Even though two white right-wing extremists last week committed acts that could be classified as terrorism, some national security veterans are telling the Daily Beast that the Trump administration is still asleep at the switch.
According to multiple former officials interviewed by the publication, the Trump administration is flat-out refusing to see white nationalist terrorism as a legitimate threat and is instead focusing all its fire on preventing Islamist terrorism and on curtailing undocumented immigration.
"It’s not even an issue that you bring up at the White House because right now, when it comes to identifying threats facing the country, if it doesn’t support the agenda to reduce or restrict immigration, then it’s not even a topic to be discussed," one former intelligence official said.
Former DHS official John Cohen expressed a similar sentiment about the administration's current efforts -- and he pointed in particular to the Department of Homeland Security's decision to hold a conference call on the migrant caravan that is thousands of miles from the American border without once mentioning the threat posed by white nationalists.
"In the world of homeland security, the common practice is to focus on those threats that present the greatest risk," said Cohen, who is now a professor at Rutgers. "So it’s disconcerting that in a call with national law enforcement and homeland security experts, the focus would be on the caravan versus the increasing number of mass casualty attacks the country’s experiencing, including by white extremists."
Another former official told the Daily Beast that Trump administration seems to have made combating white nationalist terrorism "the lowest priority."