2025 Off To Worst Start Possible, With Terrorism, Trump, Musk

Not known whether New Orleans and Las Vegas attacks were related.

Video screenshot of Cybertruck burning after fireworks and flammable materials in its bed exploded Wednesday. Amateur video by Alcides Altune via NBC News on YouTube.

Just three hours into 2025, a Texas man drove a rented pickup with an ISIS flag on it into a crowd of people partying on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 15 and injuring at least 30 others. The driver was killed in a shootout with police. The attacker was apparently radicalized online and may have had accomplices, investigators said; as of this morning, no arrests have been made.

A few hours later, around eight in the morning in Las Vegas, a Colorado man drove a rented Tesla Cybertruck up to the entrance of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas and set off an explosion in the back of the pickup, which was loaded with “fireworks-style mortars, gasoline cans and camping fuel canisters.” The driver was killed in the explosion, but nobody else died; seven bystanders had minor injuries. It’s not known whether the two attacks are connected or what the Colorado man’s motive may have been. There might be none, because the world is insane enough that two people may have separately decided that New Year’s Day would be a great time to do some terrorism.

In response to the New Orleans attack, Donald Trump, who is somehow president-elect, we didn’t dream that, went online to blame immigrants and Democrats, just making things up on his social media site. Trump wrote, “When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” which was not in fact true; the attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was born and raised in Texas, and served in the Army.

Trump’s statement followed an incorrect Fox News story claiming the rental truck, a Ford F-150 Lightning EV, was driven to Texas from Mexico, which never happened; Fox later retracted the story; as the Daily Beast explains, “the vehicle entered the U.S. from Mexico on Nov. 16, driven by a man with no connection to Wednesday’s horrific events.” But it had been in Mexico, so that must be where its murderousness came from. Or maybe EVs turn people into killers, ever think of that?

This morning, Trump was up early and lying again, claiming “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING,” and posting a longer screed in which he said the US is “a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World! This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership.”

Again, the border was not involved in either attack. But maybe all law enforcement in the country could have prevented the attack in New Orleans if only “The DOJ, FBI, and Democrat state and local prosecutors” had been paying attention to the border (or to Texans with internet connections) instead of

having spent all of their waking hours unlawfully attacking their political opponent, ME, rather than focusing on protecting Americans from the outside and inside violent SCUM that has infiltrated all aspects of our government, and our Nation itself.

So that was a rant. The important thing to know is that this really is all about Donald Trump, the real victim, and you’d better not forget it.

The Las Vegas attack, thankfully, killed nobody other than the driver of the rented Cybertruck, who has been identified as Matthew Livelsberger, an Army veteran from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Local ABC affiliate Denver7 reports that “multiple informed sources identified Livelsberger” and that he has “multiple Colorado Springs addresses associated to him,” at least one of which the FBI has staked out.

As of yet, no concrete evidence links the two attacks, although there are coincidences, like the two attackers being Army veterans, and the fact that both used the Turo rental app to rent the pickups that they used. A Turo spokesperson said that the company doesn’t think either renter “had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat,” at least not as far as the app was concerned.

Also-president Elon Musk was quick to explain that the explosion in the Cybertruck was caused by the load in its bed, not the truck’s battery. He tweeted that “We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself.”

Just to do the whole due diligence thing, ABC News was careful to point out that “It's not known if Musk's claim has been independently verified,” and also noted that an “official briefed on the investigation” said that the explosion “was not a lithium battery,” so that’s a relief.

Musk also got personally involved in the aftermath, ABC News reports, noting that “Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department” — yes, the police department sheriff, because Las Vegas combines state and county law enforcement — told reporters that Musk

helped the investigation by having the truck unlocked after it auto-locked in the blast and giving investigators video of the suspect at charging stations along its route from Colorado to Las Vegas.

That would help explain a line that puzzled us in the Washington Post’s coverage of the story, which mentioned that “As of Wednesday evening, the decedent was still in the burned vehicle, McMahill said.” That sure sounds like the killer was locked inside the truck when it exploded and the company had to unlock the thing so law enforcement could retrieve his body, is how we read that, but we are not an attorney, who might read it differently.

The story also notes that

McMahill said the fact that the explosion occurred in a Cybertruck “really limited the damage that occurred” at the hotel because the blast went through the truck and upward. The glass doors to the tower were spared, he said.

Musk himself took to Twitter yesterday to brag that

The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards. Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken.

Elmo also offered this tip to would-be terror bombers: Buy the competition’s trucks, losers. “Cybertruck is the worst possible choice for a car bomb, as its stainless steel armor will contain the blast better than any other commercial vehicle,” he twote. No, that’s not crass, that’s just facts, OK?

And then he spent some time speculating that he’ll sue every media outlet that described the incident as a “Cybertruck explosion” instead of an explosion in a Cybertruck. Thank goodness we all have our priorities straight. Rightwing influencers also crowded onto the platform to praise the hero Cybertruck for containing the bomb blast, and Musk then retweeted them.

It’s not yet clear whether Musk will sue either Trump Hotels or failson-elect Eric Trump, both of whom described the incident as “a reported electric vehicle fire” on social media, leaving out the whole big explosion (of explosives, not the battery!) part of the story.

Great Leader Donald Trump Himself hasn’t yet commented on the Las Vegas attack, but will no doubt blame immigrants, or at least Democrats, for that one as well.

[AP / NBC News / Daily Beast / CNN / NYT / ABC News / Denver7 / WaPo]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or start our new year off right with a one-time donation.