Two National Guard members were shot in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday; a tragedy that immediately spurred a deluge of prominent liberal commentators and activists on social media blaming President Donald Trump.

The guardsmen were attacked a block away from the White House shortly before 3 p.m. local time and remained in critical condition as of Wednesday evening. The troops are part of the National Guard surge Trump ordered in August to address rising crime in the nation’s capital after a series of high-profile incidents, including the fatal shooting of a congressional intern.

Democrats had long opposed Trump’s deployment of Guard units to the capital and other cities, calling it an overreach of presidential authority. In the hours after the shooting, many revived those criticisms, arguing that the president was to blame.

“Trump put them in harm’s way, fash,” former ESPN and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann posted on X. (

Jane Mayer, a writer at The New Yorker, argued that the “poor guardsmen should never have been deployed,” adding that they had “virtually nothing to do but pick up trash.”

“It was for political show and at what a cost,” Mayer wrote on X.

“Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are culpable for endangering the National Guard by putting them in harm’s way,” author and activist John Pavlovitz posted on his BlueSky platform, where he has more than 233,000 followers.

Writer Charlotte Clymer similarly told her more than 200,000 BlueSky followers that the troops had been “used as political pawns.”

“They sign up to serve their country, not needlessly deploy to American cities to pick up garbage,” she wrote.

Media personality Keith Edwards also suggested on X that the guardsmen would have been “fine” were it not for “Trump’s illegal deployment of the national guard for a non-emergency.”

“History will wonder what we’re all thinking: why did Trump have to put them in harm’s way for a STUNT?” the X account “Call to Activism,” run by political commentator Joe Gallina, posted to its more than 1 million followers.

Many other users echoed similar sentiments, including one post with thousands of likes that called the incident an “orchestrated tragedy by a president hellbent on creating a tinder box environment across the country.”

Writer and former senior editor at The New Republic Brian Beutler responded to West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s initial — and later retracted — claim that the guardsmen had died, writing that Morrisey had “sent them to die for a stunt.”

Despite the posts downplaying crime in the city, violent crime during the National Guard’s initial one-month surge in the capital fell 39% compared to the same period last year, including a 53% drop in homicides.

Opposition to the deployments has been ongoing for months. Democrat Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker claimed in August that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard into his state was an “attack on the American people” and would be used to “stop the 2026 elections.”

While the Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that one suspect is in custody, officials have not released details about the individual, a possible motive, or whether others were involved.

The president said in a Truth Social post shortly after the incident that the “animals” who shot the guardsmen will “pay a very steep price,” and Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that 500 additional troops would be deployed in response.