‘Are you a stupid person?': Trump slams reporter in heated exchange over Afghan shooter

The US President has been speaking to journalists after Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died and Andrew Wolfe, 24, was critically injured in an ambush shooting yards from the White House this week.

Suspect Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, a former special forces commander from Afghanistan, who came to the US in 2021 as part of a resettlement programme, has been charged over the shooting.

At a White House press conference on Friday, CBS journalist Nancy Cordes mentioned that the suspect ”'worked very closely with the CIA in Afghanistan for years, that he was vetted and the vetting came up clean”

Mr Trump quickly snapped back: ”He went cuckoo. I mean, he went nuts.

”It happens too often with these people. You see them. But look, this is how they come in, they're standing on top of each other. That's an airplane. There was no vetting or anything. They came in unvetted and we have a lot of others in this country and we're going to get them out.”

Read more: Trump halts migration from ‘third world countries’ after Afghan suspect ‘shot two soldiers’

Read more: Trump orders reviews of all Afghan immigration cases after DC shooting

Ms Cordes then repeated findings made by the federal watchdog.

“Actually, your DOJ IG [United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General] just reported this year that there was thorough vetting by DHS and by the FBI of these Afghans who were brought into the US, so why do you blame the Biden administration for what this man did?”

Mr Trump descended into a personal attack on the reporter as he grew visibly angry at her line of questioning. 

He said: “Because they let them in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?

“Because they came in on a plane along with thousands of other people that shouldn't be here and you're just asking questions because you're a stupid person.'

He went on to condemn former president Joe Biden’s withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan withdrawal and slammed immigration law.

“And there's a law passed that it's almost impossible to get them out. You can't get them out once they come in, and they came in and they were unvetted, they were unchecked, there were many of them, and they came in on big planes and it was disgraceful,' Trump said. 

“The whole Afghanistan situation was a mess. It should've never taken place… we would've left from Bagram, and we would've kept Bagram by the way,” Mr Trump said. It comes after the US paused immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals indefinitely on Wednesday.

It comes after Mr Trump snapped at a female reporter and told her to be “quiet, piggy” as he answered questions about Jeffrey Epstein on Air Force One.

Mr Trump announced the US will suspend migration from what he labelled ‘third world countries’ following the shooting.

The US president wrote in a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday evening: “I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the US system to fully recover.”

“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the US system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States,” Trump wrote.

He also said he would end all federal benefits and subsidies for “non-citizens”, adding he would “denaturalise migrants who undermine domestic tranquillity” and deport any foreign national deemed a public charge, security risk, or “non-compatible with Western civilization.”

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees US immigration, said in a post on social media: “Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”