'Hypocrisy is palpable': Former Trump lawyer blows up liberals' gaslighting about Antifa crackdown

Democrats, deep-staters, and the legacy media gleefully cheered on the Biden administration as it confronted imagined far-right terrorism here in America and brought the weight of the government down on supposed extremist groups, including peaceful pro-life protesters and traditional Catholics.

At the time, lawmakers such as then-Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) demanded a more liberal application of foreign terrorist designations, while Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and other Democrats championed legislation that would define domestic terrorism as a crime.

Now that Democrats are no longer in control of the White House or Congress, the left is far more circumspect about beefing up the government's ability to identify and act against domestic terrorist groups.

Fresh off designating Antifa as a terrorist organization, President Donald Trump issued a national security memorandum on Thursday establishing a strategy to "investigate, disrupt, and dismantle all stages of organized political violence and domestic terrorism."

Citing the deadly attacks on U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the deadly Black Lives Matter riots, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the two known attempts on his own life, Trump stressed that "this political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically."

'"Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society," Trump noted in the memo. "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."

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Trump's memo sets the stage for the relevant authorities not only to go after those who are recruiting, grooming, and funding would-be terrorists but to revoke tax-exempt status for NGOs linked to domestic terrorism and to designate qualifying groups as "domestic terrorist organizations."

Liberals of various stripes have concern-mongered about the president's memorandum.

For instance, Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow at the libertarian CATO Institute, suggested that Trump's memo made former President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9853 — an order designed to root out communists and Soviet sympathizers in the federal workforce during the Cold War — "look tame by comparison."

Pulling a similar thread, Douglas Charles, a history professor at Penn State Greater Allegheny, insinuated to the Los Angeles Times that this initiative might be a "McCarthyism redux."

The NGO Human Rights First claimed that the president's strategy "presents a serious threat to our core freedoms."

Uzra Zeya, CEO of Human Rights First, suggested further that the Trump administration was using the "scourge of political violence as a pretext to seek to silence voices it sees at odds with its political agenda."

'This is a shameful and dangerous move.'

California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office claimed within hours of the order's signing on Thursday, "Trump is waging a crusade of retribution — abusing the federal government as a weapon of personal revenge. Today it's his enemies. Tomorrow it may be you."

Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project, characterized the initiative as an attempt to intimidate Trump's critics.

"After one of the most harrowing weeks for our First Amendment rights, the President is invoking political violence, which we all condemn, as an excuse to target non-profits and activists with the false and stigmatizing label of 'domestic terrorism,'" Shamsi said. "This is a shameful and dangerous move. But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution by memo."

The White House has suggested that such critics are effectively political hacks engaged in another gaslighting campaign.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Blaze News, "Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more."

'The fact of the matter is that there is a concerted effort, by enemies of the United States both foreign and domestic, to destabilize our country.'

"The Trump qdministration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities, and the president’s executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization is just the beginning," Jackson continued. "Anyone attempting to downplay left-wing political violence or point the finger at Republicans following the slew of left-wing violent attacks are not credible at all; they're simply partisan actors ignoring reality."

John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer and the founding director of the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, emphasized the timeliness and importance of the president's counterterrorism initiative, calling it "a much-needed and perfectly legal response to the recent spate of domestic political violence and, as importantly, the coordinated conspiracy that funds and incites it."

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Eastman also rebutted Eddington's suggestion that the memo was reminiscent of Truman's executive order.

"There is nothing in it remotely comparable to President Truman’s 'loyalty oath' executive order, because it says nothing about federal employees (unless, of course, they are part of a conspiracy to commit violence against the United States and its citizens)," Eastman told Blaze News.

"As for those who are screaming that this violates core constitutional protections such as those in the First Amendment, inciting violence and funding violence are no part of the speech protected by the First Amendment," Eastman continued. "And the hypocrisy is palpable, coming as these complaints do from the 'silence is violence' crowd. Trump's memo targets actual violence, and those who object that it is too broad are playing semantics."

"The fact of the matter is that there is a concerted effort, by enemies of the United States both foreign and domestic, to destabilize our country. Not only is the President's memo a welcome recognition of the stakes that is well within his authority, it is also in furtherance of his solemn duty to protect the United States, its Constitution, and its citizens," Eastman added.

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