Littwin: We knew the new year might be bad, but who could imagine a worse start for 2025?

You may have noticed — or maybe not — that I’ve been off for the past 10 days. But I’ve been busy. Celebrating the holiday(s) of my choice — still allowed, by the way, at least so far. Watching the new Dylan movie and trying to be a good neighbor by not singing along. Occasionally I did hum, though. Bingeing FX’s “Say Nothing” miniseries on Hulu — based on the great book of the same name —  centered on the real-life Troubles in Ireland and the real life-and-death consequences of political violence.

And I was also busy pretending as I celebrated the arrival of the new year that there might be something — anything — worth looking forward to in our county over the next 12 months.

By the time we all woke up on January 1, we could already see that the year had begun in the worst way possible. 

And by the end of New Year’s Day, matters had somehow gotten even worse.

The mind reels.

Sure, it would have been too easy to predict that 2025 would be, at minimum, a bumpy ride — just ask Speaker-for-now Mike Johnson about his bumper-car-like reelection — but this was not a mere bump coming from Bourbon Street.

It wasn’t a mere bump that an apparent terrorist — officials now think Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the recent ISIS convert who carried an ISIS flag in the truck, acted alone in ramming all those innocent people— crashed his way into a 3 a.m. street scene, killing at least 14.

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And it was not a mere bump that Donald Trump, just weeks before his inauguration, just days before the anniversary of January 6, would preview for us just what the Trump restoration will look like. For the New Orleans massacre, he blamed open borders, dangerous migrants, Democrats and, in his words, assorted “SCUM,” despite the fact that the killer was born in Texas and hadn’t crossed any borders.

When Fox News, which first reported (wrongly) that the killer had driven a rental truck two days before the bombing across the border with Mexico, retracted the suggestion that the killer had been in (or was from) Mexico, that didn’t stop Trump. He doubled down and then tripled down —  you can do the math from there — on blaming dangerous migrant criminals and the Joe Biden “crime family,” et al.

Of course, he did. One campaign promise that Trump is likely to keep is to close down the southern border on Day One of his presidency. And the guess is he’ll continue to cite the New Orleans massacre as just one reason.

Clearly, the tragedy of 14 deaths or more on Bourbon Street is a far more tragic event than another of Trump’s many disinformation campaigns.

But here was a returning president whose first instinct upon learning of tragedy was not to comfort those who had been killed or injured, but to turn a false story into what he envisions, as shown by the success of his presidential campaign, as political gain.

How much worse can it be?

While we were still trying to digest all that, we learned that someone in a Tesla Cybertruck — rented through the same previously obscure Turo company the New Orleans killer had used — had blown up himself and part of his truck outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. 

Yes, the Tesla truck is, of course, the product of an electric car company owned by Trump’s weird friend, Elon Musk. And, yes, the hotel is a Trump-branded hotel. There had to be some connection, right?

But the authorities were more worried about another possible connection — that the two events were related. Both people involved had been or were presently in the Army, both rented electric vehicles from Turo, and then, of course, in both cases, there was the matter of timing.

And yet, so far, they’ve found no connection.

But they have declared the Las Vegas event a suicide. It turns out that the coroner ruled that Matthew Livelsberger, the Las Vegas bomber, shot himself just before the bombs exploded in the Cybertruck. We learned the identity of the bomber, whose body was unrecognizable after the explosion, with help from Musk. Tesla apparently tracks where their cars get recharged. Is that just one more thing to worry about?

What we also learned is that Livelsberger lived in Colorado Springs, was on leave from his Fort Carson-based 10th Special Forces Group in Germany, and that he was apparently sending a message with the attack, which would explain why an explosion set off by a former Green Beret with great experience in IEDs would have caused so little damage. 

A few people were injured, none seriously. The Trump hotel took virtually no damage. Only the driver died, and by self-inflicted gunshot. According to others interviewed by the Denver Gazette, Livelsberger was a strong Trump supporter.

The Gazette newspaper reached Alicia Arritt, an ex-girlfriend of Livelsberger, who said she had exchanged playful texts with the bomber on his drive from Denver, where he picked up the truck, to Las Vegas.

She had not heard from him for three years. And the FBI told her that Livelsberger, who was married and had a new baby at home, had reached out to other ex-girlfriends on the trip.

Among the texts was this from Livelsberger: “I rented a Tesla Cybertruck. It’s the shit.”

A few minutes later, he texted again: “I feel like Batman or halo.”

Arritt, a former nurse who treated wounded military members and veterans, also told the Gazette that when Livelsberger, an off-and-on boyfriend for three years ending in 2021, returned from a tour in the Middle East a few years ago, he came home with traumatic brain damage and showed clearly changed behavior.

When the Washington Post contacted Arritt, she said Livelsberger had told her he had a massive brain injury. Livelsberger told her, she said, that he had struggled with memory issues, concentration, relationships and guilt over his actions in combat, for which he received many medals for bravery.

According to the Post story, Arritt said she knew “such injuries could fuel a gradual, heartbreaking deterioration of someone’s mental state.” Several of her veteran friends and former patients, she said, have died by suicide. 

“He wanted to get more help,” Arritt said. “I think it was harder for him, being on active duty — the shame and the stigma.”

During a Friday news conference, officials revealed messages they had found on the charred phone.

“This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call,” one read. “Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives?”

Another read: “Why did I personally do it now? I needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”

So, maybe not so much a mystery. Just another tragedy.

The Defense Department says more than 460,000 military personnel have suffered from TBI (traumatic brain injury) from 2000 to 2022, with approximately 10,000 of those diagnosed as “severe” or “penetrative.”

You may remember Trump’s verdict on traumatic brain injuries that occurred during an attack late in his first term, when Iranian-launched missiles landed near a U.S. base.

When Trump was asked about the severity of the injuries, he replied, “What does ‘injured’ mean? You mean because they had a headache. Because the bombs never hit the fort …”

Not just a headache, of course. Something much worse. Which is just what this next year promises to be. And we’re only at the beginning. 

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.

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