Two National Guardsmen sent to Washington, D.C., to assist in the Trump administration’s quest to clean up the capital city were shot on Wednesday after Democrats spent months claiming the Guardsmen’s presence in the Swamp was “authoritarian” and illegal.
The conditions of the Guardsmen as of Wednesday night were still unclear. Information about the alleged suspect, however, pointed to 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who allegedly overstayed the U.S. Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) offered to him by the Biden administration during the country’s 2021 collapse.
While the suspect’s exact motive has yet to be confirmed, even D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who once called President Donald Trump’s National Guard plans an “authoritarian push,” agreed it was a targeted shooting.
Ever since Trump announced in August that he would return policing control in Washington, D.C., to federal law enforcement, Democrats have vilified the National Guard in the capital city.
The National Guard’s presence indisputably curbed D.C.’s crime rate. One week into National Guard boots on the ground in the nation’s capital, the city known for its high homicide rate went seven days without a single murder. Almost immediately, carjackings also decreased by 83 percent, robberies fell by 46 percent, car thefts dropped by 21 percent, and overall violent crime reduced by 22 percent.
Despite the crime reduction, Democrats continued to condemn Trump and the Guard. The blue party’s allegations that the Guardsmen’s presence was an “occupation” led to protests where ranks were ridiculed for following orders.
Shortly after Trump’s August declaration, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed the plan to federalize D.C. law enforcement “has no basis in law and will put the safety of the people of our Nation’s capital in danger.”
“We stand with the residents of the District of Columbia and reject this unjustified power grab as illegitimate,” Jeffries concluded.
Rep. Maxine Waters added to the dogpile by arguing that the deployment confirmed “Trump clearly hates Black people.”
“This would be dictator is using confrontational tactics to provoke Blacks, Latinos, and others into a standoff. He is just itching to invoke Martial Law, and yes, even push for civil war,” Waters continued.
Rep. Jamie Raskin added that the National Guard was a “textbook authoritarian maneuver,” and Sen. Chris Van Hollen called it “a total abuse of power” so Trump could “play dictator in Washington.”
Their veiled threats only intensified after a district judge tried to hamper the Trump administration with a ruling declaring the National Guard’s D.C. deployment illegal.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, one of the so-called “Seditious Six” who encouraged the military to disobey orders, used her TV appearance days before the attack to suggest that the National Guardsmen tasked with quelling crime in major cities would “get nervous, get stressed,” and “shoot at American civilians.”
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently called the White House’s crime-fighting strategy an “attack on the American people.”
In October California Gov. Gavin Newsom similarly called the presence of federal agents in his state “right out of the dictator’s handbook.”
Corporate media also did their part to sow controversy by publishing polls that framed the deployment as the result of a dire decision that directly contradicted residents’ wishes. One PBS anchor piled on by wondering how D.C. residents were “adapting to life under federal control.”
Even in their statements addressing the attack, Democrats were quick to redirect blame from the alleged perpetrator to the Trump administration for bringing the Guard to D.C. in the first place.
Dr. Jacque Patterson Sr., the president and at-large representative on the D.C. State Board of Education and 2026 candidate for DC Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, classified the act of violence as the consequence of “a commander-in-chief who unnecessarily is federalizing our city for political theater.”
Several accounts on the left-wing platform Blue Sky took it further when they openly celebrated the Thanksgiving Eve attack.