Two major terror attacks in one day. Are the New Orleans car ramming attack and the Las Vegas Trump Hotel car bomb related?

 

Police at the scene of the car ramming attack in New Orleans. CBS News/AP.

15 people were killed and dozens were wounded in a car ramming and shooting attack on Bourbon Street New Orleans. CBS News. The attacker used a rented Ford F-150 and rammed it into dozens of people before crashing and getting into a shootout with police. The suspect is a 42 year old citizen named Shamsud-Din Jabbar and was an Army veteran. Jabbar had an ISIS flag flying from the truck and had pledged allegiance to the terror group in a video posted before the attack. The FBI believes that Jabbar had help. In addition to the truck, body armor and a suppressed rifle, Jabbar was armed with IED's that did not explode. Additional IED's were placed in the city but they were found and disarmed, which is a major reason why the FBI believes that Jabbar had accomplices. 

Security footage of the Cybertruck right before the explosion. ABC News.

Police are looking for links to the New Orleans attack and the car bombing of Trump Las Vegas Hotel. ABC News. A driver drove a Cybertruck loaded with fireworks and other explosives to the entrance of the Trump hotel and ignited it, causing a major explosion. The driver was the only person killed in the attack, though several people were injured. Law enforcement noted that both the Cybertruck used in the Las Vegas attack and the F-150 rented in New Orleans were rented via the Turo app, a popular car sharing service. No other connection to the New Orleans attack has been found so far as of this writing. 

That is not a battery fire.

That is an explosive device placed in a Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel.

Clearly a message is being sent to Elon and President Trump.

pic.twitter.com/v8WuAgH3dT

— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) January 1, 2025

My Comment:

Very concerning way to start the year. It seems clear that there is at least one terror cell at large right now and given that this is an ongoing situation, it might not be over yet. It seems clear that both of these attacks were terrorism. 

I had honestly been expecting something like the New Orleans attack for some time now. Car ramming attacks are easy to carry out and require very little in terms of planning and funding. Indeed, it seems that this attack was a bit more sophisticated than that because the attacker had IED's and a suppressed rifle, both of which require more funding and expertise than the run of the mill car ramming attack. 

The Las Vegas attack seems to be similar. The attacker needed a pretty serious bomb and though it wasn't effective, it certainly could have been. The more solid build quality of the Tesla might have had something to do with the low casualties, it seems to have contained at least some of the blast and the battery did not seem to ignite either, despite the fireworks, explosive and fuel in the vehicle. 

Is there a link between the two attacks? Right now the only thing they have to go on is the Turo app, which is apparently a popular car rental service, essentially an Airbnb for cars. I would say that the fact that both attacks involved bombs that this was indeed a larger plot. I believe in coincidences but having two major attacks on the same day, both involving bombs, one having ISIS connections and the other appearing to be a suicide bombing; that's a bit hard to accept as one. 

It does seem like there were some failures here. Though law enforcement was able to shoot and kill this attacker after he crashed, and did a fine job in general, I do wonder what the issue was with the anti-ramming bollards that are supposed to stop these attacks. Supposedly they were out of order, which is going to fuel conspiracy theories. 

This is going to further fuel the immigration debate, especially after both Trump and Musk were involved in the H1B debate/debacle. The only attacker identified as of this writing was an US citizen but he was a Muslim and that will be enough to make folks wonder why we allow these kinds of people in the United States in the first place. And it does show that it's not just 1st generation immigrants that can commit terror attacks. Is it fair that this is going to bring up immigration as a debate when the attacker wasn't one, as far as we can tell? No, but that's the world we live in.

It's unclear how wide this conspiracy is. Is this a home grown plot or did the funding come from ISIS in Syria? Or is ISIS just a patsy for some other terror group? I am guessing that there was indeed some outside support, this amount of sophistication and the weapons involved indicate that there was some major funding, bombs, rifles, body armor and vehicle rentals are not cheap and every thing I have heard about Jabbar is that he was an unemployed wastrel with no real source of money. Someone absolutely helped him. 

Will there be follow up attacks? It's very possible and I will be worried about it until the bombmaker is caught. I doubt Jabbar was it, though I guess it is possible, and if the bombmaker is still out there then there could be more attacks. Bombmakers are specialists and capturing or killing whoever made these bombs is still out there, more likely than not. Until that person is caught we are very likely to see more attacks, if they haven't gone entirely into the wind. 

Finally I guess I should discuss the possibility that these two attacks were not actually related. I find that to be extremely unlikely, but it's possible that there was no real link. That would be a massive coincidence though and one I can't imagine being true. But to be fair, the choice of a Cybertruck at a Trump property could indicate a different motive as I doubt many Muslims care about the Musk-Trump links. But given that the New Orleans attack was done by an American citizen I seriously doubt that.