelican State Democrat said the country should stand “united” and push back against “terrorist threats” to showcase that the American people will use every “resource” to “combat these kind of hateful and heinous acts.”
“No time for political games or trickery to suggest somehow that one party or the other may be responsible? The families of the loved ones who have died and those who are in the hospital fighting for their lives, and our law enforcement agents from the federal, local and state deserve better,” Carter said.
“And I would call on all of our leadership to stand firm and recognizing that we are Americans, and we are better than this,” he added.
