In Major Shift, Trump Admin Prioritizes Fight Against ‘Left

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Inside Rubio’s Confab on Lefty Terrorism The Trump administration’s effort to create a new bogeyman of left-wing terrorism has now resulted in a major policy change unveiled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio Thursday in a speech to officials from more than 60 countries whom he gathered in D.C. Declaring Islamic terrorism “severely diminished,” Rubio said the counterterrorism apparatus must be retooled to confront the supposed threat from “far-left terror,” Reuters reports. “We can and we must identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it,” Rubio said, marking a dramatic shift away from the post-9/11 posture of U.S. counterterrorism efforts. To this point, the administration has aimed to elevate political protestors and progressive groups and activists into a vast far-left “antifa” conspiracy at home — and link it up with imagined fellow travelers abroad with wild and unsubstantiated claims of international coordination and connections. Establishing a (flimsy) link to international terrorism — a related effort which has been spearheaded by White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka and Rubio — seems intended to invoke counterterrorism powers under U.S. law that simply don’t exist for combating domestic terrorism. What made Rubio’s remarks especially notable was how he broke new policy ground in prioritizing the purported left-wing terror threat of MAGA fever dreams while deprioritizing the decades-old real-world threat from radical Islamists. Later in the day, Rubio announced a new visa restriction policy “targeting far-left terrorist and other aligned groups.” Rubio’s speech was a tour de force of disinformation, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and guilt by associations. He threw around terms like “Marxist” and “communist” while baselessly alleging that Iranian proxy networks are “intimately tied” to leftist militant groups and claiming that the George Floyd protests was left-wing terrorism that had been swept under the rug. “They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist or Marxist,” Rubio said, according The Guardian. “It’s always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice liberation — an overwhelming need to tear down, to wreck, what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world through violence and through terror.” But it was White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller who trafficked in the most reductionist and dehumanizing rhetoric in his speech to the gathered foreign officials: The invention of a new turbocharged left-wing terrorism threat is bad enough by itself, but the real aim is to then conflate it with domestic political opposition to Trump and the exercise of constitutionally protected rights to dissent and protest. It’s a regime-protection racket, but now it’s coming at the additional expense of redirecting U.S. counterterrorism resources from actual threats to made-up ones. The Latest on the Fatal Ice Shootings … Maine - The ICE agent who shot and killed Columbia national Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in a Monday traffic stop has been identified as David Brouillette, an Army veteran with an alleged history of mental illness, violent outbursts, and domestic abuse, some of his family members told the AP. - Brouillette’s ex-wife Ashley told the Portland Press Herald that he called her after the shooting to ask her to vouch for his character and that she refused. “He was asking me to lie for him and to cover for his character,” Ashley Brouillette said. “I told him that I was not going to lie for him. And then he tried to say that it was a justified shooting because the guy tried to hit him with his car.” Houston - The family of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the Mexican national shot and killed by ICE in a July 7 traffic stop, says the baggies found in the work van he was driving didn’t contain meth but salt. “Our understanding is that this was granulated salt, which is paired with lemon and water as a homemade electrolyte mix used by outdoor workers in extreme Texas heat, not methamphetamine or any other illicit substance,” said an attorney representing the family. - Controversial Houston U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz issued an unusual public statement commenting on the case that appeared intended in part to tamp down public outrage but at the same time was heavily coded in anti-immigrant language and also mentioned “several small bags of a white, crystal-like substance” in the van. - In an interview on CNN, the Houston district attorney cast doubt on the FBI’s suspicion that meth was in the van: “Based on the information we have regarding who Mr. Salgado was, and just eyeballing the evidence as it was collected yesterday, we don’t believe that they are drugs,” Sean Teare said. Quote of the Day “It doesn’t matter whether or not there were drugs. It has no bearing on why Mr. Salgado and the other three individuals were targeted. It has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not the use of force that killed Mr. Salgado was justified.”—Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare Sign of the Times President Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is under investigation for allegedly using his inside knowledge of the president’s speeches to win more than $100,000 on prediction markets. Gabriel Perez, who is on unpaid administrative leave, is in talks with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to settle the settle allegations against him, ABC News reports. Shrewd Audience A quick anecdote from seeing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey last night. I’ll leave the reviews to others since movie blockbusters aren’t really my thing, but there was a memorable moment before the film even started. It wasn’t clear at first if what was on screen was a trailer or an ad. It featured a slideshow of striking visuals with voiceovers intended to represent a diverse range of ordinary folks asking thoughtful and sometimes hard questions about AI. At the end, it was revealed to be an advertisement when the Anthropic and Claude logos appeared on screen — and the small audience in the theater immediately and spontaneously booed all around me. It was especially striking because it didn’t feel in the moment like a blanket anti-AI reaction, but a more nuanced rejection of the pretense than any AI company could purport to act as a convener or moderator of the AI debate. Or maybe it was both. This was a D.C. audience, perhaps inured to the constant barrage of reputational ads that target audiences in the nation’s capital, but even that sort of hard-boiled skepticism is more than I usually see in public settings. This is the ad in question, which you may have already seen because it’s gotten quite a bit of coverage. See You Back Here Monday News? Tips? Feedback? Please let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here. Ossoff predicted to a T (pun intended) TSF’s diaper loading (h/t Jeff Tiedrich) last night: “here’s what’s going to happen tonight: the world’s most famous sore loser will deliver a prime-time presidential sour grapes address to pursue his six-year-old grievances about the 2020 election, while his war in the Middle East spirals out of control and the cost of living continues to rise for Americans across the country.” ICE’s hiring of David Brouillette alone is sufficient reason to abolish it, and Susan Collins’ vote to grotesquely overfund it alone is sufficient reason for Maine’s voters to defenestrate her. Despite the measles’s resurgence, and an explosion of explosive diarrhea, TSF’s mental illness is still our most dangerous contagious disease. Heather & Paul: We’ve tried to stop that over here Andy. It never works. You’ll find out how much folks love their indulgences. Soon, it’s gonna suck to be you, I’m afraid. Iran is certain to hit energy and other civilian infrastructure in ME nations allied (ostensibly) with the US. For fuck’s sake. There is no “left-wing terror” in the US. Which is more of a threat, Antifa, Communism, or the monster underneath your bed?