Following the attack on two National Guard soldiers in Washington D.C., the two wounded men continue to fight for their lives. Meanwhile, President Trump is using the incident to further his political agenda.
It remains unknown why the 29-year-old Afghan man shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. At a press conference, FBI Director Kash Patel stated that the investigation is currently focused on suspected terrorism. However, no information regarding a possible motive has yet been released.
For US President Donald Trump, this is no reason to hold back. Just hours after the attack, he attempted to exploit the event for political gain with a speech to the nation. He claimed the root of all evil was the overly liberal immigration policy of his predecessor, Joe Biden:"The suspect is a foreigner from Afghanistan—a hellhole on earth! He was flown in by the Biden administration in September 2021 on those infamous flights everyone was talking about."
Trump blames Biden
The program in question is "Operation Allies Welcome," initiated by the Biden administration after the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban's takeover. According to government officials, it enabled approximately 76,000 former local staff members who had worked with US soldiers to apply for asylum and enter the United States.
"Nobody knew who was coming in," Trump claims, and now wants to have"every single foreigner" who entered the US from Afghanistan during Biden's presidency re-screened. Instead of calming tempers on the eve of the American family holiday of Thanksgiving, the US president is using the incident to aggressively defend his increasingly unpopular immigration policies.
Government plans to further tighten migration policy
Following Trump's video message on the online platform X, the US immigration authority USCIS announced that it would suspend the processing of all immigration applications from Afghan nationals with immediate effect until further notice.
Vice President JD Vance announced plans to deport even more people:"(...) We will redouble our efforts to deport people who have no right to be in our country," Vance wrote on X.
The irony of the matter: The asylum application of the 29-year-old suspect was approved at the end of April 2025 - at that time Trump himself had already been in office for three months.
Bondi:"Progressive left-wing idiots"
Other members of Trump's cabinet also used the opportunity to lash out at the opposition. US Attorney General Pam Bondi, in an interview with Fox News, accused Democratic lawmakers and journalists of contributing to the violence by criticizing the deployment of the National Guard."We're going to look at everything they said and whether they encouraged this violence," Bondi said."It's sad what's become of our country with these progressive left-wing idiots."
More than 2,000 National Guard troops have been deployed in Washington since the summer. Trump ordered them to the capital in August, justifying their mobilization with claims of rampant crime. This is highly controversial – primarily because crime statistics do not support this assertion.
Even more National Guard troops in Washington D.C.
Washington's mayor and the local police have repeatedly spoken out against the deployment of the National Guard in their city. The District of Columbia even filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration—and won. A federal judge ruled about a week ago that the repeatedly extended deployment of the National Guard in the city was illegal.
The US president remains unmoved by this decision. After the shooting of the two National Guardsmen, he feels justified. He has even instructed his Pentagon chief to send another 500 National Guardsmen to the capital.
