As our Jorge Bonilla recently observed:
"If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and throws Molotov cocktails at Jews while shouting “Free Palestine” and “End Israel," it’s a terrorist.
But not so fast, says Juliette Kayyem: it might actually just be a duck!
Commenting on the attack on a Jewish group in Boulder Colorado, by Mohamed Sabry Solimanan, an illegal alien Egyptian wielding a flamethrower, Bonilla caught Kayyem criticizing the Trump administration for prematurely calling it an act of terrorism.
And when an antisemitic attacker shot and killed two Israeli embassy staffers outside the DC Jewish Museum, we caught Kayyem admitting that you "can't deny" that he was yelling "Free, Free Palestine," and that it MAY be a hate crime.
Kayyem is a former Obama DHS official, who is now a CNN senior national security analyst. Introducing her on Tuesday's CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish didn't disclose Kayyem's Obama affiliation. Cornish proceeded to tee up Kayyem to criticize the Trump administration in connection with the Boulder attack:
"Given the cuts to the Justice Department grant programs that actually deal with hate crimes and prevention, is this DOJ even positioned to deal with a rising problem [of antisemitic incidents]?
Kayyem was only too happy to swing at that tee ball:
"It is in a tougher position than it was before. Both at DOJ and DHS, there are grants to support community security efforts as well as nonprofit security, nonprofit group security. And those often included synagogues, Jewish community organizations, and other places that would have supported protection as well as reporting on antisemitism. So there is a link between sort of the decision to not really focus on prevention. That was sort of the decision by DOGE and all of these cuts. And that will have an impact on both reporting, and the protection of various communities, and in particular, the Jewish one."
Translation: So, okay, President Trump and Elon Musk might not have personally loaded Mohamed's flamethrower, but by reducing funding to favored liberal NGOs, they enabled his attack.
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
6/3/25
6:02 an EDTAUDIE CORNISH: Joining me now is CNN Senior National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem. She's a former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary. And Juliette, I often turn to your writing because you talk a lot about political violence. So thank you for being on the show this morning.
JULIETTE KAYYEM: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: So I was looking at the numbers from the Anti-Defamation League. They say they recorded more than 9,000 antisemitic incidents in 2024, and that's a 344% increase over five years.
Given the cuts to the Justice Department grant programs that actually deal with hate crimes and prevention, is this DOJ even positioned to deal with a rising problem?
KAYYEM: Yes, it is in a tougher position than it was before. There still exists a civil rights division, although it has been fundamentally gutted at this stage. And that's the group that prosecutes these federal hate crimes.
But there's pieces of the government that we don't see a lot. They're the one, you know, they're not in a courtroom. And these are the grants and funding that you mentioned.
Both at DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security, there are grants to support community security efforts as well as nonprofit security, nonprofit group security. And those often included synagogues, Jewish community organizations, and other places that would have supported protection as well as reporting on antisemitism.
So there is a link between sort of the decision to not really focus on prevention. That was sort of the decision by DOGE and all of these cuts. And that will have an impact on both reporting, and the protection of various communities, and in particular, the Jewish one.
