You know it pains me to write this, BUT…. to be fair to Trump, this new report kinda proves he was right to put so much blame at the feet of Antifa.
According to a report that just surfaced, intelligence peoples have been warning about violence from Antifa since BEFORE THE ELECTION, and they have already been designated a TERRORIST threat.
Federal authorities have been warning state and local officials since early 2016 that leftist extremists known as “antifa” had become increasingly confrontational and dangerous, so much so that the Department of Homeland Security formally classified their activities as “domestic terrorist violence,” according to interviews and confidential law enforcement documents obtained by POLITICO.
Since well before the Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly, DHS has been issuing warnings about the growing likelihood of lethal violence between the left-wing anarchists and right-wing white supremacist and nationalist groups.
Remember when Trump was destroyed for saying both groups were at fault for what happened? IF, and that’s a big if, he was thinking about reports like this from his own intelligence agencies, then that makes more sense now.
Politico gets into more detail later:
Some of the DHS and FBI intelligence reports began flagging the antifa protesters before the election. In one from last September, portions of which were read to POLITICO, DHS studied “recent violent clashes … at lawfully organized white supremacist” events including a June 2016 rally at the California Capitol in Sacramento organized by the Traditionalist Workers Party and its affiliate, the Golden State Skinheads.
According to police, counter-protesters linked to antifa and affiliated groups like By Any Means Necessary attacked, causing a riot after which at least 10 people were hospitalized, some with stab wounds.
At the Sacramento rally, antifa protesters came looking for violence, and “engaged in several activities indicating proficiency in pre-operational planning, to include organizing carpools to travel from different locations, raising bail money in preparation for arrests, counter-surveilling law enforcement using three-man scout teams, using handheld radios for communication, and coordinating the event via social media,” the DHS report said.
I argued before that it was tribalist and extreme to call for naming Antifa a terrorist threat, but that’s a completely different matter when federal law enforcement agencies have already done it. Also, they appear to be much more bipartisan – they see the threat from racist extremist fascists the same way they see the threat from fascist “anti-fascist” groups.
This doesn’t exonerate Trump from some of the other unwise things he’s said or done, but does lend some credence to those defending him on this issue….