President Joe Biden (WhiteHouse.gov)
Amid calls by Democratic leaders to "deprogram" and "reeducate" supporters of President Trump, former CIA Director John Brennan said Wednesday that the Biden administration is "moving in laser-light fashion" to root out an "unholy alliance" that includes "religious extremists" and libertarians.
Brennan, who is widely regarded as the "quarterback" of the unwarranted "Trump-Russia collusion" effort to undermine Trump, spoke with MSNBC's Nicole Wallace after the inauguration of Joe Biden.
"The members of the Biden team who have been nominated or have been appointed are now moving in laser light fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas," Brennan said, "where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength, and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians."
Brennan said there's a "momentum that has been generated" by "the demagogic rhetoric" of the now-departed Trump administration and "also those who continue in the halls of Congress."
"So I really do think that the law enforcement, homeland security, intelligence and even the defense officials are doing everything possible to root out what seems to be a very, very serious and insidious threat to our democracy and our republic," he said.
Biden touched on the issue in his inaugural address Wednesday, speaking of "a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat."
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said in a Fox News interview on Wednesday that he understood Biden to be referencing the entire opposition to Democrats on the right.
"If you read his speech and listen to it carefully, much of it is thinly veiled innuendo," Paul said, "calling us white supremacists, calling us racists, calling us every name in the book."
Washington Post columnist Philip Bump reacted on Thursday to Paul's assessment, contending the senator was conflating Biden's "constrained criticism with a broad attack on Republicans generally."
However, Brennan clearly was painting with a broad brush when he referred to "an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians."
In November, a member of the Democratic National Committee, David Atkins, said on Twitter that "deprogramming" is needed for every one of the Americans who voted for Trump on Nov. 3.
"No seriously ... how *do* you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook?" he wrote on Twitter.
"We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South."
WND reported that after casting Trump and his supporters as "white supremacists" and "conspiracy theorists" for the past four years, the most prominent member of the far-left "squad," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Friday it's time to pour more money into efforts to "deradicalize" and "deprogram" that population.
One year ago, a campaign organizer for then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said the country would need to "spend billions" on "reeducation" of Trump supporters who have become "Nazified."
See an excerpt of the MSNBC interview with John Brennan:
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