'Far-left terrorism': Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller discuss dangers of 'extremist violence' | RISING

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller hosted a conference Thursday on the dangers of political terrorism. But as they spoke to representatives from more than 60 different countries, the focus was almost entirely on what Rubio called quote extremist violence from the political left. Here are some of Rubio's remarks. Even today the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream or worse as a dangerous fascist conspiracy. This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred above all else a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best. And here was more from Stephen Miller. It's very important to understand that left-wing political terrorism seeks as its ultimate end the overthrow of our system and form of government. And we've seen this has taken place many times in many places throughout the years. And Secretary Rubio has provided you many examples. Left-wing terrorism always ends in bloodshed, misery and suffering. Rubio also mentioned how last fall the State Department designated four left-wing extremist groups as foreign terrorist organizations and he said more designations are coming soon. So I would suspect this is going to be the segment that we perhaps disagree on vigorously today. I mean I am just entirely skeptical of Stephen Miller always because I think he's a very, very sinister character. Look there is politically motivated violence on all sides. Stephen Miller is making the argument that left-wing violence I think is uniquely dangerous or he talked in comments that we didn't play there about it being a danger to our republic. For 25 years or so, up until last year according to one think tank whose research I was looking at, the instances of right-wing violence had been higher than left-wing violence. Has Stephen Miller ever said anything about that? Ever described right-wing violence as a threat to our republic as he did with the left-wing version and the danger in my view is that he is using these arguments to talk at other times about defunding left-wing organizations in a way that I see as seeking to delegitimize political opposition and we've seen that from other members of the administration as well. President Trump has called for George Soros to be jailed for example for unspecified purported crimes. So I am enormously skeptical of all of this and the potential uses of it to neuter or mute or punish people who are actually simply politically disagreeing with people like Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio and Donald Trump. So I'll start with our agreement point. What I don't want to see is this used as a weapon to attack those who have a different voice than Republicans. I don't believe in doing that on either side and I never will. I think that the rise of left-wing political violence is something that needs to be talked about more in this country though because the riots you see on streets in this country if it's go back to the George Floyd 2020 riots. Those were not right-wing people going out there and causing that. Those were left-wing antifa agitators and we've seen those kind of violent riots and protests and you know what do they call them the zones where you know. Liberated zone. Yeah whatever they call them right those zones where all of a sudden they're not in the United States which isn't true that's not how that works. It's not just like new flag new country not how that works. But we have seen that and we've also seen it excused away and allowed to continue in some of these cities because they are run by Democrats. And that's that means businesses have had to close. That means people have lost their livelihoods and that's something that absolutely especially on antifa. We should be investigating to the ilk and making sure that we do not have terrorist organizations in this country. And you should there should be further investigation because look at the accusations against the Southern Poverty Law Center right now in there using donor money without telling the donors to fund right-wing extremes extremism so that they could get the outcome they wanted to then circumvent and say look at what the Republicans in the right wing are doing. Right that is the accusations being placed against the money spent by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Yes now that those have happened we absolutely should do that and we should do it on the right too. I've got no problem if there are right-wing extremist groups and organizations in this country making sure we do not let extremism on either side grow. But I have also no problem calling out the left-wing extremism because we have seen it. Those riots in streets those people looting stores those people doing the smashing grabs. I don't think it's necessarily politically motivated all the time but I don't think that it's a right-wing issue as much and I think the political lens on it maybe was a little bit of the wrong one by them. I think if they just talked about you know extremism in the country wanting to get that well wouldn't we be having a different conversation. But I do think again to the point of Antifa and these terrorist organizations that are not organized but are that we take care of them we make sure that these people are not trying to destroy our nation. I think that's okay. Well the train tree I suppose reach for where we do have some degree of common ground on this. I mean you say that the political lens on the Miller-Rubio thing was perhaps not the best. By them. By them. Yeah yeah okay I just want to make sure. And I agree with that because look my view on that I guess would be that the the decision by them to put the political lens on it actually is revealing of what their intent is which is to make a political point suggesting that this is exclusively a problem of the left and being blind to the equivalent or worse actions that were taken on the right. There is a separate issue about this constant setting of Antifa as a sort of spectral organization that is going to doom us all. I mean it just doesn't really exist in a concrete organized way. There are some very left-wing groups that have always been anarchist groups and all of that but the idea that every militantly left grouping is part of this sort of centrally directed body is just. Well right to your point they're not organized but we have seen a rise of left-wing violence. There have been three assassination attempts on President Trump's life. That's not happened from Republicans. That's not happening from the right side of the aisle. I mean there was almost an assassination attempt at the UFC fight where they were going to try and get people to run out so they could massacre as many people as they could. They weren't doing that because they thought it was a bunch of Democrats. They did it because they were left-wing political terrorists and whether or not it's the Antifa umbrella or whatever umbrella they want to put it under because they're not globally organized but there are pockets and cells across the country that continue to try and perpetrate crimes against the right. I mean a woman from Canada is now getting deported because she decided to assault a kid wearing an America 250 shirt and a MAGA hat and now she's going to get herself deported because her boyfriend who is an American citizen, her husband, was dumb enough to put up a video of her assault on the internet. That's not again a right-wing to a left-wing attack. That is a left-wing to a right-wing attack and I remember in New Hampshire in 2020 when we were at a polling location a kid was wearing a MAGA hat and in New Hampshire they're very organized. They have the very cornered off areas that you stand Republicans here, Democrats here on your way into a voting place and someone walked up and slapped a kid so hard that the kid had to go to the hospital for a concussion because he was wearing a MAGA hat and he was in the penned off area where he was supposed to be. Again I'm not hearing as much of that attack from the right to the left right now and maybe it's not getting covered but I'm just not hearing it in the news when we're hearing multiple assassination attempts against President Trump and continued violence by the left against those they disagree with. They'll corner people in if they think that you're somebody in a crowd they'll try to corner you in and start yelling in your face. That just can't happen in this country. We can all disagree without having to get violent and on the left right now there is a case to be made that is absolutely on the rise because we're seeing it every day and one of those instances even if I can find another study or you can find another study that might say the numbers are different that's not the reality that people are seeing right now and it's not certainly not the reality on the right that we're living because there are threats consistently against people on the right and Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood sitting in public trying to argue for more conversation. I have yet to see the same at this point happen from right to left and at this level in this country for political violence. So do I wish we could look a little bigger? Of course. But do I think that this is warranted? Absolutely as well. You know look there is a whole lot there that it would take a long time to unpack. I think that obviously look people should not be assaulted in in the casual slapping way that you're talking about or certainly should not have more serious acts of violence perpetrated against them. Obviously that is true. I get back to the point that extreme right-wing violence has for years been a more prevalent problem in this country than left-wing violence. There were attempts made people shot at the White House during President Obama's tenure for example. I remember covering his primary campaign when there were was notably stronger security in the south as the first really credible black candidate ran for the presidency. So there are all of these issues. I think that political violence is a problem across the board obviously. I do not trust Stephen Miller to be a person who is going to approach that in anything approximating a fair minded or noble way. Well I don't think we're going to solve your issues with Stephen Miller today but coming up controversy after a very low flyover from the Navy's Blue Angels squadron. Stay with us.