How Fox News’ retracted New Orleans report sparked a MAGA meltdown about the border

Hours after a U.S. Army veteran plowed a truck into a crowd of revelers celebrating New Year’s on New Orleans’s Bourbon Street, leaving 14 dead and dozens injured, Fox News reported that the terror suspect’s vehicle was spotted crossing the U.S.-Mexico border just two days prior.

The conservative cable giant’s suggestion that the horrific tragedy may have been linked to migrants entering the United States sparked an immediate freakout from prominent conservatives — and likely led to President-elect Donald Trump’s initial statement on the mass casualty event that tied immigration to the terror attack.

While the incoming president insisted he’d been proven right that “the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country,” Fox News soon walked back much of its reporting, noting that the vehicle had been spotted near the border in November rather than late-December and that it didn’t appear the suspect was the driver in that instance.

At that point, though, the genie was already out of the bottle. MAGA hardliners — who have already spent the past couple of weeks squabbling about immigration and visas — cited the Fox News story while demanding for the United States to “shut the border down” because an “illegal immigrant” was responsible for the heinous attack.

In the first few hours after Shamsud-Din Jabbar allegedly carried out his attack, which the FBI is investigating as “an act of terrorism,” media outlets were furiously trying to gather information about the suspect’s identity, motivation and background. During this initial fog of reporting, Fox News took to the air late Wednesday morning to issue breaking news sourced to “two federal law enforcement sources.”

The first on-air mention of this story occurred at 10:40 a.m. ET, with Fox News reporter Alexis McAdams noting that correspondents David Spunt and Griff Jenkins were “working their sources” to find out that “this person came through Eagle Pass, Texas, two days ago.”

During Fox News’ live coverage seven minutes later, Spunt noted that the “vehicle was traced to coming across from Mexico into the United States at Eagle Pass, Texas, two days ago.” Pointing out Jenkins had also contributed to the report, Spunt said they didn’t know “100 percent if this man… was the person driving who crossed the border,” adding the “actual license plate was picked up by a reader at a border crossing.”

“I know that raises more questions than answers, but we are providing information to our viewers as we get it,” Spunt continued. “The most accurate information. So that’s what we know right now. As far as the name of the suspect, we don’t know. We’ve heard several names right now, but we want to be sure we have the accurate name before we say anything about a name and before we broadcast that at all.”

Meanwhile, the network ran a chyron on air that blared: “SOURCES: SUSPECT’S TRUCK CROSSED BORDER 2 DAYS AGO.”

Moments before Spunt went on air, Fox News senior national correspondent Aishah Hasnie posted his and Jenkins’ reporting on X (formerly Twitter). “NEWS – Federal law enforcement sources tell FOX, the NOLA suspect came through Eagle Pass, Texas two days ago. The suspect’s citizenship status is not yet confirmed,” she wrote at 10:43 a.m. ET.

Hasnie would edit that tweet nine minutes later, removing the reference to the “suspect” coming through the Eagle Pass border station and replacing it with “truck.” The correspondent’s tweet quickly went viral, sparking former Trump adviser Steve Cortes to call for a “legal immigration pause” and to “close the damn border!”

Trump, a rapacious Fox News viewer and social media consumer, would soon deliver his first official comments on the massacre and tied it directly to migrant crime and so-called open borders, issues he ran relentlessly on during his successful presidential campaign.

“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,” he wrote at 10:48 a.m. ET on his Truth Social platform.

“The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” he added. “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!”

The network’s digital site also added the reporting to its live blog and main article on the attack, prompting other outlets to aggregate the story. At the same time, far-right provocateurs and MAGA lawmakers seized on the report to link immigration to the likely terror attack.

“BREAKING: The suspect’s truck in the horrific Bourbon Street attack in New Orleans crossed over the US/Mexico border just two days ago in Eagle Pass, TX,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk tweeted to his 4.3 million followers, sharing a Fox News clip.

“New Orleans terrorist attacker is said to have come across the border in Eagle Pass TWO DAYS AGO!!!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) exclaimed from her official congressional X account. “Shut the border down!!! Who did our government bomb lately that is taking it out on innocent Americans?”

Sharing a clip of McAdams’ initial on-air report, right-wing news aggregator Breaking911 fumed that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “HAVE MORE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS” because “the man who committed the NYE New Orleans terror attack, crossed into the U.S. from Mexico via Eagle Pass TWO DAYS AGO.” That post soon racked up thousands of retweets and 3.9 million views.

When it was reported that the suspected terrorist had rented the truck using a car-sharing app, Fox News soon began dialing back its reporting. Roughly an hour after sparking a full-fledged meltdown on the right, the network retracted its initial story.

“Sources now tell Fox that that truck from Eagle Pass, Texas, did not cross two days ago. It crossed on November 16,” host Bryan Llenas told viewers at 11:55 a.m. ET. “And the identification of the driver that crossed the border does not appear to be the shooter. We will get more clarification.”

The Fox News digital team would soon add editor’s notes to the live blog, stating that an “earlier version of this blog post stated the truck had crossed into Eagle Pass two days ago. Sources tell FOX there was some initial confusion on their end about the date.” Eventually, all references to the report about the truck crossing the border were removed from the main digital article on the attack.

Later in the afternoon, Fox News would add even more clarifications to the story. Speaking to Lousiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, host Julie Banderas noted at 3:49 p.m. ET that the truck “never actually passed through from Mexico into Eagle Pass.” At the same time, Banderas attempted to keep the topic of immigration and border security relevant to the attack, adding that sources told Fox that “the license plate on this truck has a history of plate readers at the border, in patterns and I’m quoting, that may be suspicious for human smuggling.”

Earlier in the day, though, Spunt made a point of refuting Trump’s attempts to tie immigration to the attack. Reading off the president-elect’s statement — which was potentially spurred by his initial reporting — Spunt added: “To be clear… the suspect was born in the United States. He served in the United States Army. He was a veteran.”

Fox News and Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Indeed, the FBI confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that the suspected assailant was 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, a veteran of the U.S. Army who was born in Texas and converted to Islam after being brought up Christian.

The former real estate agent and consultant, who was also divorced twice, had recently posted videos discussing plans to kill his family and join the Islamic State, federal law enforcement officials said on Thursday. An ISIS flag was found in the truck he drove, and the FBI said on Thursday that Jabbar was “100 percent inspired” by the terrorist group.

Meanwhile, after suggesting that Jabbar had accomplices, the FBI stated on Thursday that nobody else was involved in the attack besides Jabbar, adding that “this was an act of terrorism.” They also stated that they saw “no definitive link” between the New Orleans attack and the explosion of a Cybertruck at a Trump-branded hotel in Las Vegas.

Despite Fox News walking back its reporting and the assailant being a US-born military veteran, Trump has tripled down on blaming the attack on Biden’s border policies, claiming he was “RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.” Other Republicans and conservatives have also followed suit, saying the “wide open southern border” invited this.

“With the Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy’ I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that 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 raged on Thursday. “That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.”