The White House hosted a roundtable on Antifa Wednesday, just weeks after President Donald Trump designated the violent, far-left activist group a terrorist organization.

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Participants in the discussion included Trump, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, FBI Director Kash Patel, along with several journalists and researchers who have covered Antifa and been brutally attacked by its activists.

The attendees presented information about violence they’ve personally experienced from Antifa and provided information about the organization’s structure and financial background, and the impact of its new designation as a terrorist organization. Participants also discussed the media’s coverage of the violent group and law enforcement’s response.

Here are five highlights from the Trump administration’s Roundtable on Antifa.

1. Antifa bankrolled by NGOs: ‘Riot, Inc.’

Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute provided details about what he described as the “protest industrial complex” and “Riot, Inc.”

“We found a network of [nongovernmental organizations],” Bruner said. “It’s not just the [George] Soros network, the Open Society network, it’s other funding networks: the Arabella funding network, the Tides funding network, Neville Roy Singham and his network, foreign cash.”

“Like any corporation, Riot, Inc. has many divisions. It doesn’t just have the Antifa boots on the ground division, it has PR divisions, it has marketing divisions, it has a very well-funded legal division to get these boots on the ground back on the streets as quickly as possible,” he said.

“We have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than $100 million from the Riot, Inc. investors.”

Bruner identified “lawyer groups” and “groups that advocate for calling good, honest Americans fascists” as the recipients of the aforementioned funding, along with what he referred to as “decentralized crowdfunding platforms.” He also listed the John Brown Gun Club of Elm Fork, which had links to the recent attack on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas, Texas, as another example of an organization that has been bankrolled by “Riot, Inc.”

Bruner also lamented that “more than $100 million in U.S. taxpayer funding has flowed into these funding networks, including at least $4 million to these very groups themselves.” He also mentioned groups affiliated with “an event in Atlanta called ‘Stop Cop City’” where “over 60 rioters were charged with domestic terrorism” as examples of organizations that have received taxpayer money.

2. Antifa’s ties to ‘homeless industrial complex’

Jonathan Choe, an investigative reporter for Frontlines Turning Point USA, who’s also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, shared information from a newly released report published by the Capital Research Center and the Discovery Institute, which found that “Antifa is heavily embedded in the homeless and housing nonprofit sector.”

“In many cases, the homeless industrial complex is running cover for Antifa,” he said.

“Antifa is benefitting from American tax dollars, and they’re essentially being used as the muscle,” he explained. “There’s a group called Stop the Sweeps in many U.S. cities right now. They get in front of encampment sweeps. What they’re doing quietly is they’re bringing in Antifa militants to manufacture a crisis to make the police look bad.”

While Choe expressed gratitude for an executive order signed by Trump designed to address homelessness and drug addiction, which he praised for sending “the entire homeless industrial complex on the run,” he noted that “what’s also come out again is that there is a connection, a deeply embedded connection, with the homeless, housing nonprofit game in America connected to Antifa and the far-left activists.”

Choe named the Democratic Socialists of America as another group that is closely affiliated with Antifa.

3. Designation as terrorist group is making a difference

The roundtable discussion also featured testimonies from several journalists who have covered Antifa, including Brandi Kruze.

Kruze said she’s been covering Antifa for 15 years before crediting Trump’s decision to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization with saving lives.

“I genuinely believe there would be people at these tables who would be dead today and would have been killed in Portland had you not called them a terror organization, and said we’re going to bring the full weight of the federal government to bear,” she asserted. “They’re thinking in their heads, they’re worried. There’s been two dozen or so arrested in Portland. They don’t want to go to federal prison.”

Kruze recalled her conversation with Katie Daviscourt, another reporter who participated in the White House roundtable and was recently assaulted by Antifa activists. She agreed with Kruze in observing that, after the president’s designation, “they didn’t seem as quick to violence as soon as you made that designation.”

Kruze also mentioned a recent video of an Antifa rioter who was “in the face of an ICE agent” and then “he’s in custody, shaking. Once you take the mask off, they’re nothing.”

4. Journalists who cover Antifa blame mainstream media rhetoric for violence

Multiple participants in the roundtable elaborated on Antifa rioters’ motivation for engaging in domestic terror and violently attacking their political opponents.

Daviscourt discussed how she went undercover with Antifa, finding that members of the militant group “believe that ICE agents are the Nazi Gestapo who need to be killed.”

Savanah Hernandez, another reporter who attended the event, attributed Antifa’s beliefs that motivate them to engage in violence to rhetoric from the mainstream media: “The same media that’s sitting in this room with us has declared all of us at this table Nazis and fascists, and they’ve been doing this for years. This is why Antifa feels emboldened to attack us.”

Julio Rosas, another reporter who covers Antifa, agreed that slanted coverage by mainstream media outlets is one reason why the militant group feels justified in resorting to violence. He noted that MSNBC “ran a story about an operation in Southern California about how a father of three Marines was arrested and they made it seem like they just did it because he’s brown.”

“There’s video of that same man charging at the agents with a weed whacker,” Rosas added. The reporter accused MSNBC of omitting that fact to advance their preferred narrative.

5. Some police departments inadequately responding to or encouraging Antifa

While much of the discussion focused on Antifa’s hostility toward law enforcement, specifically ICE, multiple people at the roundtable mentioned that some law enforcement officials have inadequately responded to the threats posed by Antifa.

“The Portland Police Bureau has completely abandoned several blocks outside the ICE facility, giving away their jurisdiction to a terrorist group who has spent the past four months harassing, assaulting and intimidating anyone they perceive to be against their cause,” Daviscourt said.

“Today, I am sitting here with a black eye and a concussion after being violently hit in the face with a metal pole while reporting outside the ICE facility just this past week,” she said.

The reporter expressed disgust that three Portland police officers “refused to detain the suspect,” prompting her to “chase down the suspect in the streets” and restrain her for 35 minutes.

Daviscourt revealed that Portland police “never came,” and she witnessed fellow Antifa militants help her assailant escape to a “safe house.”

Other participants echoed Daviscourt’s analysis, with Hernandez agreeing that “there is no police force” in Portland and Noem recounting conversations she had with ICE agents in Portland who told her that “as they drove by the rioters that were saying ‘kill ICE agents,’” Portland police officers were “cheering them on and had their fists in the air.”

What did you think of this roundtable? Share your thoughts and prayers below.

This article was originally published at The Christian Post. Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Molly Riley.