Bulwark Takes - Trump is Exploiting a Tragedy to Burn This Country Down

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

JVL and Sarah take on the shooting of two National Guard members in DC, Trump’s escalation, his push for denaturalization and “reverse migration,” the online right’s king-fantasies, the Wall Street Journal’s warning about abandoning allies, and what real leadership demands in moments of national crisis.

Hey there, this is JVL with my best friend from the bulwark, Sarah Longwell. On Wednesday, as we were all departing and traveling for Thanksgiving, terrible tragedy in Washington, D.C., where an Afghan national shot two National Guard members downtown, just about a few blocks from the White House. One of those National Guard members, Sarah Bextrum from West Virginia, has now died from her wounds. The other one is in critical condition still. terrible, horrible thing. And I, you know, so we're finding out things, Sarah, you know, news dribbling out about the shooter. He was an Afghan national who was a partner with the U.S. military and

with the CIA during the war, came over during the Biden administration, was granted asylum under the Trump administration, seems to have been settled in Washington State and to have driven cross country. He's got a wife and five kids, I believe, driven cross. country with the goal of shooting and killing people in Washington. Unbelievable evil, hard to understand how this happened or where the turn went, because it's a big turn from putting your life on the line by being a partner for America in your home country where that sort of thing can get you killed, to coming to America, to asking to stay in America to then going and murdering Americans, and especially, like, Americans who had nothing

to do with you, right? Just, I'm going to drive cross-country and just kill these two people randomly. And that's basically all you can say is that it's awful. This is a horrible tragedy. And, like, you know, these moments right now when things, when horrible things are happening, they all live inside the political context. Like, there's a whole, you know, it's, it's, it becomes immediately coded toward immigration and should the National Guard be in these places. And, you know, I just, this is one of those moments, especially around the holidays, where you just want to say, like, this is so sad. I was looking at pictures.

I mean, she's such a young woman. Yeah. Not even old enough to drink. Yeah. I, it is. The day before Thanksgiving. I mean, I, ah. And it's one of those moments where, like, you just sort of want to say,

let's take a beat on we don't know like there's no point in speculating right now what the motives were we don't know um or why this this happened they are they are tragedies um and they are tragedies that of course end up being sort of they end up in the political context and so uh you know and it it led Trump Trump has been sort of lashing out um since this happened happened. He has been lashing out in general. This is the third, like, as a, one of the reporters was just pointing out, right? Because Trump's saying, you know, this person shouldn't be here. The reporters pointing out that he is here because the Trump, DOJ, granted asylum. Trump lashes out at her and calls her terrible. And it's like the third female reporter he has like seriously lashed out at. And then he sent this long screed last night, in the middle of the night, late in the night. It's going to have implications. Like, I don't know what those implications are yet, but the fact that Donald Trump tweeted this,

like this incident, we've been in kind of this state of Trump's putting National Guard places and everybody understands, don't take the bait, don't let Trump force escalation. This is one of those moments where we probably find ourselves now with this reverberating in some kind of an escalation. And I would say the first point of that escalation has been the tweet from last night. And so now we can dig in on that. Before we do this, so I want to, I want to use myself as an object lesson in bad thinking. So, because this is, you know, I think we all have to question our own how we react to these things.

My first reaction to this story was these two kids in the National Guard never should have been there. They shouldn't have been in Washington. They were deployed there. And they're dead because Trump had this thing that he wanted. Like, he just needed flex his muscles. He was going to, again, that was my first plus reaction. But now learning more about the shooter, I think that's not true. Somebody who drives cross country is, was going to kill somebody.

And so if it hadn't been them, if the National Guard had never been deployed to D.C., we don't know everything yet, but it sure sounds like this is the kind of guy who was going to find somebody to hurt somewhere. And so, like, again, this is me telling you on myself, like, my first blush, like, yeah, actually, that may not be helpful, right? Like, it's bad that Trump deployed the National Guard to D.C., but maybe, maybe these two kids wouldn't have gotten shot, but maybe somebody else somewhere would have. Because, again, this seems like just a disturbed or evil or radicalized person, and we don't know which it is, but hopefully we'll find out so we can make some real decisions. Anyway, I just say this to everybody as a way of like, hey, slow your role. Like, you don't, you know, don't go jumping with your first impulses. That's all.

I think that's right. I think it's okay to acknowledge, like, the deploying of the National Guard just isn't, isn't child's play. Like, it's not, you don't just do this stuff. It creates these complicated situations. But I also think it's hard because there is sort of a political, inflaming context that surrounds all of it, while at the same. time really always does come down to people doing awful things for unimaginable reasons. In any other time, certainly in our lifetimes in America, the response of presidents to moments like this, to flashpoints, regardless of where their politics are, is to try to tamp

down everything, right? No matter what, whether it is a terrorist attack or a shooting at a gay nightclub or racially and, you know, motivated murder. Like, when big national stuff like this happens, the president, whether he is Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, the response is always take the temperature down because that's the job. Not this president. So he, uh, he went on to truth social and last night posted, like for him what is like an essay, basically. A very happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our great American citizens and patriots

who have been so nice in allowing our country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the world for being, quote, politically correct, and just plain stupid when it comes to immigration. Goes on from there. Talking about how a migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family. This does feel like it was ghostwritten by Stephen Miller. This is long enough and filled with enough quasi-facts. He calls the seriously retarded governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing,

et cetera, et cetera. He says, I will permanently pause migration from all third world countries, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility and deport any foreign national who is a public charge security risk or non-compatible with Western civilization. I want to talk about this because this is sort of where Trump, I think, has been wanting to go, and he is going to, much like that guy big balls, him being jumped in D.C. is what led to them deploying the National Guard, which is still there months later, despite the fact that these guys have had nothing to do. and they just plant trees and clean up trash.

But Trump does this thing where denaturalized migrants who undermine domestic tranquility. Now, that is a wildly subjective. What does it mean to undermine domestic tranquility? But here's the thing that he's saying, and I want people to understand this and how pernicious it is. Like, this is one of the scariest things that I think Trump has put out. he's saying for people who are naturalized U.S. citizens, if you undermine domestic tranquility, so can that just be speaking out against Donald Trump? That certainly seems to be their litmus test for what it mean. I mean, they're talking about putting to death senators and Congress people

who are military service members who simply say, do not follow illegal orders. You do not have to follow illegal orders. And they say, first he said it was punishable by death. He was retweeting people saying, hang these people, president in the United States. And like, we should not get desensitized to this. But what he is saying here is if your spouse is a naturalized citizen, if your parents are a naturalized citizens, but we don't like what somebody said, what one of their kids say, we can now use threat of denaturalization and deportation against them. This is beyond, okay, they are talking about denatron. This is people who have gone through the whole process.

They've become American citizens. Many of them maybe have lived here for 30, 40 years. They are Americans, their kids are Americans, their extended family are Americans. And you'd never know seeing them on the street that they were naturalized citizens. Suddenly, Trump's saying, no, we can use this against you. I just, I need people to pause on this and sit with it. Only reverse migration, which is a fancy way of saying ethnic cleansing, I think, can fully cure this situation. Other than that, happy Thanksgiving to all, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for, you won't be here for long.

This sounds like a guy who wants everything to burn. Yeah. And I would like to read to you from not a never-trumper site from the Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journal's editorial today. Some will say this means the U.S. should never admit such refugees. I'm sorry. Why couldn't they just say Donald Trump? Instead of saying some will say, why not say the president is saying this?

But that's not, you know, they're being courageous, but not that courageous. But the alternative is abandoning allies who assist Americans in war. war to the retribution of our enemies. The fate of Afghans, men and women who worked with the U.S. has often been brutal. You can be sure Americans will fight overseas again, and our troops will need allies on the ground to assist. How many will assist us if they believe there will be no exit for them to the U.S.

leaves with the enemy triumphant? The Wall Street Journal is saying, this is a terrible idea. This is very bad policy. This is think about the implications for American. and national security in the long run, you take, you know, 340 million people in the country. It's a big country. You're going to find crazy people and bad people and bad things will happen every day, especially when you have 400 million guns floating around.

Nobody wants to say that maybe we shouldn't have so much access to guns. That's okay. Put that aside. But that there are like bigger national security concerns because they're, you know, people do take lessons, right? If the lesson is that we hang out all of our Afghan partners to drive because it turns out that one guy is a psychopath or is a terrorist or shouldn't have gotten through vetting or whatever the case may be. And we're going to make all of our policy decisions based on that.

Then how are we supposed to project power in the world? Right. I mean, this, these things should be obvious and good on the Wall Street Journal editorial board for saying it. But it is amazing that the present United States. And again, this really does read like it was from Stephen Miller, not hot. Yeah, the tweet does. Yeah, the tweet. Because it's a tweet thread. Trump never talks at like that much length in his own voice. Reverse migration. This, and this is what Stephen Miller has been waiting for. I am, I am, I'm sad about the tragedy itself. I'm sad about this young woman. I'm sad about the state of our politics that it brought us here. And I, I, I, this idea of, of, like, I don't know how I was to say this other than, like, they've been waiting. They're waiting for an excuse. They've been desperate for an excuse.

They're trying to manufacture it, right? They didn't get one in Chicago. They tried desperately in Chicago to get people to respond in ways that were unhelpful and would have served as provocations. And they didn't get it. That's right. And so I don't know ultimately what comes of this. And I do hope more people like the Wall Street Journal push back forcefully on. this escalation of where Trump wants to take it.

But they have been waiting for something like this so that they can implement this idea of like reverse migration, expelling people, more latitude with, and, you know, I still, thank God for the courts, because denaturalizing people is actually quite hard, but the extent to which they may try to accelerate that process. I don't know. This is a, I just, I guess I want people to understand that this is a, it could, be a turning point. Trump is going to try to make it a turning point by which they go much more aggressively to do this kind of thing. It will only be thwarted if more people like the

Wall Street Journal say, don't do this. This is a mistake. And if Republicans push back on this idea. And look, I don't know if this is, this is a lot of online stuff. I've been trying to not be too online on Thanksgiving. But you know, you're just seeing so many more people say things like like Laura Lumer tweeted, that's it. I want a king. And you should the report. Plies are, and look, maybe they're all bots from other countries, but people seem, there is a, and I know from listening to voters that this is not true of the vast majority of people, but like the extent to which the online right seems to be desperate for a dictator and desperate for this kind of action, there will be people who egg Trump on relentlessly on this front. And I've also seen a bunch of people tweeting things like this guy, this, this Afghan refugee. He's going to get a lawyer and he's going to get, you know, a fair, a trial. And they're seeing it with outrage. And I just want to be like, that's the point of America.

The whole point is that, yes, we're not like Afghanistan. We're not like third world countries that would just shoot this guy. Like, he gets a trial. That is the, that's the whole point. A fair trial. A jury of his beers, yeah, an incompetent defense and all that stuff. free speech means tolerating horrible things that we don't like. Like American pluralism, it's what we do.

We don't have a kick. And this I really think is a mask off. When you take the explicit call saying that reverse migration is the only thing that will handle this, that he wants to pursue denaturalization, and you put that next to the administration's ongoing attempt to do away with birthright citizenship, I don't know how to read that as anything other than saying, we want this to be a country only for heritage Americans. Blood and soil. Which is a very European understanding of nationhood.

It is absolutely contra the American history, law, and tradition. It's incredibly radical. And I wonder if people see it. I wonder if people understand that that's really what is at the root of this. It isn't really like, oh, we got to get rid of the trend to Agua members. It's not like, oh, we have to control our borders. That's not what this is about. And it's never what it's been about.

It's why those of us who are like, no, they're talking about control our borders because it's like the most convenient club. They don't mean that. And now we see that they don't mean that. Part of what I really loathe about Trump is like when you show me a picture, the young woman who was killed. I'm filled with anger at her death. I feel like I'm so sad for her family. I'm so sad that this happened. And so people have this anger. And Trump tries to direct that anger in the most anti-American way, right? People are going to be angry about this. And it's because it's a devastating tragedy. But Trump wants to weaponize that and then direct it at a whole group of people. This is what he does.

to try to weaponize your grief and turn it into a directed hate at whole groups of people. It's what they did when Charlie Kirk was killed. It's why they still say it was the entire left. It is a dangerous manipulation of people's justified anger at tragedy. We can't give in to this kind of, he wants to take your anger and your grief and weaponize it and turn America. Use it to turn America into a place that it's not. Because America is built on a kind of forbearance, right, where we say we don't just act out of our reach. We have a justice system. We have the rule of law. It's what makes us, us.

But this is what I'm seeing from Trump and the people who love him. They don't like us. They don't like America. They don't like that we have a rule of law. Every time we get to this conversation, I bring up George W. Bush. And in the days after 9-11, 2,000 people killed in an instant. Imagine what Donald Trump would have been saying, okay? And George Mubish went the exact opposite way, right? He went and appeared with imams and Muslims. He went out of his way to say that these hijackers were not real Muslims

and that Islam is religion of peace, that this was not a holy war, this had nothing to do with that, that they hate us for our freedoms, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And honestly, if you look at the FBI, statistics. There was a fairly brief rise in, like, violence and, you know, attacks against Muslims in America, but it was pretty small. And I think Bush gets a lot of credit for getting out. He saw it, you know, and he knew that that was going to come. And he knew that the job of the president to stop that sort of thing because he had a very American understanding of what America is.

And just as a thought experiment, imagine Donald Trump's reaction. did 9-11, and, you know, he'd have us all tearing each other apart in the streets. And this is not what presidents are supposed to do. The world is full of tragedies. Bad things happen every single day. Hurricanes, school shootings, people getting shot in Walmart, car crash. Like, this is, it's a big, cruel world. The universe is indifferent, et cetera, et cetera.

The job of the president is to hold us all together. Because that's when we're strong is when we're together. And when we're divided, that's when we're weak. As you can see from the way the rest of the world has approached us for the last 10 months. God help us, Sarah. It was good to see you. It's good to see you. Just so you guys know, because I obviously am not in a studio of any kind, we jumped on.

We did a lot of pre-taping for last week to give you guys shows on, you know, today and this weekend. everything. And so we just, we didn't want to not have addressed that while we were all on holiday, something happened that is a terrible tragedy happened that is probably going to have big implications. And we wanted to try to talk it out. Moments like this, the only, the only advice I have is like, you got to love each other, right? We got to all love each other through this because it's tough. All right. Well, you know, happy Thanksgiving. Good luck. America.

My friend.