Ten people were injured on Wednesday night (1st) in a shooting outside a nightclub in New York. This is the third case with multiple victims on the same day in the United States, which signals a start to the year of violence and commotion just before Donald Trump takes office as president.
The shooting attack in New York was carried out by a group of men against a crowd. The victims include six women and four men, with non-life-threatening injuries, according to police.
On the same day, a terrorist attack by a US Army veteran killed 15 people and injured more than 35 in New Orleans, and a Tesla car exploded outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, killing one and injuring seven others.
Authorities were investigating a possible link between these two events. The similarities between them draw attention: in addition to taking place on the first day of the year and in busy places in US tourist cities, the drivers in both cases were American military personnel and rented cars through the same app, called Turo.
However, on Thursday afternoon (2), a spokesperson for the FBI, the American federal police, said at a press conference that the cases are not linked.
US President Joe Biden made a statement about the cases and said that the police were investigating a possible connection. Before that, the Democrat had called the mayor of New Orleans and promised “the full support of the federal government” to local authorities.
With less than 20 days to go until Trump’s inauguration, the president-elect’s reactions drew more attention than those of the Democrat. The Republican said that his future government “will fully support the city of New Orleans as it recovers from this act of pure evil” and linked the incident to illegal immigration – although the perpetrator of the attack was identified as an American citizen.
“When I said that criminals coming into our country are much worse than the criminals already here, the Democratic Party and the fake news media constantly refuted that statement, but it turns out it is true,” Trump wrote.
The attacker in New Orleans was a 42-year-old Texas native who served in the US Army for 13 years, including time in Afghanistan. According to the FBI, he carried an Islamic State flag with him and was inspired by the terrorist group to commit the attack.
Trump’s reaction to the case sets the tone for what to expect in similar occurrences over the next four years. While Biden’s response, especially in relation to school shootings, was to pressure Congress to pass gun control laws, Trump’s should follow the script seen this Tuesday: a statement disconnected from the facts and used to promote the president’s political objectives.
In Las Vegas, attention was drawn to both the fact that the explosion occurred in front of a hotel named after the president-elect, and the fact that the rented car was a Cybertruck, a vehicle designed by the manufacturer Tesla, owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
The businessman, in addition to being the richest man in the world, became one of the people closest to Trump after he used his fortune, connections with the US financial and technology elite and control of the social network X to help elect the Republican to the White House. It is estimated that Musk spent around US$250 million, or R$1.5 billion, on donations to Trump’s party machine.
After the Republican’s victory, Musk’s investment paid off: in addition to obtaining a position in the government, responsible for suggesting spending cuts, the billionaire’s influence on choices for key positions and other decisions made by Trump as president-elect proved to be greater until than predicted by analysts who identified the businessman’s alignment with the Trumpist universe long before the elections.
Amid all this context, the car that exploded in Las Vegas, the Cybertruck, itself became a symbol of the cultural war fomented by Musk on his social network.
With a futuristic design and emphasis on the resistance of the material used, the billionaire promoted the Cybertruck as a kind of symbol of the Trumpist right: there are countless viral videos from influencers in this political field showing the vehicle resisting gunfire and competing in car races of luxury.
On the opposite side, critics of Musk and Trump release images of the car experiencing electrical failures, locking drivers out, stopping working in the cold or heat, and highlighting how its characteristics put people in danger.
Musk himself doubled down after the explosion – which he treats as “a possible act of terrorism”. In a publication on X, the billionaire stated that the alleged perpetrator of what he called an attack “chose the wrong car for a terrorist attack”. “The Cybertruck contained the explosion and directed the impact upward. Not even the glass doors of the hotel were broken,” he said, despite the death and seven injured people.
