AVERAGE: Biden downplays ISIS threat to US, repeatedly says white supremacy is ‘deadliest’ threat
Before the devastating terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day shook the nation, President Biden and his administration he has repeatedly emphasized that the greatest threat facing the country is white supremacy — he even specifically stated that terrorist organizations like ISIS are no match for the danger posed by white racists.
“According to the intelligence community, white supremacist terrorism is the deadliest threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda — white racists,” Biden said in June 2021 on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa massacre.
The comment came just weeks after he declared during the State of the Union address that year: “We will not ignore what our intelligence agencies have identified as the deadliest terrorist threat to the homeland today: White supremacy is terrorism.”
Early in the New Year, New Orleans and the nation were rocked by an alleged terrorist attack when a man identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, allegedly rammed his truck into a crowd of revelers celebrating the holiday on the city’s famous Bourbon Street. The FBI confirmed on Wednesday that they were investigating the incident as an act of terrorism, noting that they had confirmed that the suspect had an ISIS flag in his vehicle at the time of the attack.
President Joe Biden speaks about his administration’s economic game and the future of the U.S. economy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
ISIS is the jihadist group that carried out terrorist attacks around the world but has lost momentum in recent years, including in 2019 when US forces killed Iraqi militant and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The FBI said Thursday that Jabbar was “inspired” by ISIS, adding that they found no evidence that ISIS directed him to carry out the attack.
BIDEN TELLS HOWARD GRADS ‘WHITE SUPREME’ IS ‘MOST DANGEROUS TERRORIST THREAT’ TO UNITED STATES
The shocking attack revived Biden’s previous rhetoric about white supremacy and the state of national security, which has also been promoted by administration leaders such as Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“According to the FBI, the greatest domestic violent extremist threat comes from ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, particularly those who advocate white supremacy,'” Garland told the Senate Appropriations Committee in May 2021. threats to the USA
Law enforcement officers from multiple agencies work at the scene on Bourbon Street after at least ten people were killed when one person reportedly drove into a crowd in the early morning hours on New Year’s Day January 1, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dozens were injured after the suspect allegedly drove around barricades and through a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street in a rented pickup truck. The suspect then got out of the car, opened fire on the officers, and the officers then killed him. (Michael DeMocker/Getty Images)
Garland was joined by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayarokas in sounding the alarm about the threat white racists posed to the US that year. Garland and Biden administration officials argued at the time that on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters of President-elect Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building, it opened the floodgates to concerns about domestic threats to democracy.
“I have not seen a more dangerous threat to democracy than an invasion of the Capitol,” Garland said at the time, calling it “an attempt to interfere with a fundamental element of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power.”
Biden has also cited the threat of white supremacy in recent public remarks, including during his 2023 commencement address at Howard University.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, shown in an undated photo released by the FBI after he drove a pickup truck down Bourbon Street in New Orleans and died in a shootout with responding officers. (FBI)
“White supremacy … is the single most dangerous terrorist threat in our homeland,” Biden said. “And I’m not just saying this because I’m at a Black HBCU. I’m saying this everywhere I go.”
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The US Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration released a report in 2020, titled “Homeland Threat Assessment,” which found white racists and other “domestic violent extremists” to be the “most persistent and deadly threat” to the nation. After Biden’s inauguration, Mayorkas said DHS was “taking a new approach to addressing violent extremism in the country, both internally and externally,” compared to the previous administration.
New Orleans police and federal agents are investigating an alleged terrorist attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day 2025. (Chris Granger/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)
After Wednesday morning’s attack, conservative social media users and critics of the Biden administration revived Biden’s previous comments about white supremacy, joking that the comments “didn’t age well.”
The suspected terrorist’s brother told the New York Times that Shamsud-Din Jabbar was raised in Christianity but converted to Islam. The brother, Abdur Jabbar, emphasized that his brother does not represent the Islamic faith and instead called his actions an example of “radicalization.”
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“What he did does not represent Islam,” he added. “This is more a kind of radicalization than a religion.”
