Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump's Coming Witch Hunt Against Political Islam

The war on "violent extremism" is ending. The new targets are parties abroad and nonprofits at home.

November 30, 2016 at 10:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Frank Gaffney, newly influential on U.S. policy toward Islam.
Photographer: J Carrier/Bloomberg

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On the day after Donald Trump won the election, one of his campaign's advisers and endorsers made a prediction. "You are going to see a purging," retired Lt. General Jerry Boykin told Frank Gaffney on his "Secure Freedom Radio" podcast. Boykin predicted that Trump as president would purge "people inside the government that are known to have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and its front groups and its entities here in America."

This kind of comment is expected from Boykin, one of the founders of the Army's elite Delta Force. When he served in Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon during George W. Bush's administration, he boasted that his God was mightier than the one worshiped by Muslim terrorists. Since retiring from the Army, Boykin has been a leader of a movement fighting against what it calls a civilization jihad, a network of Muslim ideologues trying to take over American society.