Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) ripped the media coverage of the attack on New Year's Eve revelers in New Orleans early Wednesday morning, arguing the alleged crime should be treated as an act of war.
“As I watch coverage of this barbaric, cowardly attack that was ISIS-inspired, it is disturbing how far America has drifted from the fact that we are in a state of war with radical Islamic forces,” Graham wrote in a Thursday post on the social platform X.
The man who drove into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street was identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar. Police found an ISIS flag in the vehicle at the time of the attack, and the FBI said he was "100 percent" motivated by the terrorist group in a Thursday morning briefing.
“The coverage suggests we’re fighting a crime and that ISIS-inspired attacks are mere criminal events, not part of the larger war on terrorism," Graham said.
“It is now time for America to realize that radical Islamic-directed or inspired attacks are acts of war, not part of a criminal enterprise,” he added.
“The tools designed to protect America in a time of war are being underutilized. I am hoping President Trump will realize this key distinction.”
The New Orleans attack was one of two suspected attacks in which the primacy suspects have ties to the U.S. military.
A Cybertruck was used in an explosion outside of the Las Vegas Trump International Hotel, also on Wednesday, killing the man inside of the vehicle, who has been identified as Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an Army service member.
“We as a society must answer how and why two service members, who we trusted to keep our nation and its citizens safe, could turn around to commit heinous acts of violence that resulted in the death of innocent American citizens,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) wrote in a statement on X.
“Our intelligence community must be proactive in combatting growing threats from ISIS that were eliminated under President Trump but have reemerged due to the Biden Administration’s bad foreign policy decisions,” she added.
“The need to know who is in our country and if there’s a correlation with these attacks has become urgent.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) also blasted the FBI over its initial assessment of the attack.
“The FBI’s initial assessment that the New Orleans attack was not an act of terror is absolutely unacceptable,” she wrote on X. “There is no excuse for this egregious mistake considering there was an ISIS flag in the suspect’s vehicle.”
Authorities in Louisiana have assured the public that New Orleans is safe, with the Sugar Bowl now scheduled for Thursday afternoon, after being postponed from Wednesday night.
Authorities are ramping up security presence in various areas across the country following the attacks, though investigators have yet to discover a connection between the incidents in New Orleans and Las Vegas.
