Democrat strategist says 500 more National Guard troops would be ‘targets’

A Democrat strategist told CNN Wednesday that adding 500 additional National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. would create “more targets” for shootings. 

CNN host Erica Hill asked Democrat strategist Donte Mills on “CNN NewsNight” about the legal battle of keeping the National Guard in the nation’s capital in the aftermath of Wednesday’s shooting that critically injured two guardsmen.

“The administration filing this emergency today saying we want to keep them in, and the president saying, I want 500 more troops. How much does that sort of muddy the waters legally, given everything that we saw today?” Hill asked. 

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“I think the president is going to use — his administration is going to use this incident to further their cause of having these Guardsmen on the street,” Mills said. 

On Wednesday, two young National Guard members, Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, were shot in Washington, D.C. They had been sworn into service less than 24 hours before the attack, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said on Thursday.

The shooting suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, had entered the U.S. legally in 2021 under humanitarian parole which was part of the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome, following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Following the shooting, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said President Donald Trump asked him to deploy 500 additional troops to Washington, D.C.

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But Mills said the additional guardsman would just be “more targets” for shootings. 

“The issue that we have is, if you add 500 people to this equation, 500 soldiers, it wouldn‘t have stopped what happened today,” Mills said. “He walked up on soldiers and opened fire. It would have just been more targets there. These people are there, their assignment is high-visibility patrol.

“So, people know where they are. They‘re uniformed, so people know what they look like. And if they want to approach them or harm them, they‘re in harm‘s way. So why add to that and put more people in harm‘s way, when it wouldn‘t have changed the outcome in this particular matter?”

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Asked by Hill if additional guardsmen would keep D.C. safer, Paul Rieckhoff, a Iraq War veteran, said, “I don‘t think so. I mean, maybe potentially in those immediate areas. But I think the bigger question is this. Any time the commander in chief sends men and women into harm‘s way, he has to explain why it‘s absolutely necessary. And the question should be, is this absolutely necessary?”

Attorney General Pam Bondi says the Justice Department will do “everything in our power” to seek the death penalty for Lakanwal.