☕️ IT’S COMPLICATED ☙ Friday, January 3, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

More strange developments in the twin New Year's Day incidents; questions expand; Cybertruck driver was an American hero; the law of Narrative Simplicity; House votes on Johnson; Kirk tease; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Team Childers is back home and all the unpacking has commenced. It should only take about three weeks to finish. This morning’s roundup includes: updates on the Bourbon Street killings and the Las Vegas incident continue raising unanswered questions; thoughts about the Law of Narrative Simplicity; House of Representatives in focus today as we learn whether Trump can manage the Republican Caucus and whether Mike Johnson will serve as the next Speaker; and Charlie Kirk drops tantalizing nuggets about what’s happening at the transition and raises expectations to stratospheric levels.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Yesterday’s top story was what didn’t happen: as an apprehensive nation waited anxiously, hanging on tenterhooks, no second wave of terrorist attacks appeared, despite widespread social media predictions. As Kamala Harris used to say, today is another day, and time extends into the future, because it is time, which always keeps extending. Anyway, as yesterday’s hot takes phase continued, the twin New Year’s Day attacks grew murkier and more obscure. First, the New York Times ran a story headlined “New Orleans Officials Left Bourbon Street Vulnerable to Attack, Experts Say.

Five years ago, the article began, “a confidential security report warned that the iconic Bourbon Street tourist strip was vulnerable to a ‘vehicular ramming’ attack.” The New York security firm producing that classified assessment urgently recommended fixing the barriers immediately, explaining that “the two modes of terror attack likely to be used are vehicular ramming and active shooting.”

So what do you think they did? They did not fix the barriers immediately. It’s disgraceful New Orleans’s corruptocrats failed for five years to fix the problem. Don’t worry though, they plan to fix them soon.

Still, one’s mind wanders back to that report. Who else got a copy of that top-secret security report identifying the city’s chief vulnerability? Who else knew that Bourbon Street’s iconic tourist strip lay exposed to “vehicular ramming?”

In this next clip, N.O.P.D. Captain Anne Kirkpatrick explained to journalists that when she was crafting her failed security plan to protect Bourbon Street revelers, she did not know about the police department’s “Yellow Archers.” The Yellow Archers are portable barriers used to stop people from driving onto the sidewalk. “We have them,” Captain Kirkpatrick explained, adding “I didn’t know about them, but we have ‘em; and so we have been able now to put them out.”

CLIP: Cpt. Kirkpatrick explains how she plans to immediately improve security by using stuff she forgot about last time (1:23).

They have now been able to put them out? Now? It reminds us of an old expression about closing the barn door after the horses hide the Yellow Archers, but I can’t recall the specifics.

Captain Kirkpatrick surely deserves credit for admitting that her security plan failed, with tragic results. But it is inexcusable that Kirkpatrick failed to protect the sidewalks using inventoried gear the city’s residents had already paid for. It would seem to be a critical question to figure out what caused Anne’s disastrous senior moment.

Next, the FBI continued to surprise us. Within 48 hours the agency concluded —and I am not making this up— with one hundred percent confidence the killer’s motive was inspired by his Islamic beliefs and only his Islamic beliefs. Yesterday’s astonishing NBC headline:

Ten minutes ago, this headline would be instantly labeled “Islamaphobic” and nobody else would reprint it. Jabber’s motive would have always remained murky. Corporate media obviously holds no sincere values except the value of following orders.

Not only did Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division literally express 100% certainty that truck-killer Jabbar was “inspired by ISIS,” but also that he acted alone. Never mind about yesterday’s FBI report of additional people seen planting bombs in surveillance videos.

“We’re confident at this point that he had no accomplices,” Raia confidently said. Confident, in just 48 hours. CBS reported that police recovered three phones and two laptops from Jabbar’s AirBnB. Maybe having multiple devices was a religious thing.

Another lone wolf! Another lone wolf, killed on the scene. Never wounded.

The FBI’s confidence was attributed to five Facebook videos that Jabbar posted after 1:30am on the night of the attack, in which he claimed —for the first time— to have converted to Islam earlier this year. Apparently, he did not explain why converting to Islam meant he felt he had to commit a suicidal terror attack.

The five Facebook videos were helpful but not that helpful. “Jabbar set his sights on historic Bourbon Street,” CBS reported, “though authorities do not yet fully understand why.”

And they never will. Hopefully, the reason why Jabbar picked Bourbon Street was not because someone read that confidential security assessment.

Weird. Apparently, in his five final, last-minute confessions in the moments leading up to the attack, Jabbar never explained why he decided on Bourbon Street? If the FBI is so confident Jabbar acted alone, then who radicalized him? Who convinced Jabbar the path to Allah included a bloody speed run in New Orleans? He didn’t have any online accomplices?

And why are there so many apparent connections to the New Orleans attack?

We aren’t the only ones scratching our heads. NBC reported that “a woman who identified herself as Jabbar’s sister-in-law” said his relatives in Texas were shocked. It makes “no sense,” she told NBC News on Wednesday. “He’s the nicest person I’ve ever known.”

Apparently not that nice. ISIS-inspired —not ISIS-connected— road rage.

Whether or not you’re tempted to see a conspiracy here, remember what we do know: regardless of who’s behind the attack, it could not have happened without deep government corruption in New Orleans combined with unforgivable official incompetence at nearly every level. New Orleans readers, you should demand your tax dollars back.

🔥 Meanwhile, the Vegas twin terror incident also got murkier. CBS ran a story headlined, “Mystery continues to shroud Las Vegas Cybertruck bomber's motives, authorities say.” That was an understatement. Green Beret Matt Livelsberger is starting to look like a very unlikely terrorist.

Yesterday’s first development was an official admission of the driver’s cause of death, which was not anything you’d expect. They said he shot himself. Not only did they tell us the death has already been ruled a suicide, case closed, but officials even disclosed the make and model of the gun Matt allegedly used, and described the precise manner of his self-execution.

I can’t remember any time in my life when the FBI has been this forthcoming with details this quickly. If this is a new transparency policy, well, good for them.

But it was weird Matt would shoot himself right before blowing himself up.

That body was reportedly burned beyond recognition. Matt was identified only by his military ID, passport, and credit cards, which somehow survived the very same fire that made his physical identification impossible. Odd.

(Have you ever seen anything like this kind of disclosure within two days of the incident? Pictures of items from the crime scene?)

Beyond those strange new facts, it turns out that Matt, 37, had received dozens of awards for service and valor during his 19 years of military service. He served five tours in Afghanistan in the Special Forces, which means his superiors trusted him with significant amounts of autonomy. Matt started a charity for Afghan orphans. He’d just had an 8-month-old baby with his new wife. He had just become a ‘Team Sergeant,’ a highly respected leadership position in the Green Beret.

CBS described Matt’s resumé as “sterling.”

In other words, once again, like Jabbar’s case and like so many others, nothing in Matt’s history suggests any kind of a motive.

With five tours in Afghanistan as a Special Forces operator, Matt surely knew how improvised explosive devices work. Fireworks and gas cans are not consistent with his level of expertise. Indeed, in hindsight the explosion seemed more designed to destroy evidence than to destroy property or to harm hotel guests.

What evidence? Just spitballing, but beyond making it hard to determine the driver’s identity, maybe it could have been to destroy evidence of the time of death. Who knows?

Unnamed members of the “Green Beret community” who knew Matt reported being shocked and in denial. Some speculated that Matt’s identity was stolen or his death faked. Despite reports that Matt took a meandering path to Las Vegas and stopped several times to charge the Tesla, there is not yet any surveillance video positively identifying him as the driver.

Despite whatever the FBI is saying, based on what we’ve been told, the driver’s identity remains an open question pending DNA verification.

Social media sleuths expanded the mystery. Conservative influencer Collin Rugg (1.6m followers) claimed Livelsberger’s relatives said he was deeply patriotic and was a huge Trump supporter. Ian Miles Cheong (1.1m) reported that Matt’s rented Cybertruck first went to the wrong Las Vegas, as though somebody entered the wrong address into the truck’s navigation system.

If so, then as a result of not noticing he was going in the wrong direction, Matt had to stop eight times to charge the Cybertruck. The difference between the two routes is about an hour and a half (12 hours versus 13.5 hours), and at least one user pointed out the longer, southern drive avoided a more difficult mountain route on potentially icy roads.

The fact the truck had to stop so many times to charge undermines the idea there was no living driver. Somebody had to get out and plug the dang thing in.

🔥 Here are a few observations.

First, Matt Livelsberger’s death can no longer be reasonably called a terrorist attack. Given that he could have easily arranged a much more destructive way to kill himself and others if that is in fact what he wanted (assuming it was Matt), at most this was a glorified suicide with a political spin. Kind of like somebody who douses themselves with gasoline and strikes a match in front of the embassy.

In other words, there was only one terrorist attack on New Year’s Day, the truck attack on Bourbon Street.

Second, there is a new point of similarity between the two incidents. Both men ensured they’d be killed on the scene, preventing any possible testimony.

Third and finally, I offer an old C&C principle called the Law of Narrative Simplicity. It applies when something dramatic and seemingly inexplicable happens, like a mass shooting, an assassination attempt, or a terrorist attack. As investigations and public focus intensify, either more clarity or more confusion emerges. Which one reveals whether the officials are lying and whether the narrative is fake.

The Law of Narrative Simplicity is a sort of corollary of Occam’s Razor. If officials are telling the truth, then the narrative always simplifies, becomes easier to understand, and becomes easier to believe. One example might be the David DePape attack on Paul Pelosi. DePape survived, testified in court, and is still around (in jail). While bizarre, as the case progressed, the number of possibilities shrank, the conspiracy theories slowly evaporated, and while still not completely satisfying, the remaining most likely explanation is clearly that a crazy hobo got through poorly-planned Pelosi security and briefly held Paul hostage.

But when officials lie, the narrative inevitably becomes more complicated and harder to understand over time as the “investigation” continues. In this case, more conspiracy theories blossom and strengthen over time. Growing complexity is the inevitable result of initially overlooked facts that don’t fit the official narrative. Examples include the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 attacks, the Jussie Smollett attack, and the Nordstream pipeline bombing.

It is too early yet to tell what type of narrative, simple or complicated, the New Year’s incidents will produce. But so far, it doesn’t look like they are getting simpler. But they’re still in the early hot takes phase, so we remain hopeful.

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Today sees the first major test of Trump’s influence on the Republican caucus. The Associated Press ran the story headlined, “Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to save his job as a new Congress convenes.”

Today the House will vote whether to confirm Johnson as Speaker. The stakes are high. If the vote fails, the AP reported, it “could throw Monday’s congressional certification of Trump’s 2024 election victory into turmoil without a House speaker.”

After replacing RINO Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.), among other things Johnson irritated conservatives for allowing votes on Ukraine aid packages (approved by the majority of Republican representatives) and for allowing the Porkulus Bill to come to the floor for a vote (it was defeated).

On the plus side, Johnson appears to have maintained solid loyalty to President Trump and enjoys the President-Elect’s full-throated endorsement. Paradoxically, this is also a weakness, with some Freedom Caucus Representatives expressing angst about the two men’s close relationship, since Congress is indeed a separate-but-equal constitutional branch. Some respected Freedom Caucus members, like Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) would prefer an independent Speaker who would sometimes respectfully oppose the President.

It’s not clear who could be elected instead of Johnson. In a tweet this morning, Rep. Massie too blithely suggested that “a new Speaker can be elected in a few hours or over the weekend.” But Representative Massie tellingly didn’t say who that new, easily-elected Speaker might be. Johnson supporters complain it is also possible a new Speaker might not be elected at all, throwing January 6th’s scheduled election certification into doubt.

It will be critical for Trump’s agenda that he enjoys a close and trusting relationship with whoever is elected Speaker.

We do not, and cannot know, how much of the opposition to Johnson is actually political gamesmanship, just posturing to secure concessions in exchange for a favorable vote. We’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out today.

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In a terrific New Year interview with Megyn Kelly, Charlie Kirk dropped some extremely tantalizing hints about what is happening at Mar-a-Lago this week. Charlie said he has asked the Transition Team to be included in “all things education” and following the interview, was headed to the Team’s South Florida headquarters “for a week.”

CLIP: Charlie Kirk on working in the department of education to “fulfill the mandate” (2:25).

Among other deliriously terrific things, Charlie said in the clip, “We are going to sprint out of the gate … there will be a lot of reversals and a return to common sense, order, and decency.” I don’t know about you, but because of past disappointments, I can barely allow myself to hope for something like that. But something feels different this time. What do you think? Could it really happen?

Have a fabulous Friday! Come back here tomorrow morning for your weekend edition roundup of essential news and commentary.

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