Ken Klippenstein

But these Joint Terrorism Task Forces, they do not have those limitations on them and they can do and go places that the military can't.

And so I would say that's the next big question is to what extent is this memorandum going to task those Joint Terrorism Task Forces with going and doing and investigating the list of indicators I was describing before?

Well, Trump says so many crazy things that don't materialize that I'm sympathetic to the view that, oh, you can't just go off of something that Trump is saying.

but again this is not just something that uh trump is saying you mentioned the speaker of the house mike johnson who compared the upcoming no king's protest this weekend to um i think he said pro-hamas and and you know terrorist groups so this is something that is solidly within the mainstream of the uh political leadership of the party in addition to that um the second highest ranking republican official in the house steve scalise

called it something like the American hating protest.

And then third top official in the House also compared it to terrorism.

So this is something that's being echoed throughout the administration.

When Trump says stuff that is something that you can just chalk up to Trump's flamboyant rhetoric, that is often something that you'll see he says, and it's not really reiterated by other principal figures within, in the case of national security, within the national security apparatus, his appointees.

and certainly congress but that's not the case here they're all talking like that to give you just one other example um secretary of homeland security uh christy noem said recently that they had arrested the girlfriend of uh the leader of antifa and again

The judgment of the intelligence community and Trump's own FBI director as recently as a couple of years ago was that there was no such organized group.

It's an idea.

It's like saying the Internet Hacking Collective Anonymous has a leader.

It doesn't work that way.

So there's a lot of... I think there's...

an abundance of indications here that this is something that the Republican Party in large part is taking seriously.

And then when you look at federal law enforcement like Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, who's the country's top cop, operationalizing this and creating an ice protection task force.

Again, you can go online and see that directive.

It's publicly available.

and she cites as its um inspiration nspm7 as its authority that it's based on as nspm7 you see that they are acting on this this is not just words and it's not just trump