While Donald Trump was quick to praise the police in Charlottesville, he doesn’t want to listen to the police when they talk about the real threats to the nation.
A 2015 survey of nearly 400 law enforcement officials by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, found that antigovernment violent extremists, including white supremacist groups, were “the most severe threat of political violence that they face.”
Actually supporting the police means actively fighting radical white supremacists through a group called Life After Hate. Under President Obama, there was a move to address these groups, but Donald Trump’s team moved to undercut this program even before they took office.
Trump aides, including Katharine Gorka, a controversial national security analyst known for her anti-Muslim rhetoric, were already working toward eliminating Life After Hate’s grant and to direct all funding toward fighting what the president has described as “radical Islamic terrorism.”
Now the grant that was intended to fight Nazis, only to be cancelled by Nazis, is getting a second look.
But after the violent, deadly clash on Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., the move to pull back the money from a group dedicated to helping people leave hate groups is receiving renewed scrutiny.
The grant to Life After Hate was one of 31 awarded under the Obama administration to combat violent extremism, and it was the only one focused exclusively on the rehabilitation of former neo-Nazis and other white supremacist group members.
A second grant that was cancelled addressed both white supremacists and Muslim radicals. By cancelling both, Trump’s incoming team removed all support for fighting extremist white nationalists. Trump has put all the money into fighting the people he considers evil, which is ignoring the people who pose a genuine danger.
Organizations that received funding from the Trump administration, including several large law enforcement agencies, work almost exclusively on programs to deal with terrorist threats from Islamic extremists, even as research shows that white supremacist groups have been linked to most domestic terrorist attacks in recent years.
Both statistics and reviews by experts show that the white nationalist threat is growing—and growing faster since the election of Trump. But the Trump regime hasn’t just been failing to fight Nazis, they’ve been denying they’re a problem.
Last week, Mr. Gorka dismissed concerns about white nationals during an appearance on the “Breitbart News Daily” radio show.
“It’s this constant, ‘Oh, it’s the white man. It’s the white supremacists. That’s the problem.’ No, it isn’t,” Mr. Gorka said.
Tell it to Heather.