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Jeffrey Toobin Says Flatly Antifa ‘Widely Perceived As African American Organization’ — Triggering A Tidal Wave Of Criticism

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Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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CNN’s chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin raised a few eyebrows Wednesday when he claimed that Antifa — the violent “anti-fascist” group responsible for a number of destructive protests and counter-protests nationwide — was “widely perceived as an African American organization.”

Toobin was responding to President Donald Trump’s claims, made during a White House dinner for evangelical leaders, that a shift in power in Congress could lead to violence. Naming Antifa directly, the president added, “The level of hatred — the level of anger —  is unbelievable.”

But according to Toobin, the real problem is not the many documented instances of violence perpetrated by Antifa, but the “racism” of the president. “Let’s be clear also about what is going on here,” he said. “The theme here is, ‘I’m Donald Trump and I’ll protect you from the scary, black people.'”

But then Toobin took it a step further, saying, “Antifa is widely perceived as an African-American organization, and this is just part of the same story of Lebron James and Don Lemon and Maxine Waters and the NFL players and the UCLA basketball players. This is about black versus white. This is about Donald Trump’s appeal to racism and it just happens all the time. We never say it — we don’t say it enough for what it is, but that’s what is going on here.”

The response to Toobin’s assessment suggested that Antifa being an “African American organization” was not as “widely perceived” as he may have thought.

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