Rahmanullah Lakanwal

Borrowed from the internet from Phil McLaughlin, if there really is such a person. 

Breaking….late 26Nov

The accused shooter is an Afghan national who was airlifted to the U.S. in 2021 under Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome, but his individual asylum claim was not approved until April 2025 under the current Trump administration, after a fresh round of vetting. That’s the uncomfortable, documented truth Republicans are working very hard not to say out loud right now. 

What actually happened 

The suspect has been identified as 29‑year‑old Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, arrested after two West Virginia National Guard members were shot in a targeted attack near the White House. He was evacuated from Afghanistan to the U.S. in 2021 as part of the Biden‑era evacuation and resettlement effort following the fall of Kabul, under Operation Allies Welcome. 

The asylum timeline 

After arrival, he lived in the U.S. for several years and formally applied for asylum in late 2024, which triggered a new, case‑specific security and eligibility review. That asylum application was approved in April 2025, explicitly under the Trump administration, following additional vetting steps that are separate from the original 2021 evacuation screening. 

So the factual chain is: evacuated and initially screened under Biden in 2021, then granted asylum and protection from deportation by Trump’s DHS in April 2025. 

What Trump is saying 

In his public remarks, Trump called the shooting “an act of evil” and “an act of terror,” and ordered even more National Guard troops into Washington, D.C. in response. He has framed the suspect broadly as a product of “Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal,” demanding a full review of “every alien” who entered from Afghanistan under Biden and suggesting that the prior administration’s vetting was too weak. 

Notice what he is not saying: that his own administration reviewed this man’s file this year and chose to approve his asylum claim in April. 

What the right‑wing ecosystem is pushing 

Pro‑Trump and right‑wing outlets and influencers are hammering a simple story line: Biden “flooded” the country with dangerous Afghan refugees, this shooter is proof, and therefore mass crackdowns, re‑interviews, and revocations are necessary. In a lot of that coverage, the detail that his asylum was actually approved in 2025 under Trump is either buried or simply left out altogether. 

The result is a narrative where Biden is blamed for “bringing him here,” but the Trump‑era decision to formally grant him asylum this spring is treated as a footnote or not mentioned at all. 

Why this split reality is so dangerous. 

When the president and his media allies aggressively simplify or distort a case like this, they’re not just shading the truth; they’re training millions of people to associate an entire category of people (Afghan refugees, immigrants, Muslims) with terrorism, even when the full record is more complicated and shared across administrations. 

That scapegoating becomes raw material for policy: mass re‑screenings, status revocations, and deportations aimed at large groups who went through years of vetting, all justified by a single horrific crime and a dishonest telling of who actually signed what and when. 

In a moment when trust in institutions is already brittle, this split reality—one side working from a documented timeline, the other from a weaponized story—pushes the country closer to a place where facts simply do not matter, only tribe and fear do. And that is exactly the environment in which abuses of power and violence against vulnerable communities flourish.