Washington Post: Orange Man Bad Turning “Security State” Inwards Or Something

Obviously, the Democracy Dies In Darkness wackos saw the 25th anniversary of 9/11 coming in thought “what kind of hit piece can we do about Trump?”

Trump has turned the post-9/11 security state inward to domestic targets

Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, powerful agencies and vast legal authorities created to stop another terrorist catastrophe are being turned inward, with the Trump administration using many of those powers to round up immigrants, battle drug traffickers and target political dissent.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, birthed in response to pre-9/11 intelligence failures, has been central to President Donald Trump’s pushing of false election conspiracies and retribution against his perceived political enemies.

Trump has directed that Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which spread nationwide after 2001 to harness federal and local resources, investigate groups that challenge White House views on immigration, gender and religion. Another post-9/11 creation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has aggressively surveilled and rounded up immigrants on Trump’s watch, sometimes catching or killing U.S. citizens in its dragnet.

As to challenging White House views, the WP offers zero evidence. Not one link. As to ICE, well, that’s part of their f’ing job, and, if the wackos didn’t try and run them over they wouldn’t be in the grave now.

As memories of the worst terrorist attack in American history fade, former senior U.S. officials say the rapid remolding of agencies and laws created a quarter-century ago has contributed to a dimming focus on looming external threats. They cite not just anti-U.S. terrorism, which has ebbed but not disappeared, but a host of largely post-2001 challenges including advanced artificial intelligence, cyberthreats, drones and biotechnology.

Wow, they are really swinging for the fences, Orange Man Bad is just bad on everything.

Trump is dismantling or repurposing “almost all of the agencies that were created by the Bush administration to protect us from terrorism,” said John Bellinger III, who was President George W. Bush’s National Security Council legal adviser on Sept. 11, 2001, and helped craft the reforms that followed.

Let’s also not forget that Obama heavily used the powers of the government to go after his “enemies” and the Credentialed Media, including the Washington Post, turned a blind eye. That he, along with Bush and Biden, let in and brought in huge numbers of Muslims who seem to hate America, hate Israel, hate Jews, and support the extremist version of Islam, and want to change America into a Muslim nation.

Yet Trump’s definition of terrorism is far different from his predecessors’. He has designated drug cartels as terrorist groups and used lethal military force dozens of times against alleged narco traffickers. Many former national security officials and legal experts say narcotrafficking does not fit the definition of terrorism because cartel members are motivated by money, not ideology, violence against civilians or overthrow of the U.S. government.

OK, and? What’s the problem? Oh, right, Orange Man Bad.

At home, Trump has targeted leftist groups, including the loose amalgamation of militant antifascism activists known as antifa, which he designated as a domestic terrorist group last year. The Treasury Department said it will pursue financial probes of left-wing groups, including any international support.

You mean the very violent people causing lots of problems? Anyhow, this article continues on and on and on with their TDS whines (here’s a non-paywalled version), and, you know what would be hilarious? If Trump was using all those post 9/11 tools to go after Islamists then the WP would be upset over that, yammering about “Islamophobia”. Let’s also not forget that the leftists, like those at the WP, tend to take the side of the Islamists, just like they did when Hamas attacked Israel. And that outlets like the WP were super upset when Bush used all these same post 9/11 methods against Islamists. That the WP has worked hard since 9/11 to protect Islamists.