The White House is ratcheting up its pressure campaign on the Democratic leaders of Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, with President Donald Trump calling for Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to face charges over the presence of antifa in their cities.
“What they’re doing is not lawful,” Trump said of antifa during a roundtable Wednesday to highlight his crackdown on the loosely organized movement of largely left-wing activists.
“And what the governor and the mayor of, as an example, you can say, of Portland and you can say certainly of Chicago, it is not lawful, what they’re doing, they have to be very careful,” he added.
Trump last month designated antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization” and has taken steps that could lead to further prosecution of his critics. The president has specifically targeted Portland and Chicago, both of which have had protests over Trump’s deportation efforts, as crime-riddled. He deployed troops to Chicago and is fighting in court to do the same in Portland.
Local leaders oppose the troop deployment — and Trump has made clear he does not take kindly to them standing in his way. He wrote earlier Wednesday that Johnson and Pritzker “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!”
Trump said at the roundtable that he had not asked officials to look at specific charges against Johnson and Pritzker, but added, “I’ve seen the law. … I’ve read it today in numerous journals, that that’s illegal.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has overseen other prosecutions of Trump opponents, criticized Pritzker and Johnson directly at the roundtable.
“The Biden administration let them commit these crimes with total impunity for years, so did Democrat leaders like Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson,” Bondi said.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem accused the pair of “helping antifa.”
“These leaders in these local cities, along with Pritzker and Johnson, ignore what’s going on, or sir, they’re helping antifa cover it up,” Noem said. “Many times, the legacy media has looked the other way.”
Pritzker and Johnson blasted Trump’s initial call for their arrest earlier Wednesday.
“This is a convicted felon … who is threatening to jail me,” Pritzker told MSNBC. “I got to say, this guy’s unhinged, he’s insecure, he’s a wannabe dictator.
“This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested. I’m not going anywhere,” Johnson wrote on social media.
Ahead of the event, the White House accused the news media of turning a “blind eye” to violence in the city, quoting the experiences of Portland residents whose stories were being told in local and national mainstream news outlets.
The antifa roundtable featured several right-wing activists and influencers, including Nick Sortor and Andy Ngo, who shared story after story of covering antifa as independent media personalities.
They tied multiple acts of violence to antifa, casting them as the downstream of a well-funded organization without presenting evidence.
“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 (antifa) a terror organization and said, ‘We’re going to bring the full weight of the federal government to bear,’” conservative commentator Brandi Kruse told Trump, adding that she thought she “looked better” after losing “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and embracing the president.
Some of the activists urged Trump to designate antifa as a foreign terror organization, which would allow for different types of prosecution. Trump said he heard their calls: “I agree, let’s get it done.”
This article has been updated with additional comments from the roundtable.