Jerry Nadler Says Antifa Is Imaginary, Gets Savaged by Jim Jordan in Front of Congress
It looks like House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler needs a little reality check.
After all, speaking on the House floor, the New York Democrat described the far-left domestic terrorist group antifa, which has been wreaking havoc in major American cities, as “imaginary.”
Fortunately, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, quickly rose to the occasion and set his colleague straight.
“They couldn’t utter the phrase ‘black lives matter’ and could barely the subject of police reform,” Nadler said June 25 during debate on a Democratic-sponsored police reform bill, according to the Media Research Center.
“Instead, [Republicans’] amendments — I’ve given you about half of them just listed here — were errant nonsense, off-topic, dealing with imaginary things like antifa and completely negating the entire purpose of the bill.”
.@RepJerryNadler just said #ANTIFA was “imaginary.”
Seriously? Tell that to the business owners whose shops were looted and destroyed. pic.twitter.com/o8IVgP9G8I
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) June 25, 2020
But Jordan wasn’t going to let Nadler make such a blatantly false claim without responding.
“I can’t believe the chairman of the Judiciary Committee would utter such a statement on the House floor,” he said.
“They’re not imaginary. They’re real.”
The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee just called #Antifa “imaginary.”
Antifa is real.
Ask the journalists they’ve attacked and the owners of businesses they’ve destroyed. pic.twitter.com/KE5KdaOKWH
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) June 25, 2020
Jordan reminded Nadler that an antifa mob beat up Portland-based journalist Andy Ngo, and that President Donald Trump has labeled the anarchist group a domestic terrorist organization.
“They are far from imaginary,” Jordan said. “And there are people from every major city in this country who know that, and yet the chair of the Judiciary Committee just made that statement. That is scary!”
The domestic terror label is certainly well-deserved.
A write-up in The Washington Times in June explained the violent, anarchistic group’s battle plan in detail: “What makes the shadowy group unique is its willingness to use of violence, what antifa organizers and sympathizers call ‘direct’ action in support of the Marxist-Leninist agenda. That often involves setting fires, looting, throwing bricks and bottles at police, and in one case the apparent use of a milkshake laced with quick-dry cement in attacking an opponent in the face.”
Even as the “direct” action supported by antifa has become widespread in recent weeks, Nadler still wants to dismiss the group as “imaginary.”
What planet is he living on?
Apparently, he’s not living on the same planet where the son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the top law enforcement official in that state, has pledged support to antifa.
And he’s not living on the same planet where undercover video captured by Project Veritas showed a member of Portland’s antifa group talking to a journalist posing as an antifa recruit about “destroying your enemy” and urging him to “practice things like an eye gouge” because “it takes very little pressure to injure someone’s eyes.”
Nadler’s ignorance of antifa raises the possibility that the congressman agrees with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that the left-wing mobs unleashing violence across America are the “armed militia of the Democratic Party.”
Maybe Nadler believes that if he denies antifa exists, he will never have to defend or come out against the actions of this “armed militia.”
But Nadler and others’ dismissals of antifa, intentional or not, come at great risk to the country.
As Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs told The Western Journal, antifa, along with leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement, “basically hijacked a peaceful protest … and basically sent the whole country up in flames.”
This horror will continue as long as Nadler and others refuse to call out antifa for what it is: a domestic terrorist group.
While antifa-spawned terror has reached a fever pitch in the past month, antifa’s anarchy started long before the death of George Floyd.
Earlier this year, antifa descended upon downtown Portland, defacing a war memorial, attacking innocent people with metal-tipped umbrellas and pushing a woman into the path of an oncoming car.
Then, just like now, antifa is the farthest thing from “imaginary.”
Stopping this terrorist group will require the cooperation of leaders on both sides of the aisle at the federal, state and local levels.
It is time for Nadler and other liberals to get out of denial and acknowledge and condemn the nightmare that is antifa.
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