There is something the activist media doesn’t want you to know about the individual who allegedly assaulted three New York City police officers in Times Square on Sunday. As Democrats and their close friends and allies in the press continue to insist that right-wing domestic terrorism is the most dire threat to national security, it appears Islamic extremism could be making a comeback.
Law enforcement has charged Trevor Bickford, 19, with attempted murder and assault after the alleged attack. He is believed to have traveled from Maine to the Big Apple to carry out the attack.
RedState’s Nick Arama reported:
Bickford went up to three police officers who were on New Year’s Eve duty. He attacked and slashed two of the officers with a machete. One of those officers was on his first day on the job. The suspect was then shot in the shoulder and stopped by the third officer, who was also injured. All three officers are expected to recover.
“Bickford is being investigated for Islamic extremism, although he’s not facing terrorism charges yet,” Arama added, noting that the suspect was being watched by the FBI’s counterterrorism task force.
CBS2 noted that Bickford had been placed on the terror watchlist after his aunt reported that he had been radicalized online and “expressed a desire to travel overseas and fight with Islamic extremists.”
Police reported that the alleged assailant tried to strike an officer in the head using a machete and also attacked two other officers, fracturing one’s skull. The incident occurred around 10 p.m.
All three of the officers have been released from the hospital.
So far, the New York Times and Reuters are the only mainstream left-leaning news outlets that have mentioned the connection to radical Islamic extremism in their reports on the incident. Bickford wrote a letter to his family in a diary that was found in his possession after the alleged assault, according to The Times. He wrote a note to his mother which read: “I fear greatly you will not repent to Allah and therefore I hold hope in my heart that a piece of you believes so that you may be taken out of the hellfire.”
Bickford also mentioned his brother, a member of the U.S. Armed Services, saying that he was wearing the uniform of the enemy. Investigators discovered that the suspect appeared to “spiral downward” after his father died from a drug overdose. “Sometime in the last year and a half, he converted to Islam, often praying at mosques in the vicinity and devouring readings and videos about the religion,” the author wrote. “He was angered by the persecution of Muslims overseas, including of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uyghurs in China, and decided to go abroad and fight for them.”
Since the Islamic State (ISIS) and other radical Islamic terrorist groups were decimated under the Trump administration, they have not received much attention from the media. The left chose to focus more on the supposed threat of right-wing domestic terrorism after the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI cited it as a major danger to the U.S.
But others have sounded the alarm on a resurgence in Islamic extremism. Concerns have intensified after the migrant crisis worsened and authorities caught individuals with ties to terrorist groups trying to cross the southern border. It is also worth noting that many of the lone-wolf terrorist attacks that have occurred on American soil were carried out by individuals who had been radicalized online, not by terrorists who traveled to the U.S.
Unfortunately, most activist media outlets seem almost completely uninterested in this detail when reporting on this case. Indeed, they seem to think ignoring it is the best course of action in this regard, perhaps because they believe it will ruin their narrative about crazed MAGA hat-wearing psychos seeking to inflict physical harm on black and brown folks.
Is it possible that America could see ISIS and other groups make a comeback? Yes, it is possible. These folks still seek to kill Americans abroad and at home. Of course, it is also possible that Bickford could be a one-off. But with the border becoming even more porous and federal authorities focusing more on a seemingly nonexistent right-wing terror threat and censoring American accounts on Twitter, it is not difficult to imagine how radical Islamic extremists could take advantage.