It Could Happen Here - Trump’s New Counterterrorism Strategy and the Spectre of Left-Wing Violence

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Garrison and Robert discuss how the new White House counterterrorism strategy targets anarchists, antifa, and “extreme transgender ideology,” while using terrorism to justify military strikes and regime change. Sources: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-USCT-Strategy-1.pdf https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/NSCT.pdf  https://icct.nl/sites/default/files/import/publication/NSC-1v2.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210615130908/https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches-and-testimony/confronting-white-supremacy-examining-the-biden-administrations-counterterrorism-strategy-langan-092921  https://web.archive.org/web/20210615101231/https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/15/fact-sheet-national-strategy-for-countering-domestic-terrorism/ https://www.gao.gov/blog/rising-threat-domestic-terrorism-u.s.-and-federal-efforts-combat-it https://uncoverdc.com/2023/02/08/the-fbi-doubles-down-on-christians-and-white-supremacy-in-2023/ https://angelusnews.com/news/nation/fbi-memo-investigation-update/ https://defendinged.org/press-releases/full-nsba-letter-to-biden-administration-and-department-of-justice-memo/ https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/us-house-judiciary-republicans-doj-labeled-dozens-of-parents-as-terrorist https://www.justice.gov/archives/ag/file/1170061-0/dl?inline=  https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I hardly know her terrorism. Hi, this is, it could happen here. Yeah. I'm Garrison Davis. That's Robert Evans. And... Not a lot to be proud of with that introduction.

No, not much to be proud of. But there's also not much to be proud of. be proud of considering the 2026 White House counterterrorism strategy. That's right. So I think we put equal amount of work into this as Sebastian Gorka did. Every year the new counterterrorism list is, it's my dune, you know, or whatever big movies coming out this year. I was excited. Yeah. I mean, I was excited until I actually read it. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. And it's a short one. This is very short, actually. This is just 14 pages of actual text about half the length of previous comparable documents. Now, there's been a lot of headlines about the political

weaponization after this strategy was released. And we'll talk about that in a sec. But let's first start by talking about how the document starts with a presidential forward by none other than Donald Trump dated May 26th. Trump lists counterterrorism accomplishments from the first year of a second term, like mobilizing DHS to remove illegal alien criminals and jihadist sympathizers, to arresting the ISIS-K operative who planned the Abbey Gate suicide bombing in Afghanistan and rescuing over 100 American hostages. Speaking of, Trump also says he secured the release of the remaining October 7th hostages,

and quote, began the process of ensuring Gaza can no longer serve as a haven for terrorism and extremism, unquote, and that's through establishing Trump's own Board of Peace. The president writes that Operation Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury have dealt, quote, unquote, devastating blows to Iran, which Trump calls the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Other actions, Trump admin has taken, include designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters and, quote, deadly cartels as terrorist organizations. With Trump boasting that he, quote, began using the strength and power of the U.S. military to stop and destroy cartel operations. The example that he includes here is

when the U.S. Armed Forces captured the, quote-unquote, narco-terrorist outlaw Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro. So Trump's opening forward covers the majority of what this 16-page total strategy is focused on. As Trump writes, quote, cartels, jihadists, or the governments who support them. Now, what Trump doesn't actually write about in this forward is what most reporting on the new counterterrorism strategy has focused on the later inclusion of left-wing terrorism as one of the nation's leading terror threats. And that's what we'll be mostly talking about today. Good. So we will cover the other two types of terrorism that this guide focuses on. Now, this strategy is the

brainchild of White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, a far-right Hungarian commentator who briefly served in Trump's first term. This new document states, quote, a new type of domestic terrorism has emerged, driven by violent extremists who have adopted ideologies antithetical to freedom and the American way of life. The terrorist threat has changed. We face new categories and combinations of violent actors that make established ways of doing counterterrorism, insufficient or obsolete. This strategy lists three main types of terror groups the U.S. is currently facing. Narco-terrorists and transnational gangs, legacy Islamic terrorists, and violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists.

Now, we'll get to the narco-terrorist stuff later. But let's start with that last. line, which is clearly pulling from Trump's Antifa terrorism executive order. Yeah. As well as the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number 7, which directed federal law enforcement to investigate potential crimes relating to political violence and terrorism, quote, under the umbrella of self-described anti-fascism. This is a pretty clear political weaponization of the intelligence community apparatus. And the new counterterrorism strategy doubles down on what.

MSPM-7 established, writing, quote, In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national counterterrorism activities will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent, secular, political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us

to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent. We will do the same with state sponsors of such groups and those governments undertaking lethal plots on U.S. soil or against Americans anywhere, unquote. Sure. Are there any cases of that happening?

Are there any Antifa groups killing Americans? They have one case. They have one case. Not Antifa groups, but yes. Oh, they don't have cases of state sponsors backing Antifa. But they do have one instance. included of violent left-wing extremism, which we'll get to in a sec. That's one example across this like 14 to 16-page document.

Now, the violent secular ideologies that I just listed are very similar to or overlapping with the common indicators and motivations animating violent conduct included NSPM7. Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism on migration, race and gender, and host. hostility to those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. After this new strategy was published, Sebastian Gorka told reporters, quote, We are taking ideology and counter ideology very seriously, unquote. Now, despite that clear political focus, literally calling it left-wing extremism,

something that Biden never really did with right-wing extremism, at least in documents like this. No, shocking. Despite that clear focus, this counterterrorism. strategy claims that counterterrorism operations will be executed, quote, unquote, apolitically. Uh-huh. And actually spends a significant portion complaining about how the Biden admin previously weaponized counterterrorism operations against innocent Americans. Great stuff.

Quote, as real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies. This is the only example of quote-unquote left-wing violence included in this entire document. Just this. Just this one killing. Now, on executive disorder, we have reported on a few instances where the Trump administration has tried to weaponize the killing of Christians or attacks against churches as being motivated by like anti-Christian bias, even when the people committing those attacks

were themselves Christian. And for all that we can tell, we're not religiously motivated against Christians. But they tried to glum onto a few of these incidents. Certainly not the Charlie Kirk assassination. Exactly, right? Yeah. But they've tried to glim onto these examples

to build this narrative of like anti-Christian violence, which is rising in the United States. And as for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, we still don't have a clear picture of the motivations behind that attack. More on that later. After this new counterterrorism strategy dropped, I did the thing that I assume anyone would do and read through the past like three or four counterterrorism strategies.

Really? Yeah, great. Great stuff. From the past 10 years. Good work. Trump released one in 2018 and Biden's came out in 2021. Now, the first mention of any non-Islam Islamic terrorist group in Trump's 2018 counterterrorism strategy is the Nordic resistance movement, quote, a prominent transnational, self-described national socialist organization with anti-Western views that has conducted violent attacks against Muslims, left-wing groups,

and others, unquote. This document from Trump's first term focuses almost exclusively on Islamic terrorism, specifically ISIS and al-Qaeda, but also briefly mentions the neo-Nazi National Action Group in one paragraph, and in another reads, quote, the United States has long faced persistent security threat from domestic terrorists who are not motivated by a radical Islamist ideology, but are instead motivated by other forms of violent extremism, such as racially motivated extremism, animal rights extremism, environmental extremism, sovereign citizen extremism, and militia extremism, unquote. But that's really all it has on non-Islamic extremism in what is a 34-page document.

By the time Biden got into office, white supremacist violence had risen dramatically, and the Biden admin released a domestic terrorism-specific counter-terrorism strategy. This document released in June of 2021 starts by describing racially or ethnically motivated violence from the KKK during reconstruction to attacks on black churches and synagogues and the El Paso shooting at the Walmart. Then the document covers what it calls anti-government or anti-authorization. authority violent extremism, including the Oklahoma City bombing, the congressional baseball game shooting, and the recent January 6th attack. I'm going to read a paragraph from Biden's domestic terrorism strategy here to compare, quote, today's domestic terrorists espouse a range

of violent ideological motivations. They also take on a variety of forms, from lone actors to small groups of informally aligned individuals, to networks exhorting and targeting violence towards specific communities to violent self-proclaimed militias. Among that wide range of animating ideologies, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, particularly those who promote the superiority of the white race and militia violent extremists are assessed as presenting the most persistent and lethal threats. These actors have different motivations, but many focus their violence towards the same segment or segments of the American community, whether persons of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, or other religious minorities, women and girls, LGBTQI plus individuals,

or others. Their insistence on violence can at times be explicit. It also can, at times, be less explicit, lurking in the ideologies rooted in a perception of the superiority of the white race that call for violence in furtherance of preservation and abhorrent notions of racial purity or cleansing, unquote. Now, Biden's strategy does later specifically mention, quote-unquote, anarchist violence. though within the broader context of anti-government or anti-authority extremism. A significant component of today's threat includes self-proclaimed militias and militia violent extremists who take steps to violently resist government authority or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. government based on perceived overreach.

Anarchist violent extremists who violently oppose all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions which they perceive as harmful to society. The document goes on to mention sovereign citizen violent extremists and other groups that resist or oppose legislative, regulatory, or other actions taken by the government. This strategy also names a few single-issue ideologies which may motivate violence like abortion, animal rights, environmental issues, or involuntarily-sellent violent extremism. But that little section there is the closest that the Biden strategy, gets to quote-unquote left-wing violence, as Trump would call it. But rather than referring to violence as somewhere on like left-right politics, Biden's strategy tries to specifically name the exact motivating factor driving the violence. His document reads, quote, the definition of

domestic terrorism in our law makes no distinction based on political views, right, left, or center, and neither should we, unquote. Biden's AG Merrick Garland would often say that combating domestic terrorism is about stopping violence, not policing ideology, and quote-unquote, violence, not ideology was an often repeated refrain during the Biden administration. And this is something that the Biden administration definitely acted on. The FBI investigated Stop Cop City under Biden, and a significant portion of the domestic terror-related charges while Biden was in office were levied against Stop Cop City protesters by the state of Georgia with investigative assistance from multiple federal agencies.

And almost all of whom were charged with terrorism were not actually charged with any specific violent crime. We'll talk more about the partisan weaponization of terrorism or counterterrorism after some ads. Excellent. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.

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Yeah, boy, back in those days. Yeah, it makes me, It makes me nostalgic. It's just a totally different world. Yep. Like, it's unfathomable to, like, think of the federal government now using this kind of language, talk about, like, ethnic cleansing being done by the white supremacist-motivated terrorists.

It's like, it's just a totally different, totally different ballgame. Now, in Trump's new strategy, it states that under the Biden admin, U.S. officials, quote, used their significant powers to politically target individuals in the interests of those they favored. wanted to keep in power or to help win elections, unquote. Now, under Biden, there was an increase of domestic terrorism-related prosecutions following January 6th, plus unrelated felony cases against Trump himself, and prosecutions of Trump allies related to the Stop the Steel efforts.

In 2022, the DOJ opened a new unit focused on domestic terrorism investigations, and just that year, $100 million of additional resources were allocated to the the DOJ FBI and DHS for countering domestic terrorism. Now, this increase in focus was correlated to an increase in attacks. The government accountability office reported that between 2010 to 2021, domestic terrorism-related investigations had grown by 356 percent, with 231 confirmed incidents, according to the DHS. In just Biden's first year of office, the number of FBI domestic terrorism investigations, more than doubled. During this time period, the intelligence community classified racially or

ethnically motivated violence as the most common type of attack. It's 35% of domestic terrorism. And this category also contributed to the most deaths. The second most common type of attack was anti-government or anti-authority motivated violent extremism with 32% of attacks. And that category covered a lot of different things, including the militia stuff as well as the anarchist stuff. It depends on who's doing the exact categorization, though. Yeah. Now, the racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists were most likely to conduct civilian mass casualty attacks, while militia types were more likely to target law enforcement or government apparatus. In comparison, Trump's new counterterrorism strategy does not contain a single mention of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism.

Weird. Not one. Not one, huh? Which is like, which is astounding, right? even like beyond beyond the clear partisan weaponization. Like just from a counterterrorism standpoint, like this is, this is bizarre. This is, this is quite, quite a choice.

The last pillar of Biden's counterterrorism strategy was, quote, confronting long-term contributions to domestic terrorism like racism, bigotry, religious or ethnic hatred, unquote. Meanwhile, Trump's new strategy says that the fearsome powers of the U.S. government must never be abused, quote, whether under the guise of deradicalization protecting our democracy or any other pretext, unquote.

Great. Which is, like, I don't, I don't even know how to respond to that. Yeah. I would always, yeah, like, what are you supposed to say? I mean, it, it demonstrates they're not actually interested in combating what is the most lethal form of domestic terrorism. No. And they never have been.

Even in Trump's first term, at least they, moved towards that as the threat was increasing. But now they just have no interest whatsoever in actually like target de-radicalization as an example of the fearsome powers of the U.S. government. Yeah.

Like the thing that never worked and like never actually did anything is the big boogeyman for you guys. Okay. It's wild. The new strategy includes a few examples of U.S. government overreach. Quote, our nation has not been well served by its

intelligence community, which has been mirrored in old ways of looking at threats or has been actively weaponized by its leadership as a political tool. Whether plotting against conservative Catholics attending traditional mass in Virginia, parents standing up for their children at school board meetings, members of Congress, or President Trump and his associates, this administration will continue to prohibit the intelligence community from being used politically against innocent Americans. unquote. So that's the main example of partisan weaponization of the intelligence community. Let's start with this first one, targeting Catholics attending traditional mass. This refers to a 2023 FBI memo from the Richmond Field Office on how racially or ethnically

motivated violent extremists were displaying a growing interest in traditionalist Catholicism. Great. And how trad-Cath extremist violence could be mitigated by building connections within the church. sure. Now, random Latin mass churchgoers in Virginia were not being investigated. Rather, this memo was discussing the quote-unquote growing overlap between the white nationalist movement and quote-unquote radical traditionalist Catholics, and how white supremacists may use trad-cath social media to promote violence and recruit. This memo also made a distinction from ordinary traditional Catholics who prefer Latin Mass, and the extremist beliefs and violent rhetoric from what they call radical

traditional Catholics, what we would just call tradcats, like colloquially. After backlash to this memo, the FBI claims to have scrapped it for not meeting the standards of the FBI. Sure. Yeah, we've seen how high those standards are in Cash Patel's era. I'm going to go on a little bit of like a tangent here. Because I wanted to get more information about this Richmond field office. memo and investigation. So it turns out the FBI did monitor a traditionalist priest at a church, and this church was not considered by the Vatican to be in full communion with the Catholic church, but it's still Catholic affiliated. This priest refused to speak with the FBI about communications he had with a parisher who was a self-described radical, traditional Catholic,

clerical fascist, self-described, who was posting about conducting a mass shooting at a special needs school, armed resistance against the government, learning how to manufacture pipe bombs, and using untraceable means to purchase supplies to manufacture 3D printed weapons. Posting about that on this Catholic account. Yeah, nothing sketchy. This Nazi was actually previously arrested in 2019 after being overheard making comments about political violence while purchasing several AR-15 style rifles, multiple high-capacity magazines, and large quantities of 2-23 ammunition, as well as making online statements advocating civil war

and the murder of politicians. Now, after getting out of prison, this guy started attending this traditionalist church and planning an attack. The FBI claims he tried to recruit others with similar belief systems and made comments to churchgoers about his intent to commit violence. He was arrested again and pleaded guilty to possessing a destructive device. So the FBI was looking into this priest because this priest was not talking to them about what the communications were with this Nazi. communications that they know existed and so they briefly looked into him. This caused a massive backlash among the right.

This is where Marjorie Taylor Green was posting about defunding the FBI. A lot of the dismantle FBI stuff coming from the right was based on this incident of the FBI, you know, targeting conservative churchgoers. Little side tangent there. The other main example from the Trump counterterrorism strategy refers to parents and school boards. This is in reference to a letter

from the National School Boards Association requesting federal intervention into the harassment threats and attacks against school boards in 2021. And this letter read in part, quote, these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terror and hate crimes, unquote. After this letter was sent, the AG, Merrick Garland, announced that the government was going to look into these threats. This too sparked a huge backlash from the right, claiming that the FBI was investigating parents for terrorism.

There was congressional hearings, and a month later, the National School Board Association apologized for some of the language they included in this letter. So those are the too many examples of this horrendous government overreach and weaponization of the intelligence community against innocent Americans. Yeah, of course. I mean, it's just, it's frustrating how, like, reality doesn't matter at all here. But I only like, what is the point of even like going in and line by line? Here's everything that's wrong with that.

I don't even know anymore. No, it's not a matter of convincing. It's often a matter of just holding my sanity together, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it's important to like look at it. And to some extent document how bullshit it is. But it's also just like, it's incredibly frustrating to like see this fucking trad-cath priest

get away with shit that like people would go to prison for if the ideologies were reversed, you know? Yeah, sure. If you switch this stuff around, you can imagine how the Trump administration would be handling it. Yeah. A Unitarian pastor planning some kind of attack with like an Antifa super soldier. Well, or just if you've got like a Unitarian pastor or whatever, like someone who is tangentially attached to someone left wing who was like posting about carrying out an attack. Like the level of backlash would be higher and would hurt more people. No, horrendous. We've seen stuff like that. happen. The sections on left-wing terrorism in this new strategy actually only make up a few paragraphs of this 16-page document. So what is the rest of this counterterrorism strategy really

about then? The first priority is the, quote, neutralization of hemispheric terror threats by incapacitating cartel operations, unquote. The primary threat is the so-called narco-terrorists previously mentioned. And this term narco-terrorists was invented in the 80s by the president of Peru to describe attacks on the police by drug traffickers. But since then, the term has come to mean a variety of things. In this new strategy, Trump doesn't just consider drug trafficking as a means to fund terrorist groups, but also implies that drug overdoses themselves constitute a form of terrorism. Right. Quote, the borderless America created by the borderless America created by the

Biden administration was so badly exploited by threat actors that during one 12-month period, more Americans died as a result of illicit drugs flooded into the country by the cartels than all the U.S. servicemen killed in combat since 1945, unquote. Let's look at those numbers for cigarettes. Let's just add tobacco in. Let's just throw tobacco into the mix. See how that, oh, does it dwarf every other drug-related death toll combined? Yeah, it sure does.

Obviously, an absurd statement. Yeah. But I think it is crucial to understanding how the administration is operating by understanding that they consider drug overdoses to be terrorism. And that's a big part of how they're able to do what they're currently doing is by weaponizing terrorism as a category. The strategy later considers illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals to be weapons of mass destruction. Sure. Right? This is the same category of weapons as nuclear bombs.

That is how they categorize it technically. No. When the U.S. government uses the term terrorism, it's supposed to mean activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state that appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of the government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. It's really that that last half that constitutes the terrorism part. That separates terrorism from just any crime. It's the intent to intimidate or coerce civilian populations or influence the government. But the FBI defines international terrorism as, quote, violent criminal acts committed by individuals and or groups who are inspired by or associated with designated foreign terrorist organizations, unquote. So if you designate a group of foreign terrorist organization, that means that what they are doing is terrorism. And that last bit leads us to Trump's kind of core strategy to combat drug trafficking,

designating cartels and transnational gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, which will, quote, make available additional intelligence authorities and deny and disrupt their financial streams and access to the United States, unquote. After the designation, Trump authorized, quote, dozens of strikes by the Department of War against cartel drugboats, resulting in a more than 90 percent decrease. in maritime drug smuggling into the United States, unquote. Citation needed. Yeah.

We will get into the second priority of the counterterrorism strategy after these ad breaks. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers,

all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter.

There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard herds, right?

That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection Listen to humor me with Robert Smygle and Friends

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we are back. For our last section here, let's start by talking about the second priority of the counterterrorism strategy released last week. The second is the targeting and destruction of Islamist terror groups, especially al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS-K. Trump's new strategy blames continuing jihadist plots against Americans, quote, in part because of the failed forever war policies, the empowerment of terror supporting regimes like Iran, and a past unwillingness to challenge Islamist ideologies head on, unquote. So how's that going?

How's that correct? I haven't checked the news in about three months. Robert, can you briefly fill me in? Good. No, no problems. It's flyed. Everything's fine. We solved the failed forever war policies.

We did. We did. No more forever wars. We've got a short war, but it's one of our shortest, Garrison. Iran is in no way in power. I can't, I can't tell you how short this war is at the moment, you know? Incredibly short war. Iran isn't exercising economic influence over the whole world right now?

I know you think that this all been a disaster, but I'm going to put on a graph how long World War II lasted next to how long this little adventure in Iran has lasted. And you tell me if it's a problem. Hmm? Wow. One of those numbers is bigger than the other. Guess we're fine. It's wild. It's absolutely bad shit that they have this in here.

Yeah. Like, yeah. It's so funny. It's insane. So the document talks about Islamist terrorism in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe for over four pages. It takes up a significant chunk of the strategy. These sections of the document largely mirror Trump's national security strategy from last year and talks about how, quote, unfettered mass migration in Europe has been the transmission belt for terrorists and discusses the

need for, quote, honest conversations about Islamism and how hostile groups exploit open borders and related globalist ideals, the more these alien cultures grow. and the longer current European policies persist, the more terrorism is guaranteed. As the birthplace of Western culture and values, Europe must act now to halt its willful decline, unquote. Sure. One of the more explicitly fascist sections of this strategy.

Trump's new CT strategy does discuss the integration of counter-cartel and counter-terrorism efforts saying it allows the U.S. to, quote, disrupt the shared networks financing and logistical routes used by both designated drug traffickers and Islamist terrorists, unquote. The main success story of this strategy is the capture of Maduro, quote, the illegitimate leader of Venezuela, a cartel boss in league with terror sponsor Iran and its terror proxy Hezbollah, unquote.

We've talked about this strategy for like 35 minutes, and you may have noticed that so far we've really just talked about identifying targets with very little discussion actually on actual strategy on how to counter these threats. That's because the document has very little on actual strategy to counter these threats. It lays out three steps for countering terrorism, identifying terror actors and plots before they happen, cutting off their arms, funding, and recruiting streams, and ultimately destroy the established threat group. Methods for going about this are, quote, a series of similar, high intensity, but short campaigns against jihadist groups.

Love to see that happen. As well as sanctions, shadow fleet, oil tanker interdiction, and covert operations to disrupt funding and state sponsorship of terrorism. That's it. That is really the bulk of like the actual like strategy of how to do this. Yeah. And that's the important thing to remember for all that's scary about this and for all like the people freaking out and not to say if there's nothing to be concerned about. This is the government

saying this. They have a lot of ability to fuck with people. Certainly should be concerned about this. But at the same time, don't forget, they don't know what they're doing or have a real plan for most of what they're doing. No. Like, this is hacked together, cobbled together and executed by people who don't know what they're doing. And at least in one major case, are drunk all the time. No, it's pretty stunning to compare this to the 2021 Biden one, which is very, very complicated in laying out actual strategy to dismantle domestic terrorist operations. And this just, this lacks a lot of, a lot of the same, like, strategic outlook. Lastly, the strategy outlines current functional aspects of the threat environment. That's, that's the term it uses, functional aspects. These are like

complicating factors. I'll go through these line by line. New and evolving collaboration between nation states and threat groups, such as cartels. Alliances between a established terror groups, exploitation of new weapons like drones by cartels and jihadists, the remaining threat of terrorists acquiring and using nuclear biological or chemical weapons, which President Trump has rightly labeled the single greatest threat to this world, unquote. All of this stuff is like Bush era terrorism stuff. Like this is all very outdated, not necessarily outdated, but like it's not cutting edge, I guess, what would be the more correct way of putting this.

Like, you're just talking about drones now in 2026. Yeah. But another one of these, quote, unquote, functional aspects is, quote, new and deepening alliances between the far left and Islamists, i.e., the red-green alliance, unquote. This really just takes up a single line. They don't expound on this. I'm pretty sure this would relate to, like, pro-Palestine protests. Is this really people in the far left either supporting Hamas or just generally being pro-Palestine or anti-Israel?

That's where they're calling a red-green alliance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like a throwaway line, but I thought it's worth including just because of how odd it is. Like it really stands out. It's at like the middle to end of the document way after they actually do their like three paragraphs on left wing extremism. They just kind of throw that in there as a new complicating factor. Yeah, of course. So what does this all mean for the left?

Almost nothing in here that pertains to the left isn't already in National Security Presidential Memorandum Number 7. This new strategy does not designate trans people as a class as terrorists, nor does it categorize trans people as nihilistic violent extremists like some have previously reported. Yeah. It essentially states, like NSPM7, that being extremely pro-transgender can be. be a motivating factor in carrying out terroristic violence. And the only example provided is the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which we still don't have an illuminated motive for, besides the

suspect allegedly expressing frustration at Kirk for spreading vaguely defined hate. The strategy claims, quote, our counterterrorism powers will not be used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us. We will not permit the weaponization of America's unparalleled counterterrorism capabilities for partisan purposes, unquote. Despite clear political weaponization and Gorka specifically, specifically mentioning that we're going to be countering ideology. Now, a way to kind of explain what's going on here, like, think about racially motivated or ethnically motivated violent extremism. Being racist isn't illegal. But if someone threatens to shoot up a black church, because they are racist,

then that qualifies as racially motivated by extremism. The Trump administration is basically using the same MO against people with left-wing anarchist or anti-fascist views to either stop crimes before they occur or crack down harder on people or groups who have committed crimes motivated by those ideologies. The Joint Terrorism Task Forces were already directed to investigate Antifa-aligned groups and individuals, quote, engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation. And that's been happening since at least October of 2025. What's in this document is already been in effect for a while, and we've already seen some of

the results of this in the federal Prairieland trial last February following the shooting of a cop outside an immigration detention facility in Texas last summer. The government, in that case, used the specter of Antifa to link a group of defendants together and argue for ideological motive. And a federal jury convicted eight people of riot, conspiracy, and material support to terrorists, even if each individual defendant did not commit an act of violence. Yeah. So there's cases like that, and then there's also cases against the SPLC, which, while the government hasn't specifically said are part of their anti-Antifa investigations,

you can see some similar throughlines there. Yeah. Right. In a broad sense, that's how it relates to, like, current left-wing activism, right? The sort of threats and risk that has existed, really ever since Trump took office, but especially after the Antifa Terrorism Executive Order and National Security Presidential Memorandum Number 7 are still in effect. That is still the same level of risk.

This document doesn't introduce anything new. Now, overall, what this strategy tries to do is connect all of the ideological targets of this administration, right? Put them onto a map intersecting HIV. other. That's what it's doing with this red-green alliance. So it's trying to connect all of these ideological targets while expounding on Trump's justification for mass deportations of suspected cartel members, military strikes on boats in the Western Hemisphere, regime change in Venezuela, and the ongoing war in the Middle East. That is really most of what the document is trying to do,

is actually build up the counterterrorism justification for all of Trump's military actions. And that's one thing that has, I guess, slightly frustrated me in people's discussion of this new strategy that a lot of it's based on threats to left-wing activists in the United States, while not really focusing on the bulk of the document, which is building the justification for Trump's murderous military actions around the world, right? Actions that are blowing up people in boats, bombing schools in Iran, things that have like a sizable death count and the sort of logistical and theoretical framework that Trump is building

through this document does have really, really devastating lethal consequences. And I guess that's what I wanted to focus on a little bit, a little bit more, rather than just the targeting of left-wing extremists.

Yep. All right. Well, fun. I guess we'll see what happens next. Yeah, I mean, we're going to see them continue to carry this out. Yeah. Both domestically against left-wing activists and overseas, including like right now, right?

This is what they're doing in Iran. they're talking about Cuba. This strategy does not grant them any new powers, but it does give us a look into how they are thinking about regime change and the Don Row Doctrine, right? Yeah, Jesus, it's all so dumb. This U.S. domination of the Western Hemisphere, and I think that's really the core of what's driving this document

is U.S. domination of the Western Hemisphere, rather than explicit political persecution of ideological left-wing enemies, which is, of course, still a factor. And still a thing to be concerned about and monitoring and fighting back against. Yep, absolutely. Well, all right, guys. I think that does it for us today, huh? Yeah.

Let's go be elsewhere. All right. See you around. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen. are listed directly in episode descriptions.

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