Eric Lichtblau

But then what happened certainly under Trump was that it has moved away.

And certainly in the second Trump term, with the focus on ICE and immigration, the mission of the FBI has been almost totally recast into an arm of immigration.

And the traditional law enforcement agency is secondary to the immigration role.

And I think whatever momentum there was in terms of identifying violent, subversive

Elements like Atomwaffen and The Base and Boogaloo Boys and you could go on and on.

The Proud Boys.

That has been, I think, once again, minimalized.

And that's also been minimalized by Trump and his own priorities.

He's not going to go after the Proud Boys if that was his agenda.

He has done just the opposite.

He has given those groups a platform.

It was a very powerful statement.

I mean, he has given the white supremacists an influence that they have never experienced.

had before over the course of the last decade.

You can trace it through the debate with Biden, where he told the Proud Boys to stand by and stand down.

You can trace it through January 6th, where he spoke with such equivocation and even support about the rioters

who were standing there with Confederate flags and anti-Semitic symbols and screeds and racist paraphernalia.

You can look at the pardons, of course, probably more than any other single act of those white nationalists who were there that day.

You can look at the myth of the cat-eating and dog-eating Haitians in Ohio, which was a myth that was first started by a neo-Nazi group in Ohio.

You could look at the