Domestic extremism update: Last week’s Las Vegas Cybertruck bomb suspect was a supporter of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, as well as an active-duty Green Beret with PTSD who left notes (PDF) in his phone stating he believed the U.S. was “headed toward collapse,” authorities said Friday after accessing one of two phones found at the scene. He’d also been experiencing marital problems just days before the incident occurred, officials told the New York Post.
ICYMI: His name was Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old from Colorado Springs who was a master sergeant in the Army special forces when he carried out his suicidal final act on New Year’s Day. Police said he shot himself in the head seconds before his rented Tesla Cybertruck truck exploded in flames and fireworks on the Vegas strip.
The attack, which wounded seven bystanders, is being investigated as a possible act of terrorism, officials announced shortly after it occurred. Several messages on the soldier’s phone would seem to meet the textbook definition of terrorism: carrying out a violent act to advance a political ideology.
But from the soldier’s troubled perspective, “This was not a terrorist attack. It was a wake-up call,” one of his notes read, according to Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren of the Vegas police. “Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence,” Livelsberger wrote. “What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives?”
What was his “point,” or message? “Masculinity is good and men must be leaders,” he wrote in one of the notes. The U.S. must “focus on strength and winning” and “weed out those in our government and military who do not idealize” masculinity and strength, according to the soldier—who also called on military personnel, veterans, and militias to “move on DC starting now.”
Livelsberger also encouraged insurrection in Washington, urging those with a like mind to “Occupy every major road along fed[eral] buildings and the campus of fed[eral] buildings by the hundreds of thousands. Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete.”
“Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dem[ocrat]s out of the fed[eral] government and military by any means necessary,” he advised. “They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse…Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans!” said the deceased soldier.
Historian’s reaction: “The vision of the U.S. as a hellscape that can only be fixed by purging the government of Democrats does not reflect reality,” Heather Cox Richardson of Boston College wrote Sunday. However, she continued, “Livelsberger’s notes reflect not reality but rather the political rhetoric in which many Americans have marinated since the 1950s: the idea that a government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights crushes the individualism on which America depends.” (Richardson goes into greater detail on the myth of the American cowboy and how that seems to color several of the soldier’s themes and grievances, here.)
But Livelsberger left another notable clue as to his violent final act: “Why did I personally do it now?” he wrote in one of the messages, according to police. “I needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took,” he said. He also blamed processed foods, children “addicted to screens by the age of two,” and lamented, “Our soldiers are done fighting wars without end states or clear objectives.”
Said one close friend: “He needed help, and he was afraid to get it,” a former Army nurse told the New York Times, and noted that fear of seeking help “is very common for guys who do his job.”
The Army even released a statement acknowledging the “behavioral health” toll on its personnel, as well as measures taken to support the special operations community, in particular. “The Army is fully committed to assisting our Soldiers and has a multitude of behavioral health professionals and resources that are available to our Soldiers around the clock,” Chief of Public Affairs Brig. Gen. Amanda Azubuike said in a statement Saturday. “Additionally, the U.S. Special Operations Command established the Preservation of the Force and Family (POTFF) program which provides holistic care in physical, cognitive, medical, and support resources as appropriate to each individual.”
For the record, “We encourage our Soldiers, if they need help, mental health treatment or need to speak with someone, to seek proactive behavioral health treatment either on base or online,” the general said in her statement. “They also have the option of talking to an Army chaplain. We are committed to supporting our Soldiers in every possible way.
Worth noting: “In this particular case, Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger had access to and used the POTFF program,” Azubuike said, and stressed, “he did not display any concerning behaviors at the time, and was granted personal leave. All relevant records were provided to the FBI as the lead investigative agency,” she added.
FBI: “Although this incident is more public and more sensational than usual, it ultimately appears to be a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who is struggling with PTSD and other issues,” Spencer Evans, the special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office, said Friday.
Related reading:
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2021, thousands of Trump supporters rushed the U.S. Capitol Building, dozens attacked police and hundreds broke inside in a violent attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election of President Joe Biden. More than 1,580 people have since been charged with crimes related to the insurrection; more than 1,000 have pleaded guilty and at least 220 were convicted at trial.
Pacific
The same day the White House blocked a Japanese steelmaker from buying a U.S. firm, the Pentagon’s arms export agency announced a $3.6 billion sale of missiles to Tokyo on Friday.
Involved: More than a thousand AIM-120D-3 and AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, aka AMRAAMs, in a deal benefiting Tucson-based RTX Corporation. Lawmakers could still object to the deal, though that does not seem likely.
North Korea launched what may have been a hypersonic missile on Monday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports. Seoul’s military described the projectile as an intermediate-range ballistic missile that flew an estimated 1,100 kilometers before splashing into the East sea. Japan’s military said it had a maximum altitude of about 100 kilometers.
Context: “The latest launch took place as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting Seoul for talks on efforts to deter North Korean threats amid political turmoil in South Korea stemming from President Yoon Suk Yeol’s failed martial law bid,” Yonhap writes, and adds, “South Korean officials have warned the North could take advantage of the political crisis by engaging in military activity and ratchet up cross-border tensions.”
From the region:
Trendspotting: Trump’s promise to build more warships is on a collision course with his deportation pledges. Early last year, the then-candidate promised that when he got back into the Oval Office, he’d authorize the U.S. Navy to build more ships, reports ProPublica’s Nicole Foy. “It’s very important,” Trump said, “because it’s jobs, great jobs.” However, Foy writes, the companies that build ships for the government are already having trouble finding enough workers to fill those jobs. And Trump may make it even harder if he follows through on another pledge he’s made: to clamp down on immigration. Read on, here.
Boeing appoints a former Trump Pentagon official as CIO. From December 2019 to January 2021, Dana Deasy served as DOD’s CIO. Read the company’s press release.
The Americas
Honduras: We’ll eject U.S. forces if Trump proceeds with mass deportations. President Xiomara Castro’s threat, made in a New Year’s Day radio address, is “the first concrete pushback by a leader in the region to Mr. Trump’s plan to send back millions of Latin American citizens living in the United States” and came as “as foreign ministers were set to meet later this month to address the deportation issue,” the New York Times reported Friday.
Trump has also proposed unilateral military action in Mexico. “Mexican officials have tried to learn whether he is serious or merely blustering to gain leverage in talks about shutting down the pipeline of migrants and drugs heading into the U.S,” the Wall Street Journal reported late last month. “Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has rushed to blunt criticism from Trump’s orbit and put to rest worries at home that there is any danger from the country’s neighbor to the north.”
What might such action look like? Veteran military reporter Kevin Maurer writes that he “talked to half a dozen former special operations soldiers and intelligence agents to see what this saber-rattling might look like in practice. On paper, they argued it was an easy operation to dismantle the cartel leadership, something that our military—particularly units like SEAL Team Six and Delta Force—has mastered after two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he reported in Rolling Stone last Thursday.
However, “Carolyn Gallaher, a professor studying guerrilla and paramilitary violence at American University’s School of International Service, calls the idea folly. She researched cooperation between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement in the mid-2000s and says one takeaway from the Mexicans was that it was a mistake to target cartel leaders.” Read on, here.
ICYMI: A recent ridealong with ICE officers revealed obstacles to mass deportations, AP reported from New York City just before Christmas. For starters, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is already understaffed. “About 1.4 million people have final orders of removal, while about 660,000 under immigration supervision either have been convicted of crimes or are facing charges. But only 6,000 officers within ICE are tasked with monitoring noncitizens in the country and then finding and removing those not eligible to stay. Those staffing numbers have largely remained static as their caseload has roughly quadrupled over the past decade to 7.6 million. About 10% of that workforce was pulled from their regular duties last year to go to the U.S.-Mexico border at times when immigration spiked.” Read on, here.
Lastly today: Migrant flows have plummeted in one key route. “Over 300,000 migrants crossed the Darien Gap into Panama in 2024, 42% fewer than the record number who made the perilous jungle crossing from South America a year earlier, Panama’s migration authorities told Reuters on Thursday.” Reuters has more, here.
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