“This is what Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric has caused,” fumed one Twitter Leftist. “Alexander Hillel Treisman who had already been arrested by the FBI on child pornography charges. Now it’s come to light that the MAGA fanatic may have also been plotting to assasinate [sic] @JoeBiden.” Another quipped: “Very fine people for trump!” There was just one problem with the Left’s latest confirmation that it isn’t Antifa, but Trump supporters who are the violent thugs menacing innocent people: Treisman is a Bernie Bro.

Treisman, who is 19 years old, was arrested back in May, when, according to NPR, “employees at a bank in Kannapolis, N.C., called the local police to report an abandoned white Ford van in the bank’s parking lot.” This was not your average abandoned jalopy: “When officers arrived, they looked into the van’s windows and saw an array of items: an AR-15 rifle, the box for a handgun, a canister of explosive material, and a box of ammunition, according to a court document. Police say they towed and searched the van, finding more than $500,000 in cash, drawings of swastikas and planes crashing into buildings, books on survival and bomb-making, and a half-dozen firearms.”

“Books on survival and bomb-making.” NPR’s report leaves out another category of books noted by the Daily Beast, of all people, which reported that Treisman’s van contained “books about survival, bomb making, improvised weapons, and Islam.” NPR does note, however, that Treisman told Kannapolis police “that he had lost friends over jokes he had made about mass shootings and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,” and that “investigators found video on Treisman’s cell phone that apparently was taken while driving by Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas — the site of a deadly 2017 mass shooting — as a male voice is heard saying, ‘There it is. That’s it. That's the one, that's where they did it. Allah Akbar! Ah hah, nice.’”

Treisman doesn’t seem to be a Muslim, but he clearly admired the jihadis for the destruction they have wrought. When Treisman entered the bank and asked why his van had been towed, he was arrested. The more investigators found out about him, the worse he looked. He was charged early in October with possessing “a total of 1,248 videos and 6,721 images of child pornography content.”

So Treisman was a right-wing extremist, an anti-Semite, a pervert, and a would-be killer, or at least that’s how he has most often been portrayed. Reality, as is usually, the case, is a different matter. Buried in the fifteenth paragraph of the Washington Post story on Treisman, is the salient fact that Treisman wanted to kill Biden to “save bernie [sic].” It took sixteen paragraphs for the Times of Israel to get around to mentioning this, and the Huffington Post doesn’t bother to inform its readers about it at all.

Treisman wrote on the Internet platform iFunny: “My hatred is for the complacent American people who will turn u in for their own satisfaction. But aside from former goals, my eyes on the future. If anything I have to save bernie.” Then he wondered on the same platform: “should I kill joe biden?”

These were not just idle words. According to NPR, “Treisman bought the AR-15 rifle in New Hampshire and then traveled to a Wendy’s restaurant within 4 miles of Biden’s home in Delaware, federal agents say. He allegedly wrote out a checklist that had as its last task: ‘execute.’”

Apparently Treisman lost his nerve, as he made no attempt on Biden’s life and returned to North Carolina, where he was living at the time. But he had already done quite enough to be of tremendous service to the establishment media. The first comment on the Huffington Post article is: “Another Trump-loving incel - complete with swastikas to boot. He bought the full MAGA package apparently. White House gift shop?” Another added: “The president is an inspiration to the next generation of domestic terrorists -- ready to defend white supremacy to the death -- nice work there Trumpers.” And a third: “Fox nation look in the mirror!”

If anyone should look in the mirror, it is the supporters of Bernie Sanders and other hard-Leftists whose hateful rhetoric and refusal to condemn Antifa violence has created a climate in which the likes of Alexander Treisman can think they’re doing something heroic by plotting to murder a corrupt machine politician who is slightly less Leftist than his hero. But most of those who are imagining a MAGA hat on Treisman today don’t even know he was actually one of their own, because their trusted media outlets will bury that information or not bother to tell them at all. By such delusions the modern Left is fueled.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.