The White House hosted a roundtable with independent journalists on Wednesday, and several of them didn’t hold back when describing what they said were repeated attacks by Antifa militants in Democratic-run cities.
President Donald Trump vowed Wednesday to designate Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization. Trump spoke during a White House roundtable that focused on cracking down on the group. During the roundtable, a few reporters recounted violent attacks they suffered while covering Antifa protests, accusing city officials of enabling the group by refusing to enforce the law.
Video journalist Nick Shirley described a direct threat he received while on assignment.
“A member of Antifa said he would smoke me,” Shirley said during the roundtable. “Next thing he knew? A DHS sniper had lasers on his chest.”
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“These people are very dangerous,” he added. “These cities are not enforcing the law. And why should these people be worried if the law is not being enforced?”
Katie Daviscourt, who has spent years covering Antifa protests in Portland, recounted a chilling event after her own assault.
“I watched 20 Antifa militants help my assault suspect escape into an Antifa safe house that is one block away from the ICE facility,” Daviscourt said.
“It’s where they are resting, they’re showering, they’re eating. I have staked out this safe house and have observed shift changes. This group is highly organized. It is being funded through mutual aid groups, and they have no plans of stopping.”
Daviscourt accused local police of ceding entire blocks to extremists.
“The Portland Police Bureau has completely abandoned several blocks outside the ICE facility, giving away their jurisdiction to a terrorist group who has spent the past four months harassing, assaulting, and intimidating anyone they perceive to be against their cause! I’m sitting here with a black eye and a concussion after being violently hit in the face with a metal pole while reporting outside the ICE facility,” Daviscourt said.
Andy Ngo, a journalist known for documenting left-wing political violence, told Trump at the roundtable about the day Antifa militants assaulted him in 2019 and nearly beat him to death. Portland’s Rose City Antifa, one of the oldest Antifa organizations in the country, took credit for a brutal assault on Ngo as he covered one of their rallies, an attack that left him with a brain hemorrhage.
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“It led to me nearly losing my life…I was ambushed in a mob beating, and I had never been in a fight. I didn’t even realize that I was being assaulted until seconds in, and the punches came from everywhere. On my head, and my face, and I was bleeding out of my eyes and ears, and then they threw all the drinks in my eyes to humiliate me further and to laugh at me, and I was rushed to the hospital,” Ngo said.
Ngo said the media turned against him after the assault.
“I had a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is bleeding in the brain, and I nearly died. And after surviving that, the reporting that I saw in the liberal media was, it seemed to suggest that I had deserved it because they branded me far right, and some even went so far as to suggest that I may be faking my injuries,” Ngo added.
Trump in September ordered troops to defend U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in Portland after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem requested federal reinforcements against Antifa. A White House official told the Daily Caller News Foundation that violent left-wing protests broke out in Portland more than half a dozen times between June and September, linking some demonstrators to Antifa and others to a group that received funding from George Soros’ Open Society.
The official cited multiple incidents involving arson, assaults on law enforcement, and a guillotine threat outside an ICE facility. Trump formally labeled Antifa a terrorist organization in September and ordered federal agencies to investigate its financial backers. He called the group a “sick, dangerous, radical left disaster” in a Truth Social post and said officials must trace who funds its operations.
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