Trump’s ‘antifa roundtable’ airs grievances of partisan conservative influencers
So far, all of the fact witnesses contributing testimony at the White House “antifa roundtable” hosted by Donald Trump are self-described independent journalists or partisan conservative social media influencers who cover leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more akin to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
Several of them have described being assaulted in the course of their work by leftwing protesters they uniformly refer to as “antifa members” without evidence.
What the conservative new media figures have not mentioned is that several of them work by confronting leftwing protesters and filming the angry responses they provoke.
Others go undercover, disguised as leftwing protesters in black clothing, and then selectively edit the video they gather, ignoring peaceful protests to focus only on any instances of violence or conflict they witness.
One of the witnesses, Katie Daviscourt, whose coverage of protests outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland, Oregon, has been featured on Fox News, described being given a black eye recently when she was struck with a protester’s flag pole.
Shortly before that incident, a Portland police officer reported (in an email made public through the state of Oregon’s federal lawsuit to block Trump’s deployment of troops) that Daviscourt was one of three conservative influencers at the facility who appeared to be acting as “counter-protesters”.
“These 3 counter-protesters continue to be a chronic source of police and medical calls,” the officer wrote on 20 September. “Despite repeated advice from officers to stay away from the ICE crowd, they constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or pepper sprayed. They refuse or are reluctant to walk away from these confrontations, even when police are in the area trying to meet with them. They even engage in the same trespassing behavior on federal … property as the main protesters.”
Another witness, the conservative influencer Nick Sortor, complained of being arrested recently by the Portland police after a skirmish. However, video recorded on multiple nights in the past week shows that Sortor has repeatedly antagonized protesters in the course of filming outside the Ice facility.
One clip, for instance, showed that Sortor initiated conflict by trying to force his way through a protest encampment on a sidewalk near the Ice facility. He was then involved in a scuffle over an American flag he had previously taken from a protester who was trying to burn it.
The charges against Sortor were later dropped after an outcry in the conservative media prompted the head of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, Harmeet Dhillon, to threaten an investigation of the Portland police bureau over supposed anti-conservative bias.
The two women Sortor was arrested for fighting with still face charges, as does a Trump supporter who intervened in Sortor’s scuffle over the flag and punched a protester, knocking him to the ground.
The event is still going on.
Key events
Trump ‘is considering going to the Middle East’ soon, White House says
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, just said that Donald Trump could go to the Middle East this weekend.
According to Leavitt, Trump is scheduled to visit Walter Reed medical center on Friday to meet soldiers and for “his routine yearly checkup”.
“President Trump is considering going to the Middle East shortly thereafter,” the press secretary said.
For more, follow our live coverage of the diplomacy aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
Despite Trump’s claims, political violence in Portland has not claimed ‘many’ lives
During the White House “Antifa Roundtable” on Wednesday, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, made a number of factually dubious claims, starting with her assertion that antifascists do not just threaten federal law enforcement officers, “they want to kill them”.
This assertion follows repeated false claims from her boss, Donald Trump, that large numbers of people have been killed by left-wing radicals in Portland, Oregon.
The correct number of killings by self-described “antifa” radicals in Portland is: one.
The victim was not, however, a member of law enforcement. Aaron J. Danielson, a right-wing activist with the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer, was fatally shot after a raucous pro-Trump car caravan through Portland in the summer of 2020.
Four days later, the suspected gunman, Michael Reinoehl, was killed by police officers with a federal taskforce in Washington state. Reinoehl, who provided security at racial justice protests in the city that year, had described himself on social media as “100% ANTIFA”.
Multiple witnesses later disputed the claim from officers that they fired on Reinoehl instead of trying to arrest him because he had pointed a gun at them.
Two years later, a Portland resident who followed the conservative influencer Andy Ngo on social media opened fire on a group of traffic safety volunteers and protest medics he called “terrorists” before a racial justice march at the city’s Normandale Park. The gunman, Ben Smith, shot five of the left-wing activists, killing two women.
Later in the roundtable event on Wednesday, Noem also said that federal immigration officers in Portland accused members of the city’s police force, which used large amounts of tear gas and force on antifascists at demonstrations in 2020, of supporting the protesters outside the Ice field office in Portland.
“Some of the Ice officers were telling me that as they drove by the rioters that were saying ‘Kill Ice agents’, ‘Molotov cocktails melt Ice,’ that the Portland police were cheering them on and had their fists in the air, cheering on the rioters that were threatening their lives,” Noem said.
Noem offered no evidence for the story. The city’s police chief, Bob Day, has strongly rejected allegations that his officers have an anti-conservative bias.
Trump says ‘we’re very close to a deal in the Middle East’
Donald Trump was just handed a note by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, during his live roundtable on antifascism, read it and had a brief whispered exchange.
The president then interrupted the discussion to say: “I was just given a note by the secretary of state saying that we’re very close to a deal in the Middle East, and they’re going to need me pretty quickly.”
“So we’ll take a couple of more questions,” he added, and turned back to the press.
Trump said that he would “probably” travel to the Middle East before the Israeli hostages are released in the event of a deal.
The event continued for another 10 minutes, during which Trump boasted about the economy, seemed confused about the meaning of the term “habeas corpus”, suggested that he should win the Nobel prize for peace, and praised Pam Bondi, the attorney general, for her combative response to questions from Democratic senators at an oversight hearing on Tuesday.
The event has not concluded.
Trump’s ‘antifa roundtable’ airs grievances of partisan conservative influencers
So far, all of the fact witnesses contributing testimony at the White House “antifa roundtable” hosted by Donald Trump are self-described independent journalists or partisan conservative social media influencers who cover leftwing protests in a highly political manner, more akin to opposition research than nonpartisan reporting.
Several of them have described being assaulted in the course of their work by leftwing protesters they uniformly refer to as “antifa members” without evidence.
What the conservative new media figures have not mentioned is that several of them work by confronting leftwing protesters and filming the angry responses they provoke.
Others go undercover, disguised as leftwing protesters in black clothing, and then selectively edit the video they gather, ignoring peaceful protests to focus only on any instances of violence or conflict they witness.
One of the witnesses, Katie Daviscourt, whose coverage of protests outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland, Oregon, has been featured on Fox News, described being given a black eye recently when she was struck with a protester’s flag pole.
Shortly before that incident, a Portland police officer reported (in an email made public through the state of Oregon’s federal lawsuit to block Trump’s deployment of troops) that Daviscourt was one of three conservative influencers at the facility who appeared to be acting as “counter-protesters”.
“These 3 counter-protesters continue to be a chronic source of police and medical calls,” the officer wrote on 20 September. “Despite repeated advice from officers to stay away from the ICE crowd, they constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or pepper sprayed. They refuse or are reluctant to walk away from these confrontations, even when police are in the area trying to meet with them. They even engage in the same trespassing behavior on federal … property as the main protesters.”
Another witness, the conservative influencer Nick Sortor, complained of being arrested recently by the Portland police after a skirmish. However, video recorded on multiple nights in the past week shows that Sortor has repeatedly antagonized protesters in the course of filming outside the Ice facility.
One clip, for instance, showed that Sortor initiated conflict by trying to force his way through a protest encampment on a sidewalk near the Ice facility. He was then involved in a scuffle over an American flag he had previously taken from a protester who was trying to burn it.
The charges against Sortor were later dropped after an outcry in the conservative media prompted the head of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, Harmeet Dhillon, to threaten an investigation of the Portland police bureau over supposed anti-conservative bias.
The two women Sortor was arrested for fighting with still face charges, as does a Trump supporter who intervened in Sortor’s scuffle over the flag and punched a protester, knocking him to the ground.
The event is still going on.
Sortor is now speaking at the roundtable, and is chastising the Portland police for arresting him, and baselessly claiming that local officials are “willing to sacrifice their own citizens just to appease these Antifa terrorists”.
Pam Bondi just mentioned the arrest of rightwing influencer Nick Sortor, who was arrested by police in Portland, Oregon, last week while covering the ongoing protests outside an immigration facility. Bondi said that Sortor was “protecting himself against Antifa”.
“He was pushed down and assaulted, yet the local police arrested Nick, not the Antifa thugs who did this to him,” Bondi added.
Trump, who has spent his time in politics denigrating the mainstream press, has spent this roundtable heralding the conservative “independent journalists” as heroes.
The attorney general is now speaking at the roundtable event:
This is not activism, it’s anarchy. We can’t and we will not let masked terrorists burn our buildings, attack our law enforcement and intimidate our communities.
Trump congratulates Bondi on combative Senate hearing
The president just congratulated attorney general Pam Bondi, who is sitting to his right, on the way she handled her oversight hearing before the Senate judiciary committee this week.
“It was amazing, and she just did it from the heart and the brain, because she’s very smart in all fairness,” Trump said. “She did an incredible, and everybody was talking about it.”
Donald Trump is now holding a roundtable on Antifa, the disparate left-wing movement that he designated as a “domestic terrorist organization” recently.
He’s now listing examples of attacks against federal agents which he’s attributed to Antifa, and also suggested that the man charged with shooting Charlie Kirk was a member of the group. A reminder that law enforcement officials have not established a link between Tyler Robinson and any specific group.
“The epidemic of left wing violence and Antifa inspired terror has been escalating for nearly a decade,” Trump said.
IRS to furlough more than 34,000 workers as government shutdown continues
The Internal Revenue Service will furlough more than 34,000 employees according to a statement. It accounts for almost half of the agency’s workforce.
The treasury department’s new contingency plan means that due to the “lapse in appropriations” an agency-wide furlough began on 8 October “for everyone except already-identified excepted and exempt employees”.
According to the plan, while tax-filing preparations will stay in place, many taxpayer services will stop.
Democratic lawmakers say that vote on Epstein files is reason behind delay to swear in Arizona congresswoman
Per my earlier post, at today’s press conference Jeffries also added to the ongoing chorus of Democratic lawmakers calling on House speaker Mike Johsnon to swear in representative-elect Adelita Grijalva.
“There is no dispute or controversy relative to her election. And so many of us are asking the question, ‘why the delay Mike?’,” the minority leader said. “Does it have anything to do with Republicans, continuing effort to hide the Epstein files from the American people? Inquiring minds want to know.”
A reminder, Grijalva would provide the 218th signature needed on the bipartisan discharge petition to force a House vote on the release of the Epstein files.
Jeffries says Democrats will meet ‘anytime, anyplace, anywhere’ to negotiate on funding bill
Hakeem Jeffries, the House’s top Democrat, has said that members of his party are willing to “anytime, anyplace, anywhere” to negotiate a short term funding bill that includes several health care points they are pushing for.
“These extremists don’t even want to show up to work when they’re requiring hard working federal employees to show up to work without pay because of the Republican shutdown,” Jeffries added, referring to Republican speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to cancel votes, and keep the House out of session until the Senate passes a funding extension to reopen the government.
