Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.
Tom Homan, the 30-plus-year immigration enforcement veteran selected to serve as Donald Trump’s “border czar,” has already seized on his boss’ proclivity for bluster and bullshit.
During a Fox News appearance last week to discuss the New Year’s Day terror attack in New Orleans and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas hours later, Homan claimed without evidence that the second incident must be the work of Islamic jihadists.
Why? Without providing a lick of evidence, Homan chalked it up to a “gut feeling.”
“I’ve done this for three and a half decades,” said Homan, a former Border Patrol agent who served as acting director of ICE during the first half of the first Trump administration. “I just think there’s too many similarities, there’s too much coincidence. Down the road, they’re going to show there’s some connection, whether it’s some same network where they got the tools to pull these terrorist attacks off.”
So far, details supplied by actual federal agents investigating the incidents — you know, people who must rely on evidence, not “gut feelings” — suggest Homan pulled his answer straight out of his ass, wet and steaming.
New Orleans attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar had an ISIS flag in his truck and posted online videos declaring his support for the terror organization. Meanwhile, Matthew Livelsberger, the Green Beret who shot himself and detonated the Cybertruck in Las Vegas, left notes showing his support for Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
In those notes, Livelsberger said his suicide was a “wake up call” aimed at addressing what the Associated Press called “political grievances, societal problems and both domestic and international issues.”
“This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” Livelsberger wrote in a letter reported on by the AP. In a separate note, he urged Americans to “rally around” Trump and Musk, the latter an ally of the incoming president.
So far, federal investigators have revealed no connection between Livelsberger and Jabbar beyond the coincidental. Both served at the same military base at one point and both rented their vehicles from the carsharing service Turo, for example.
Even so, authorities said they’re continuing to pursue any lead that could tie the cases together, which a far cry from Homan’s bombastic claim.
What is clear so far is that Homan — a Project 2025 co-author and an architect of the first Trump White House’s ghoulish family separation policy — is an assclown more concerned about echoing his boss’ nativist, anti-Muslim rhetoric than taking the time to know what the fuck he’s talking about.
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This article appears in Dec 26, 2024 – Jan 1, 2025.
