Trump Continues To Push Border Framing Day After Fox News Retracted New Orleans Attack Truck Crossing Report
President-elect Donald Trump continued to slam the Biden administration’s border policy one day after appearing to seize on now-retracted Fox News reporting that the rental truck driven by the New Orleans attack suspect crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
Shamsud Din Jabbar, revealed to be a U.S. citizen and veteran, drove a vehicle down Bourbon Street in New Orleans early Wednesday killing 15 people in what authorities say was a premeditated attack, before he was killed in a firefight with law enforcement at the scene. According to federal investigators that suspect was inspired by ISIS.
Wednesday morning, however, as newsrooms scrambled to navigate the fluid information space and investigate the incident, Fox News emerged with the stunning reporting at around 10.45am ET that the Texas license plate on the rental truck used by the attacker was picked up as it crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, through Eagle Pass, Texas, just two days prior to the attack. The network cited anonymous sources.
Just minutes after Fox News broadcast the border crossing report, Trump issued his first statement on the incident at 10.48AM ET.
Apparently riding on the report as precedent to revisit his claims about illegal immigration, Trump blasted “criminals coming in” from other countries while slamming Democrats and the “Fake News Media” for refusing to believe his warnings about foreign criminals.
Fox News reporter David Spunt read Trump’s statement out on air just after 11 am ET, fact-checking Trump’s insinuation about a link between the attacker and the border. Spunt clarified that the citizenship status of the suspect was not known at that time.
By then, other MAGA personalities and lawmakers had jumped on Trump’s statement.
Over an hour later, at around 11.55AM ET, the initial claim was withdrawn and the date which the truck had reportedly crossed the border was corrected.
In good practice, host Bryan Llenas clarified that the truck had been recorded crossing on November 19th. This placed the border crossing claims around 6 weeks prior to the attack, not two days. Likewise, the host added that the rental truck was not being driven by the suspect at the time but someone else.
Into the afternoon, hosts and reporters repeated the correction, Fox News anchor Julie Banderas repeated the retraction while interviewing Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill. She clearly noted that although the truck was “brought from Texas and spotted in Eagle Pass” it “never actually passed through from Mexico into Eagle Pass.”
“However the license plate on this truck has a history of plate readers at the border, in patterns, and I’m quoting, that may be suspicious for human smuggling,” she added.
The correction of the earlier reporting, however, did not quite ring through as loudly as the initial claims that the truck had crossed the border. Either the correction was missed or was willfully ignored as Trump continued into Thursday to point to “open borders” as connected to Wednesday’s attack.
The president-elect, who previously promised mass deportations from the beginning of his new administration, declared that failure to address border security had, as he’d predicted, led to the rise of “Radical Islamic Terrorism and other forms of violent crime” in the country.
The retraction was also missed by Outkick’s Tomi Lahren who took to X to demand Biden “close the border now.” Lahren went on to unleash on Democrats for having “sold out” American “safety and security” by trying to “pack as many illegals into this country as possible” in a bid for future votes.
Despite then retweeting the correction, Lahren on Thursday blasted authorities for a “wide open southern border” and “importing people who HATE us.”
Watch above via Fox News.
