Pacific Northwest journalists sound off on Antifa at President Trump’s roundtable

By Carleen Johnson
The Center Square

Journalists from the Pacific Northwest took part in President Donald Trump’s Wednesday roundtable discussion on Antifa that included top cabinet officials and other independent members of the media.

Trump said his administration would designate Antifa as a foreign terror organization. Last month, the president designated the organization as a domestic terror group.

Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is a loosely organized leftist movement that claims to be against nationalism, far-right ideologies, white supremacy, authoritarianism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia.

“It should be clear to all Americans that we have a very serious left-wing terror threat in our country,” the president said. “Radicals, associated with the domestic terror group Antifa and other far-left extremists, have been carrying out a campaign of violence against ICE agents and others charged with enforcing the law.”

Brandi Kruse, a former FOX 13 reporter and current host of the Seattle-based “unDivided” podcast, and Jonathan Choe, a former KOMO News reporter and current journalist and senior fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth and Poverty who covers homelessness issues, spoke up about their concerns.

Kruse urged the Trump administration to dismantle Antifa and turned to mainstream media reporters covering the roundtable.

“Frankly, I could not care less what any of you have to say about this meeting… We’re not here for you,” she said. “I’m not here to convince any of you that Antifa is a real thing, because if you have not come to that conclusion by now, you are never going to come to that conclusion because you don’t want to see it.”

After flying back to Seattle on Thursday, Kruse told The Center Square she was thrilled to have been invited to the White House event and that the administration is acknowledging the very real threat that Antifa poses, which she and other journalists have been dealing with for years.

“I first started covering what we would come to call Antifa during the Occupy movement,” Kruse explained. “I was a young reporter in Seattle, and at the time, you know, they were dangerous. But I think the extent of what they were doing is they’d break windows of businesses they didn’t like or banks or things that they deemed the establishment, and they’d get into scuffles with police.”

She went on to explain witnessing Antifa grow bolder and more violent over time.

“I became a favorite target of theirs,” Kruse said. “The Occupy movement folded into the May Day riots, and that folded into the BLM [Black Live Matter] movement. And then, of course, the ‘summer of love‘ in 2020 and my security guard famously disarmed two Antifa members of stolen police rifles, which made us a target for what was to come in the following weeks.”

She shared that after suffering through several violent attacks, she took five years off from covering protests and left her job in television news.

“This summer, I decided I was going to go back out and start covering some of the actions of these ICE facilities in federal buildings, and I thought, surely enough time has passed where maybe it’s a new generation of these radical extremists, and I’m not going to be a target,” Kruse said. “On one of my first nights back out, I went to the ICE facility in Tukwila, and they assaulted me within 30 seconds of me arriving. I had wasp killer sprayed directly into my eyes. That was my welcome back from Antifa to covering riots.”

Choe called on the administration to dig into Antifa’s alleged ties to the homeless crisis, claiming they are “heavily embedded in the homeless and housing nonprofit sector.”

“It was so important for President Trump to acknowledge, in front of us, but also the rest of legacy media in the room listening and watching, that Antifa is real,” he told The Center Square shortly after the conclusion of the roundtable discussion. “It’s not just an idea. You know, these are far-left activists, violent militants, who have been essentially allowed to run wild in American cities, especially in the Pacific Northwest. I truly believe the president will take our guidance, our advice, our reporting, and recommendations to implement a strategy to wipe out this group for good.”

Choe presented Trump with a 114-page Capital Research Center report showing Antifa’s alleged ties to the homeless industrial complex.

The Center Square reached out to the Democratic Socialists of America for comment, an organization that has been accused of funding the Antifa movement.

“Like every American who believes in democracy, we stand against fascism and support everyone’s right to free speech and assembly,” DSA spokesperson Priscilla O. Yeverino said in an email. “DSA organizes for working-class people through peaceful protest, political education, and campaigns to make our lives better. The accusations from the roundtable are ridiculous and false. We will not be intimidated by the Trump administration.”