ISIS, those inch-perfect evil-doers straight out of a James Bond movie, have just gifted Donald Trump the most perfect New Year present he could have wished for.
The horrible, cowardly, attack in New Orleans on New Years Eve which killed 15 and injured 35, has wittingly or unwittingly given the incoming President a moral mandate to add to the people’s mandate he already has in the bag.
And whether or not this particular twisted killer Shimsud-Din Jabbar turns out to be a henchman in a greater ISIS plot or just another random nut-job with a black flag matters not one jot. Neither does his 13 years in the American armed forces.
He had an ISIS flag in the Ford pick-up truck he used as a deadly weapon. Oh, and Jabbar is no whitebread Timothy McVeigh. Despite being Texas-born, he has the rotten luck of looking like an Islamic suicide bomber straight out of central casting.
And while the details and the nuance of the terror attack might – or might not – be pored over by the authorities in forthcoming days, those are the only two factors which will really resonate with the American public who are realising that once again the United States is under attack from Islamic terrorists.
And, let’s face it, they are. Which is a gift to incoming President Trump. Already politically unassailable, he is now morally untouchable.
Trump is hell-bent on deporting all undocumented migrants pretty much as soon as he sets foot in the Oval Office on January 20.
The impeccable Trumpian logic is that attacks on the US are the work of “migrant terrorists” – deport the migrants and you deport terror.
And if you don’t think that is what almost every blue collar American is thinking today (even the migrants) you don’t get America.
Oh, and it will also strengthen his hand to hit ISIS where they live too. Be ready for air-strikes across Middle East targets in forthcoming months.
And woe-betide any Democrat who has the temerity to challenge him – they will be chewed-up and spat out as terrorist sympathisers.
And still, even in the wake of the Kamala Harris disaster, Trump’s opponents do not learn.
Indeed, Trump’s position as “tell it like it is man of the people” was further boosted in the last 24 hours by two ridiculously, stupidly, PC statements by both Joe Biden and lead FBI investigator Alethea Duncan.
Ms Duncan – a woman charged with leading the terror investigation remember – was adamant the attack in Bourbon Street was “not a terrorist event”… even while the entire sane world (and more importantly every American) could clearly see that it was.
Then Joe Biden spouted a scripted empty platitude:“I know while this person committed a terrible assault on the city, the spirit of our New Orleans will never, never, never be defeated. It always will shine forth.”
Blah, blah, blah I’m afraid.
Meanwhile Trump did what Trump does best – he read the room, and last night posted on Truth Social: “When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true.
“The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before. Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department.
“The Trump Administration will fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!”
Which is exactly what the people of New Orleans and America wanted to hear. That the truth has become mangled and lost is irrelevant to Trump. We live in an age where truth is whatever people want it to be.
And that may be the only truth worth the name.