President Donald Trump shared a social media post claiming Afghans would ‘chop off your head’ and ‘assume you were a witch’ if you showed them a Nespresso machine.
Robert O’Neill, the Navy Seal veteran who claimed to have killed Osama bin Laden, shared a post on X appearing to oppose the immigration of people from Afghanistan to the United States.
‘If you’ve never been to Afghanistan, you wouldn’t understand,’ O’Neill wrote. ‘If you showed these people a Nespresso machine and gave them a free coffee, they would assume you were a witch and chop off your head… But let’s bring ’em in!’
The president then reshared the post on Truth Social on Saturday following the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington DC by an Afghan national rescued from Kabul during the US withdrawal in 2021.
O’Neill, who has come under fire for claiming sole responsibility for shooting bin Laden, stoked debate online over his stance on immigration.
The Navy Seal veteran previously described himself as a Trump supporter and defended the president’s ban on immigration from ‘majority-Muslim’ countries during his first term.
‘Donald Trump… he has a big heart and sometimes he speaks a little loosely but he’s just tryna protect [America],’ O’Neill told Good Morning Britain in 2017.
‘It takes ten minutes of talking with a GWOT (global war on terrorism) veteran to understand the atrocities they witnessed over there,’ one user commented under O’Neill’s post.
Another rebutted: ‘You’ve NEVER been there. I don’t mean physically; I mean interacting with them like human beings, being invited into their homes, having casual conversations, buying street food etc. Your experience there is of a hate-filled invader, he kills indiscriminately, then returns.’
Another user saw the lighter side and joked: ‘I myself always wonder how they make those awesome espressos out of little cups? Nespresso is pretty witchy.’
The attack in Washington DC on Wednesday saw Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, 24, shot in what the president described as a ‘savage attack’.
Beckstrom was killed in the shooting, while Wolfe is in hospital being treated for his wounds.
DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said that she believed the two ‘were sworn in less than 24 hours before they were shot on the street’.
‘[Beckstrom] was savagely attacked. She’s dead. She’s not with us,’ Trump said on Thanksgiving. ‘[Beckstrom was] outstanding in every single way, in every department. Just horrible.’
The suspected gunman was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, who was said to have come to the US as part of the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome program in 2021.
Around 85,000 Afghans, many of whom had aided American forces in Afghanistan, were settled in the US after troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.
Prior to Lakanwal’s arrival, the suspect worked with the US, including the CIA, ‘as a member of a partner force in Kandahar,’ John Ratcliffe, the spy agency’s director said.
He did not specify what work Lakanwal did, but said the relationship ‘ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation’ of US servicemembers from Afghanistan.
Trump described the shooter as an ‘animal’ and vowed that they would ‘pay a very steep price’.
Pirro said that the lone gunman was armed with a .357 Smith and Wesson revolver when he allegedly opened fire on the two ‘without provocation, ambush style’.
She said: ‘One guardsmen is struck, goes down, and then the shooter leans over and strikes the guardsmen again. Another guardsmen is struck several times.
‘Fellow guardsmen who were there responded immediately, engaging the suspect, neutralizing the threat and subduing him at the scene.’
The motivation for the shooting remains unclear.
The following morning, immigration requests from Afghanistan were halted by the Trump administration. Trump also ordered a ‘full-scale, rigorous reexamination’ of green card holders from 19 ‘countries of concern’.
Joe Edlow, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote in a post on X on Thursday: ‘At direction of @POTUS, I have directed a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.’
Those countries include Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to CNN that ‘effective immediately’ the processing of all immigration requests to Afghan nationals ‘is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols’.
‘The Trump Administration is also reviewing all asylum cases approved under the Biden Administration,’ she added.
