At one point during the White House’s “antifa roundtable,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made comments she treated as important. “One of the individuals we arrested recently in Portland was the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa,” the secretary boasted, “and we’re hoping as we go after her and prosecute her, we’ll get more and more information about the network.”
For those who watch crime shows on television, the strategy probably sounds familiar: Law enforcement arrests one low-level person, who’s pressured to identify others, as prosecutors work their way up the hierarchy of a larger criminal enterprise.
But while Noem talked about the arrest of an unnamed woman and the administration’s desire to “get more and more information” about the antifa network, the secretary failed to acknowledge one nagging detail: There is no network.
Antifa (to the extent that it exists) is made up of loosely affiliated anti-fascist activists. There is no budget. There is no membership list. There are no offices or headquarters. There are no staffers, leaders or board members. There is no hierarchy for prosecutors to pursue.
And yet, just two weeks after Donald Trump signed a ridiculous executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization” (notwithstanding its lack of organization), the president held a roundtable discussion at the White House, which included several Cabinet members, devoted to a far-left entity that hardly exists in any meaningful way.
As the event unfolded, Noem also equated antifa with ISIS, Hezbollah and Hamas, which was every bit as odd as it sounded, given that those radical groups are actually in operation abroad.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration intended to “take the same approach” to antifa as it did with foreign drug cartels — an unsettling vow in light of a series of deadly military strikes against civilian boats in international waters that Trump has ordered as part of a formal “armed conflict.”
But to fully appreciate just how weird this White House conversation was, consider that Noem also took the opportunity to accuse four Democratic officials — Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson — of “covering up” terrorism. NBC News reported: ‘I was in Portland yesterday and had the chance to visit with the governor of Oregon and also the mayor there in town, and they are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets,’ Noem said during a roundtable about antifa that Trump held at the White House this afternoon. ‘These leaders in these local cities, along with Pritzker and Johnson, ignore what’s going on, or, sir, they’re helping antifa cover it up,’ she added. Ah, I see. So antifa is committing acts of terrorism, but people don’t know that, because Democratic governors and mayors are somehow in league with the criminals, “covering up” the anti-fascist activists’ violent misdeeds. Ordinarily, when politicians orchestrate a cover-up, they do so to keep private misconduct hidden. But in this case, according to the former congresswoman and former governor who’s currently leading the Department of Homeland Security, governors and mayors are covering up terrorism. Why would they do this? How would they do this? Noem didn’t say, and Trump didn’t ask.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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