If someone plows their truck into a crowd of people celebrating New Year’s with an ISIS flag and IEDs are found at the scene of the attack, what would you call that? It seems like a simple question, but for the cast of Thursday’s CNN Newsroom, it wasn’t as they shamed the Democratic mayor of New Orleans for calling the attack on her city an act of terrorism.
Host Pamela Brown asked national security analyst Juliette Kayyem, “I mean, I've sadly covered too many tragedies like this and it struck me because normally you don't come right out of the gate and label it a terrorist attack or not, Juliette, you know, you say ‘we're looking into all possibilities’ because it's so early, you don't really know. And there were these explosive devices. This suspect shot at police and hit two police officers. Ten people are killed. More than 30 in the hospital. I mean, this is horrific, Juliette, how do you see this?”
One of those who did label it a terrorist attack was Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Kayyem, who thinks Donald Trump is a terrorist, patronized her and, one presumes, others for believing what they saw with their own eyes, “Yeah, I just think the mayor made a mistake. Let's just, you know, in some ways, move on. It has to be clarified. I do not think she should have come out. You actually saw the people behind her, sort of, flinch. She was speaking as a politician and as someone who governs the city that this was terrorizing. It was terrible. It was terror for those there. But we are now in the investigation and prosecution stage.”
The definition of terrorism is an attack on civilians by a non-state actor in order to intimidate them in pursuit of a religious and or political objective. If what happened in New Orleans does not fit that definition, then what does?
Here is a transcript for the January 2 show:
CNN Newsroom
1/2/2025
9:10 PM ET
PAMELA BROWN: I mean, I've sadly covered too many tragedies like this and it struck me because normally you don't come right out of the gate and label it a terrorist attack or not, Juliette, you know, you say "we're looking into all possibilities" because it's so early, you don't really know. And there were these explosive devices. This suspect shot at police and hit two police officers. Ten people are killed. More than 30 in the hospital. I mean, this is horrific, Juliette, how do you see this?
JULIETTE KAYYEM: Yeah, I just think the mayor made a mistake. Let's just, you know, in some ways, move on. It has to be clarified. I do not think she should have come out. You actually saw the people behind her, sort of, flinch. She was speaking as a politician and as someone who governs the city that this was terrorizing. It was terrible. It was terror for those there. But we are now in the investigation and prosecution stage.
