The Media Helped Trump Spread a Lie After the National Guard Shooting

The job of the media is to provide truth, which equals facts plus context.

Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe, in photos released by the military

The shooting of two National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., last week should have led to bipartisan action—specifically, an immediate commitment to shoring up protections for these men and women who volunteer to serve. Instead, it became President Donald Trump’s latest opportunity to spread a made-up number to Americans. And the legacy media, as always, helped him.

Sarah Beckstrom, 20, was killed in the attack. Andrew Wolfe, 24, is fighting for his life. The attacker, an Afghan national, had worked with the United States during the war in Afghanistan. He entered the United States in 2021 and received asylum earlier this year, under the Trump administration.

Trump responded to the attack by furthering his immigration agenda. He halted the immigration process for applicants from Afghanistan. “This attack underscores the greatest national security threat facing our nation,” he said. “The last administration let in 20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners from all over the world, from places that you don’t even want to know about. No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival.”

The media rushed to parrot Trump’s claim. From the BBC to CNN, ABC, and more, the news shared the figure without bothering to find out and tell audiences that it’s untrue.

Trump makes up numbers all the time about all sorts of things. Earlier this year, I fact-checked his claim that 21 million people are here illegally. (News flash: It was false.) If legacy media were really committed to truth, they would standardly fact check claims before sharing them with their audiences. Instead, they routinely quote and air lies.

It’s the “news as open mic night” phenomenon I rail against on They Stand Corrected. Since launching the podcast and newsletter, I’ve invited listeners and readers to send me examples of lies that go uncorrected in the media or instances of news agencies lying in their own reporting. Each week, I’m inundated. It’s a systemic problem.

The ‘unknown’ claim

With this latest claim, Trump was not only making up a number but also mixing different issues. The shooter in this attack was certainly known and definitely went through some vetting. To help audiences understand the truth, the news should clarify all this.

There is no legitimate basis to claim “20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners” are in the United States. “Unknown” describes people who are in the country without the government’s knowledge, such as people who sneak in or overstay their visas.

The latest estimate of undocumented immigrants comes from Pew Research, which puts the figure at about 14 million. That’s total, not arrivals during the Biden years. The number went up in the last year of Trump’s first term and grew sharply under Biden between 2021 and 2023, by a few million, according to the study. But this is a case in which there’s a crucial technical distinction between “illegal” and “undocumented.” (People have strong feelings about these terms; I focus tightly on the facts.)

According to Pew, that increase “was driven primarily” by people who received parole or asylum. The country knows those folks are here and allows them to be “for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” They can still be classified as “undocumented” because they did not come through the application process and receive documentation. But they are here legally.

The ‘unvetted’ claim

There’s no reason to believe the shooter in the National Guard attack was unvetted (despite FBI Director Kash Patel claiming he was not vetted “in any way, shape or form”). However, it’s certainly possible that he was inadequately vetted.

In 2021, the Taliban took back power in Afghanistan under a withdrawal negotiated by the Trump administration. Afghan security forces fell much faster than the Biden administration was prepared for. There was a massive rush to try to get people out, particularly those who had helped the United States.

Evacuees from Afghanistan, August 2021

The next year, the Office of Inspector General found that amid that rush, the country “may have admitted or paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities.”

It’s also important to emphasize that more vetting of this shooter might have made no difference. We don’t yet know the motivation for his attack. And Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says authorities believe he was radicalized here in the United States.

Perhaps most important, because the shooter received asylum this year, it was up to the Trump administration to vet him for that. (You might have noticed that I’ve avoided using the shooter’s name. It’s fine to use it but also good to limit mentions to avoid helping attackers gain notoriety.)

There are legitimate concerns about the 2021 vetting process. No one who is a threat to the brave volunteers of U.S. forces should be allowed in. That should be a bipartisan position.

But the job of the media is to provide truth, which equals facts plus context. In letting Trump or anyone else lie, they achieve neither. And we’re all worse off for it.

Josh Levs is host of They Stand Corrected, the podcast and newsletter fact-checking the media. Find him at joshlevs.com.

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