There was even discomfort with the term “domestic terrorism” itself, former officials told me. Neumann played a critical role in seeking funding for the new Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention. Ultimately, the Trump administration’s budget for the 2021 fiscal year included $80 million for “targeted violence and terrorism prevention and protection,” along with millions in grant allocations to fund community efforts—something Neumann saw as a victory, even though the budget was dead on arrival in an election year. But there was an understanding that Neumann should not expect to hear the funding characterized as addressing domestic terrorism or the white supremacist threat—just preventing violence in general terms. The tiptoeing, she said, was “a way of [managing] around a president who has certain trigger words.”
“I’d say most of this lays at the president’s feet because ultimately people are following the tone that he sets and the vision that he lays out,” Taylor said. “In this case, it’s very clear to someone who would serve the president that he would hold views sympathetic to conspiracy-theory-wielding, semiviolent groups because they tend to like him…People knew that talking about these issues too much was going to get them in trouble. And so it had a chilling effect on the subject, whether or not the president directly ordered them to stand down.”
Of course, the debate shouldn’t be over whether domestic terrorism is a threat—it should be over what to do about it. As it has with so many things, the White House’s approach has dangerously skewed what’s seen as the real issue. “Because of the fact that we’re spending so much damn time arguing with DHS over the facts of white supremacist violence, we aren’t talking about how truly difficult of a problem it is to solve,” a former senior DHS official told me. “We can’t get to the really tough conversation…. The harder part is actually, if they accepted it, what do you do?”
Any expectation that Trump will condemn right-wing extremists has long since evaporated. “When the president speaks and he says crazy things, people feel free to express overtly racist views, they feel free to say things that were once unthinkable—whether that’s Charlottesville or the president’s recent refusal to condemn Rittenhouse or referring to police who murder Black men and women as golfers missing putts,” said Wells Dixon, an attorney who works on international terrorism cases. “The president’s strategy is clear, which is to say crazy things in order to sow division and spur violence, create chaos. And then he’s going to try to exploit all of that for political purposes.” Kellyanne Conway, former senior adviser to Trump, recently said the quiet part out loud: that armed vigilantes patrolling streets in swing states is a Trump win.
Even if Trump doesn’t buy into the white nationalist frame of mind, his reluctance to condemn it is motivated by political expediency. “There was a point at which I was willing to say that all of the rebuffing that we saw was just a part of the chaos and the incompetence and normal government bureaucratic stuff, but on steroids because of how chaotic the Trump administration has been,” Neumann said. But “he’s more than willing to talk about domestic terrorism in the context of Antifa. He clearly has a hard time admitting when he’s made a mistake. It’s part of that. And it’s part of a recognition that these people are helping keep him in power and he doesn’t want to disturb his base.”
At a certain point, the outcome is the same regardless of intent. Sources I spoke with expect things to get worse before they get better, especially as the election approaches. “Instead of thinking, Well, cooler heads will prevail, the answer is no, they won‘t,” Snyder said. “There needs to be a change in posture, not only by the American public, but our elected officials.”