President Donald Trump on Wednesday pledged to bring the full force of the federal government down on antifa, a left-wing anti-fascist, anti-racist political movement.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Trump convened a White House roundtable on political threats from left-wing groups to highlight the danger of antifa if left unchecked.
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“They have been very threatening to people, but we’re going to be threatening to them, far more threatening to them than they ever were with us, and that includes the people that fund them,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re going to be looking very strongly at the people funding these operations.”
During the roundtable, Trump asked the participating conservative and independent reporters for information regarding their exchanges, some of them violent, with alleged members of antifa. At one point, the president asked participants what the “worst” mainstream news outlet was.
The fact that Kirk’s alleged killer referenced anti-fascist ideology, including inscribing an unfired bullet casing with the words “Hey fascist! Catch!”, has provided ammunition for Trump and his administration to crack down on left-wing groups.
For example, Wednesday’s roundtable comes after Trump last month designated antifa as a terrorist organization and directed his departments and agencies to “utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations” with respect to antifa.
Trump signed a presidential memorandum days later, underscoring that “a new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies, including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them, is required.”
That memorandum directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to ensure domestic terrorism prosecution priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts, such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder.
The memorandum also directed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to identify and upend financial networks that fund domestic terrorism and political violence and, in his capacity as acting Internal Revenue Service commissioner, to make certain that no tax-exempt organizations are directly or indirectly financing the same.
Wednesday’s roundtable coincides with the highly anticipated deployment of National Guard troops in Chicago, despite protests from the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate. Trump has described the deployment as helping with crime and illegal immigration enforcement, Operation Midway Blitz.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.
During the roundtable, Trump criticized Pritzker as a “loser” and the “failure” of his family, who founded the Hyatt hotel chain.
Illinois is challenging the deployment to Chicago, Trump’s third to a Democratic-run city this year after Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in federal court on Thursday after U.S. District Judge April Perry declined to immediately block it on Monday. On Thursday, the judge will hear the state’s request for a temporary restraining order.
Oregon will similarly challenge a separate deployment to Portland on Thursday, with the 9th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals hearing the Department of Justice’s appeal of an order blocking the National Guard there.
“I don’t know what could be worse than Portland,” Trump said Wednesday. “You don’t even have stores anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows.”
Trump was asked this week whether he and his administration would adhere to the court’s order on Portland, to which he replied, “We’ll take a look.”
“Portland is burning to the ground. It’s insurrectionist all over the place, It’s antifa,” he said. “Look, the politicians are afraid for their lives. That’s the only reason that they say, like, there’s nothing happening. And you’ve seen it, the place is burning down, and they pretend like there’s nothing happening. So we’ll take a look at the order.”
Oregon state and Portland city officials have denied Trump’s descriptions of the conditions.
Trump has also been asked multiple times this week whether he would invoke the Insurrection Act as a workaround for the court orders. The law permits the president, in specific circumstances, to deploy the military domestically and to federalize the National Guard.
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“Well, it’s been invoked before,” the president told reporters on Tuesday. “If you look at Chicago — Chicago is a great city where there’s a lot of crime and if the governor can’t do the job, we’ll do that job. It’s all very simple.”
Previously, on Monday, he said: “I’d do it if it was necessary … If I had to enact it, I’d do that. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors, or mayors were holding us up. Sure, I’d do that.”