Trump Promised To Designate Antifa A Terrorist Group. Why Does That Matter?
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. |
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| 0:15.4 | Hey, NPR. This is Chinisa calling from the state capital rotunda in Jefferson City, Missouri, |
| 0:22.0 | where my uncle, the milkshake man of Walter Reed, was just inducted into the Missouri Veterans Hall of Fame. |
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| 0:29.1 | This podcast was recorded at 1124 a.m. on Wednesday, October 29th, 2025. |
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| 0:40.7 | Love you, Uncle Jim. |
| 0:45.6 | The milkshake man of Walter Reed? |
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| 0:49.7 | That is awesome. Yeah. There he is right here. Anyone else can Google it as well, the milkshake man of |
| 0:55.8 | Walter Reed. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ryan |
| 1:00.6 | Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. |
| 1:05.6 | And today on the show, we're talking about the possibility of the Trump administration |
| 1:08.8 | designating Antifa, the far-left movement or ideology that's opposed to fascism as a foreign terrorist organization. President Trump was asked about taking this step during a roundtable with right-wing influencers earlier this month, and here's what he said. Would you like to see it done? Yes, Mr. President. Do you think it would help? They have foreign legs all across Western Europe. I think it's the kind of thing I'd like to do. If you'd like to, does everybody agree? If you agree, I agree. Let's get it done. Okay? Let's get it done. Marco, we'll take care of it. Ryan, let's just start here. This is a decentralized movement, if I'm not mistaken. Can the president really take this step? So there are a couple parts of that question that we need to address. First off is, yes, |
| 1:47.3 | it is experts, say, more of an ideology or a movement and not a centralized cohesive group. |
| 1:54.5 | Former FBI director Christopher Ray actually testified to that before Congress a couple years ago. |
| 1:59.5 | As for whether the president can take |
| 2:01.4 | this step, the authority to designate a group, a foreign terrorist organization lies with the |
| 2:06.3 | State Department. There are certain criteria that have to be met. There's an office there that |
| 2:10.5 | makes these recommendations. The criteria are, is it an organization? Is it a cohesive |
... |
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