WASHINGTON (AP) — President Trump said Thursday that one of the two West Virginia National Guard members shot by an Afghan national near the White House had died, calling the shooter who had worked with the CIA in his native country a “savage monster.”
As part of his Thanksgiving call to U.S. troops, Trump said that he had just learned that Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, had died, while Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was “fighting for his life.”
“She’s just passed away,” Trump said. “She’s no longer with us. She’s looking down at us right now. Her parents are with her.”
The president called Beckstrom an “incredible person, outstanding in every single way.”
Trump used the announcement to say the shooting was a “terrorist attack” as he criticized the Biden administration for enabling Afghans who worked with U.S. forces during the Afghanistan War to enter the U.S. The president has deployed National Guard members in part to assist in his administration’s mass deportation efforts.
Trump suggested that the accused shooter, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was mentally unstable after the war and his departure from Afghanistan.
“He went cuckoo. I mean, he went nuts,” the president said. “It happens too often with these people.”
