First National Guard shooting victim named as Trump responds – live updates

While Trump and Vice President JD Vance have been quick to blame Biden for allowing suspect Rahmanullah Lakanwal to come to America under Operation Allies Welcome following the U.S military’s withdrawal from his homeland, his asylum application was actually approved by the Trump administration in April this year, according to CNN.

That important detail is reportedly going unmentioned on Fox News, according to this avid viewer of the conservative cable news channel.

The president was not at the White House yesterday as he had already returned home to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, for Thanksgiving.

He reacted angrily to the attack, however, posting this message on Truth Social in response:

“The animal that shot the two National Guardsmen, with both being critically wounded, and now in two separate hospitals, is also severely wounded, but regardless, will pay a very steep price. God bless our Great National Guard, and all of our Military and Law Enforcement. These are truly Great People. I, as President of the United States, and everyone associated with the Office of the Presidency, am with you!”

The president subsequently delivered a televised statement from his home at 9.15pm in which he called the incident “an act of terror” and a “crime against humanity” and blamed the suspect’s presence in the country in his predecessor Joe Biden, adding that all Afghan nationals’ asylum claims would now be placed under immediate review:

One of the National Guardsmen shot in Washington, D.C., Wednesday has been named as Andrew Wolfe in a tribute post on his old West Virginia high school’s Facebook page.

Wolfe and a colleague remain in a critical condition after yesterday’s attack and he is undergoing surgery, the school states, promising further updates.

President Donald Trump called for the reinvestigation of all Afghan refugees who entered under the Biden administration after the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington D.C.

In a video message released on social media on Wednesday night, Trump said: “If they can’t love our country, we don’t want them.”

He called the shooting a “heinous assault” and “a crime against our entire nation” and said it proves that lax migration policies are “the single greatest national security threat facing our nation”.

“No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival,” he said.

Trump described Afghanistan as “a hellhole on earth” and he said his administration would review everyone who entered from the country under President Joe Biden, a measure his administration had already been planning before the incident.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the Afghan national who allegedly opened fire on two National Guardsmen near the White House, reportedly served with the U.S. Special Forces.

Lakanwal, 29, served in the Afghan army for 10 years alongside U.S. Special Forces troops and was stationed in Kandahar for part of that time, NBC News reported, citing an interview with an unnamed relative of the suspect.

Investigators led by the FBI’s joint terrorism task force sought clues on Thursday to what drove him to open fire on two soldiers in what officials called an “ambush” attack on Thanksgiving eve.

The Department of Homeland Security has taken an Afghan national into custody for allegedly shooting at two National Guardsmen near the White House on Wednesday.

The suspect has been identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who resided in Washington state, and had no known criminal history.

Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program to resettle thousands of Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the Afghanistan war and feared reprisals from Taliban forces who seized control of their homeland after the U.S. withdrawal.

Following the shooting, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency announced an immediate and indefinite halt to the “processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals” pending a review of security and vetting protocols.

The shooter appeared to have acted alone, officials said.

President Donald Trump has directed the deployment of 500 additional National Guard troops to Washington D.C. following the shooting of two Guardsmen near the White House.

The additional troops will join about 2,200 already in the city as part of the President’s contentious immigration and crime crackdown targeting Democratic-led cities.

The Guardsmen were shot and critically wounded Wednesday in downtown Washington in what officials described as a targeted ambush.

The two soldiers, members of the West Virginia National Guard, were part of a “high-visibility patrol” around 2.15p.m. E.T. near the corner of 17th and I streets, a few blocks from the White House.

The suspect came around a corner and “ambushed” them, Metropolitan Police Assistant Chief Jeff Carroll said at a press briefing.

After an exchange of gunfire, other National Guard troops subdued the shooter, he said. The two wounded soldiers were in critical condition at local hospitals, FBI Director Kash Patel said.

“This is a targeted shooting,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said at the briefing. The shooter appeared to have acted alone, officials said.

Two National Guardsmen, who were shot in Washington, D.C, remain in a critical condition in the hospital.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth described the injured Guardsmen as individuals who serve out of commitment to the country.”

Heroes willing to serve in Washington, DC, serve for people they don’t know, and they’ve never met, because they love their country and their capital and their community,” he said.

“They were willing to do dangerous things; others were not, because they love their fellow Americans.”

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said late Wednesday it has stopped processing all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals indefinitely, after two National Guard soldiers were shot and critically wounded in Washington.

President Donald Trump said that the shooting near the White House was “an act of terror,” saying the suspect came from Afghanistan in 2021.

The move follows Trump’s call for his government to re-examine Afghan immigrants who entered the United States when Joe Biden was President.

“The protection and safety of our homeland and of the American people remains our singular focus and mission,” the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a post on X.