Tunnel vision

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Secretary of State Marco Rubio also came out last week to call attention to left-wing terrorism as an international issue. He’s calling on other countries to join the United States in fighting it.

His comments came as leaders from more than sixty countries gathered in Washington, last week for a special “ministerial.” A ministerial is an international meeting where government ministers gather to coordinate policy … and make commitments on a specific issue.

NICK EICHER, HOST: The secretary of state started by calling to memory the most devastating terrorist attack in American history.

MARCO RUBIO: On the 11th of September, in the year of 2001, 19 men murdered, 3,000 people here in my country.

GEORGE BUSH: Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in what appears to be an act of terrorism.

EICHER: 9/11 served as a catalyst for substantial changes in law enforcement and government agencies.

RUBIO: We built intelligence and law enforcement systems capable of anticipating and stopping attacks before the public even hears about them. Every country represented here today has disrupted a terrorist threat at some point emanating from this source.

Rubio credited the recent decline in Islamic terrorism to these advancements. But he warned decision makers against focusing only on Islamic violence. He said failing to consider political terrorism by far-left extremists is a dangerous blind spot.

RUBIO: Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy.

BROWN: Rubio argued ideological prejudice has made Americans willing to excuse terrorism from far-left actors.

RUBIO: A bomb planted by a neo-Nazi group was a nefarious and murderous act of evil. It is. But a bomb planted by a Marxist revolutionary, well, that's just merely a tragic excess of idealism.

He gave historical examples of far-left extremism and terrorism from around the globe.

RUBIO: Every one of our friends here from the nations of the Western Hemisphere remember….You remember the tens of thousands of Marxist guerrillas trained to kill in Castro's terrorist camps….

All of you here from Europe remember….You remember the Red Army faction's nearly three-decade campaign of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations in Germany.….

And here in America, we remember…..In one 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, the FBI counted some 2,500 bombings on American soil, a rate of nearly five a day.

The Global Terrorism Index says that in the decade of the 1970s, there were nearly 17-hundred politically motivated terrorist incidents recorded in the West. More than 9 in 10 of them were carried out by terrorist groups classified as far-left."

Rubio said the problem has continued.

RUBIO: It does exist. And we're actually underestimating it. And our nations bear the scars to prove it. And today we face a new wave of this old evil.

Here in the United States. The share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades. In Germany, far-left violence has jumped by more than 40% in just the last year alone….These are not abstract statistics. Americans have seen what those numbers mean.

An all-out assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes, a transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students..

KUTV: As police investigate this mass shooting that happened in Minneapolis this morning at the Annunciation Roman Catholic Church…

Two children, ages eight and ten years old were killed, 17 other people injured and 14 of those 17 total injured are also children.

EICHER: Rubio pointed to the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and attempts on the life of President Trump.

RUBIO: Multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president.

ABC COVERAGE: A very disturbing 24 hours in American history. The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump.

SOUND: [Gunshots and screams]

ABC: Gunfire erupting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

And he concluded with the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in front of college students.

SALT LAKE TRIBUNE COVERAGE: [Gunshot] Oh my! [Screaming]

RUBIO: This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself.

BROWN: The Ministerial comes after a string of actions by the Trump administration following Kirk’s death. Those actions include designating Antifa as a domestic terror group…a move the ACLU warned could lead to an infringement on First Amendment rights.

EICHER It also named four other far-left groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Rubio said more will be added to that list. The State Department is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information about the funding of these groups.

Rubio’s speech did not directly tie domestic events to foreign actors but he called on world leaders to work together to fight the violence.

RUBIO: Through intelligence and information sharing, through coordinated law enforcement strategy, through financial targeting and disruption, we will dismantle these networks brick by brick.

In May, 14 countries joined the United States for the first counterterrorism law enforcement workshop. Rubio announced the United States will co-host the second workshop with partners from Germany.

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