Donald Trump and his fascist political base have seized upon the acts of violence in New Orleans and Las Vegas on Wednesday morning to whip up an atmosphere of hysteria and promote attacks on immigrants and “the enemy within.”

In a post on Truth Social posted Wednesday night, Trump wrote, “Our Country is a disaster, a laughingstock all over the World! This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership.”

He also wrote that the DOJ, FBI and Democrats have spent their time attacking him, “rather than focusing on protecting Americans from the outside and inside violent SCUM that has infiltrated all aspects of our government, and our Nation itself.”

On Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas-born US citizen and Army veteran, acted alone when he drove a rented pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter early New Year’s Day, killing 14 people and injuring more than 35 others. After he plowed into the crowd, Jabbar exited the vehicle and exchanged fire with responding police, who fatally shot him.

The FBI is investigating the horrifying attack as “an act of terrorism” based on social media videos posted by Jabbar, in which he pledged allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and said he intended to target the public to highlight what he claimed was a “war between the believers and the disbelievers.”

Surveillance footage revealed that Jabbar had also placed explosive devices in ice coolers on Bourbon Street prior to his vehicle attack. Police neutralized the explosives before they could detonate.

Lending support to Trump’s anti-immigrant frenzy, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN a conclusion had been reached regarding Jabbar’s motive, saying, “This is an event that was inspired by a foreign terrorist ideology.”

Other police agencies said they had determined that Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old US Army Special Forces Sergeant from Colorado Springs, Colorado, rented a Tesla Cybertruck and filled it with firework mortars, gas cans and camping fuel before he detonated the crude system in front of Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas at approximately 8:39 a.m. on January 1, about five hours after the bloody events in New Orleans.

Seven people were injured and Livelsberger died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head moments before the explosion. Authorities are investigating the explosion as a potential terrorist attack and seeking to determine whether Livelsberger acted alone or was influenced by extremist propaganda or external groups, but nothing definitive has been reported as of this writing.

The FBI is also investigating possible connections between Livelsberger and Jabbar. Both served at the same time in Afghanistan and were stationed at Fort Bragg—now known as Fort Liberty—in North Carolina. There is currently no evidence to suggest the two men were assigned to the same unit or even knew each other.

Jabbar enlisted in the Army in 2007, working in both human resources and information technology. He was deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010, then transferred into the US Army Reserve in 2015, according to a military representative. He left the military in July 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.

Friends and family told news media that Jabbar had become increasingly withdrawn and erratic in the months prior to the attack. He was reportedly distancing himself from his community and exhibited signs of paranoia as well as fixation on religious and ideological topics. Investigators found evidence of an attraction to Islamist extremism through online platforms, particularly content associated with ISIS and other such groups.

Livelsberger was an active duty Green Beret who had recently returned from an overseas assignment in Germany and was on approved leave, according to a US official. He was a highly-trained Special Forces soldier who had been awarded five Bronze Stars. Livelsberger served in the Army since 2006 with a long list of overseas assignments, deploying twice to Afghanistan and on missions in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and Congo, the Army said.

Family and colleagues described Livelsberger as exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including paranoia and erratic behavior, in the months leading up to the attack.

President Biden gave a brief public statement Wednesday only a few hours after the attacks, linking the New Orleans and Las Vegas attacks in his statement despite admitting there was no evidence of any connection between the two.

He followed this up with a second appearance before the media on Thursday afternoon, where he cracked a joke about finishing up the event so as not to interfere with the Sugar Bowl—the college football playoff game at the New Orleans Superdome that had been postponed one day by the mass killing a few blocks away.

Biden went to make a backslapping salute, with further joking, to outgoing Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin over the large number of federal judges whose nominations were confirmed during the lame duck session of the Senate.

At both occasions, delivering phony condolences on Wednesday and making lame and inappropriate attempts at humor on Thursday, Biden refused to answer questions about whether he had been in contact with President-elect Trump, or whether he had any reaction to Trump’s efforts to whip up anti-immigrant violence.

This includes a second message on Truth Social, posted Thursday morning, in which Trump said, “Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe.”

Trump makes crude attempts to link the New Year’s massacre in New Orleans and the Las Vegas car bombing to “outside and inside violent SCUM,” although both were actually perpetrated by long-time military veterans of wars he supported and even commanded. This is a warning of what is being prepared against the working class when the new administration takes office on January 20.

Regardless of the specific reasons and causes of these events, they have emerged out of the crisis and breakdown of American capitalist society. The United States is rapidly descending into authoritarianism, dictatorship and war combined with extreme austerity for working people, while billionaires such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to accumulate massive fortunes.

The working class, which is on a collision course with the incoming Trump administration, can only defend itself from the fascist political agenda being rolled out in 2025 by organizing a mass political movement that is independent of the Democratic Party and based on the struggle for socialism.