Trump's week in review: Antifa Roundtable, Israel-Hamas ceasefire

2. White House hosts Antifa Roundtable

The White House hosted an Antifa Roundtable featuring members of the Trump cabinet as well as journalists and researchers who cover the violent, far-left activist organization on Wednesday.

Speakers detailed how groups that bankroll Antifa have received over $100 million in U.S. taxpayer funding and how Antifa militants are used to “manufacture a crisis.” 

Brandi Kruse, a reporter who covers Antifa, credited Trump’s designation of the group as a terrorist organization with making a difference as violent riots perpetrated by members of the group continue. “I genuinely believe there would be people at these tables who would be dead today and would have been killed in Portland had you not called them a terror organization, and said we’re going to bring the full weight of the federal government to bear,” she said. 

Several journalists who've covered Antifa pointed to mainstream media rhetoric and coverage as the motivating factors behind Antifa activists’ outrage.

Reporter Savanah Hernandez said the media's labeling of Trump supporters and conservatives as “Nazis and fascists” has made Antifa “emboldened to attack.” 

Julio Rosas highlighted MSNBC’s coverage of the arrest of a father of three as if it was because “he’s brown,” while neglecting to report that he charged at law enforcement with a weed whacker. 

Katie Daviscourt, another reporter who covers Antifa, revealed that “the Portland Police Bureau has completely abandoned several blocks outside” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Oregon city and failed to arrest a member of the group who gave her a black eye.

Noem recalled conversations with ICE agents who told her “as they drove by the rioters that were saying ‘kill ICE agents,’” Portland police officers were “cheering them on and had their fists in the air.”