The early hours of 2025 shook Americans with two incidents that cast a pall over the new year.

The first occurred in the French Quarter after 3:15 AM CST when ISIS sympathizer Shamsud Din Jabbar began his deadly vehicular and shooting assault upon New Year revelers on Bourbon Street.

And then a little over 7 hours later at 8:30 AM PST Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger pulled into the valet area at the front door of the 64-story Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in a Tesla Cybertruck loaded up with fuel and pyrotechnics.

Mere seconds later Livelsberger ended his life with a handgun upon detonating the vehicle in a ball of flames and fireworks.

In contrast to the Bourbon Street rampage by the radicalized Islamist terrorist Jabbar, there were no fatalities beyond Livelsberger and few injuries in the Vegas explosion.

While Jabbar’s intentions were not only clear via his actions and uploaded videos, what triggered Livelsberger is a matter of conjecture.

A manifesto attributed to Livelsberger has circulated around the internet declaring his act of self-immolation to not be an attack but a “wake up call.” It has also been claimed by those who knew him that Livelsberger suffered PTSD from his combat service overseas. Also issues with his personal life have also been cited as a motivating factor.

What seems certain is that 1) he wanted to draw attention to his suicide and 2) Livelsberger did not seek to maliciously inflict harm on others while taking his own life.

The first is obvious from his choice of vehicle and venue- two brands connected to the most high-profile non-entertainment figures on the planet – a truck produced richest man in the world and a hotel affiliated with the soon-to-be president again.

Livelsberger didn’t so much dog-whistle his final act but used an air raid siren.

Yet beyond the presidential brand the Trump property has a few distinct features.

First it doesn’t have a casino, meaning the only tourists coming and going to the resort are guests.

Unlike many Vegas resorts, the Trump is a nice, yet for Vegas an atypically quiet, place.

All of the rooms are suites and the main clientele targets are folks looking to relax in a spacious room, people who choose to patronize a property with a Trump connection (they sell MAGA hats and other Trump swag in the gift shop), and high-end international airline flight staff.

Secondly, it’s not on Las Vegas Boulevard, AKA The Strip, but is located on Fashion Show Drive, a connector road that links The Strip with Sammy Davis, Jr. Drive, an ancillary road that runs parallel with Las Vegas Boulevard primarily used as a service road for large-scale casino properties that front on The Strip.

The Trump International Hotel is the only structure on the even numbered side of Fashion Show Drive with the rest of the area being a completely vacant footprint for future development.

Furthermore, there’s not even a sidewalk along the Trump International Hotel side of Fashion Show Drive, being located across the width of four traffic lanes and a turning lane in the middle. There’s not even a bus stop on that street.

Thirdly, anyone who has watched the video of the cybertruck explosion saw that the conflagration did not emit horizontally (which would be optimal if the intent was maximizing harm) but shot up vertically. Only the noticeable but relatively harmless firecrackers whizzed around the sides.

The Trump Hotel was temporarily closed with guests moved over to the Resort World Hilton property on Las Vegas Boulevard, but that was likely due for the purposes of securing the site for investigation and removing debris. The hotel was back up and running the next day.

From the street-level view of Fashion Show Drive the only thing that looked out of place was the presence of moveable metal barricades manned by staff as taxi and rideshare pickups and drop offs were relocated to the street curb.

There was a Las Vegas PD cruiser on site but that was probably more to do with deterring minor mischief than any looming threat.

Arriving at the entrance the first thing you notice that the glass facade that separates the lobby from the vehicle pull-in area is completely intact. There wasn’t even so much a crack in the glass.

In fact, the wood and marble valet stand that is located mere yards from where Livelsberger blew up the rented cybertruck showed no damage whatsoever.

You had to look up to overhang that shelters vehicles to see any damage from the explosion.

Where one camera dome was located had been removed and the fire sprinkler heads were charred. There also were some small holes and a large piece of paneling that appeared blown out. Beyond the superficial scarring of an area I’ve never bothered to look at in the dozen or so times I’ve been on the property you’d never know anything, let alone a car bomb, had occurred there.

Livelsberger began his fateful path towards his self-appointed demise on December 28th when he rented the vehicle. Whatever his true motivation, actual or imagined, will be speculated over by folks ranging from military medical experts to TikTokers.

This is the first time I can recall that a car bomber seemed meticulously focused on maximizing attention to his own death and simultaneously minimizing harm to others.

All Livelsberger needed to do is pack nails and screws into the vehicle to have blasted deadly shrapnel across the valet area or smash the vehicle right through the lobby and then detonated the truck to have easily inflicted more fatalities than Jabbar.

But he didn’t; and that apparently wasn’t the green beret’s end game.