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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem slammed Antifa during a White House roundtable discussion with reporters on Wednesday, likening far-left troublemakers to terror groups like ISIS.
“I want to thank the new journalists here today for telling their stories and for being able and willing to go to the streets and to cover what’s happening here in America. Many times, the legacy media has looked the other way, refused to tell the stories,” Noem began.
“The networks have not really focused on what this is and what damage it is doing to our country and how this network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TdA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them,” she continued.
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Noem visited Portland on Wednesday, where left-wing agitators have been rioting outside an ICE facility for months, noting that dozens of Antifa members from all around the country have been arrested under the Trump administration.
She said that authorities recently arrested the girlfriend of the founder of Antifa in Portland, and that investigators are trying to garner more information from her about the network of newly-labeled “domestic terrorists” during their prosecution.
Noem said the administration’s explicit goal is to “eliminate [Antifa] from the existence of American society.”
“These individuals do not just want to threaten our law enforcement officers, threaten our journalists and the citizens of this country. They want to kill them,” Noem said.
“Their agenda is to destroy the American people and our way of life,” she said. “And this president is standing in their way. He is stopping them from bringing their death. And there’s destruction to the individual citizens in this country that just want to raise their kids and their grandkids in peace and in safety.”
President Donald Trump set the stage at the beginning of the roundtable.
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“It should be clear to all Americans that we have a very serious left-wing terror threat in our country, radicals associated with the domestic terror group Antifa that you’ve heard a lot about lately,” he said. “And I’ve heard a lot about them for 10 years, and other far-left extremists have been carrying out a campaign of violence against ICE agents and other officials charged with enforcing federal law.”
Trump emphasized his belief that many Antifa rioters are paid to cause mayhem, and teased an announcement to that effect.
“You’ll be finding it out very soon,” he said. “You should see what we have on these people.”
One reporter asked Trump about designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization. Trump said it “sounds good to me.”
“Would you like to see it done?” he asked the other officials at the roundtable. “You think it would help? I’d be glad to do it. I think it’s the kind of thing I’d like to do.”
Other top officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, spoke at the roundtable, before the reporters in the room shared horror stories about their experience covering the black-bloc rioters.
The common theme was gratefulness for the Trump administration’s acknowledgment that Antifa is real and is well-organized. The reporters blasted legacy media for either outright refusal to cover Antifa violence, or for downplaying it.
“Thank you, Mr. President, for having us here,” said reporter Julio Rosas. “And, you know, not to sound like a broken record, but it needs to be said that Antifa is real. It’s real. It’s a threat.”
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