Portland, Maine’s WMTW reported Thursday that “the Wells man accused of attacking police in New York City near Times Square with a machete on New Year’s Eve is now scheduled to stand trial on federal charges in March 2024.” The “Wells man” is Trevor Bickford, who was nineteen years old at the time of his attack, and a fervent convert to the religion of Islam. He is “charged with four counts of attempted murder of officers and employees of the U.S. Government” and “has pleaded not guilty.” He is also yet another reminder that when Biden regime officials tell us that white supremacists are the biggest threat the nation faces today, they’re lying.

“According to the state indictment,” says WMTW, “Bickford studied radical Islamic ideology, intended to carry out ‘jihad,’ and aimed to attack U.S. officials he thought to be ‘anti-Muslim.’”

This is unusually forthright reporting for an establishment media outlet, even a minor one. When Bickford stabbed the cops with a machete back on New Year’s Eve, the reaction from authorities was more in line with what we have come to expect these days: they scratched their heads and wondered why, oh why, a young convert to Islam could even dream of doing such a thing. According to the UK’s Daily Mail, “an investigation was underway to pinpoint a motive for the attack.”

That investigation, however, was more the result of officials not wanting to recognize Bickford’s obvious motive, rather than a matter of his real intentions being unclear. Bickford himself left behind a “manifesto” in which he made his perspective and intentions quite clear. But since neither he nor his attack fit the establishment media/Biden regime narrative about the “white supremacist” terror threat, they got virtually no attention.

The New York Post reported that when he was arrested after the stabbings, Bickford had a handwritten note in his backpack, asking his family to “please repent to Allah and accept Islam.” The backpack also contained a “collection of religious material” that was unlikely to have been gospel tracts. Bickford wrote: “To my family — specifically, mother —  I’m sorry for not having been a good enough son.” But then he gets down to brass tacks: “I fear greatly that 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 to [sic] the hellfire.”

Bickford addressed the same hope to his brother: “To Travis. Of anyone I’ve known who I have felt is closest to faith — it’s you. Of anyone I’ve ever wanted to accept Islam with me — it’s you. Please repent to Allah and accept Islam. I fear for you.” To his other brother, who is reportedly in the U.S. Marine Corps, Bickford wrote: “To Devon, there was a time when we were close, but that time has passed. You have joined the ranks of my enemy. And for that I can give you no kind words – return to Allah.”

The New York Post also noted that Bickford wanted to attack “a uniformed officer” or “someone with a gun,” as he believed such people to be an “enemy of the state.” Which state? The New York Post, as willfully ignorant as the rest of the establishment media, showed no curiosity about this question. But clearly, Trevor Bickford, after he converted to Islam, was no stalwart American patriot. He wanted to target a uniformed officer as an enemy of the Islamic state. He had no kind words for his brother Devon because Devon had joined “the ranks of my enemy,” that is, the U.S. military.

How did Trevor Bickford come to think this way? According to the Daily Mail, he “appeared to be a typical, all-American teenager” who “once made the school honor roll, won awards for his artwork, and was a member of the championship football team in his hometown of Wells, Maine.” Then, however, his father died of a drug overdose, which must certainly have been deeply traumatizing, and Bickford converted to Islam.

If authorities really want to understand Bickford’s motive, they should study carefully what they are almost certainly ignoring even to this day, such as the questions of how and where this young man converted to Islam, and how he got the idea that his new religion, which non-Muslim authorities all over the Western world assure us is completely peaceful and tolerant, commanded him to consider non-Muslims enemies and violently attack them. 

These questions are never asked, much less answered, despite the fact that converts to Islam turning to jihad violence is a distressingly common phenomenon. American intelligence and law enforcement officials don’t want to do anything to give the impression that they don’t accept the dogma that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. The fact that converts to Islam such as Trevor Bickford, Allison Fluke-Ekren, Damon Joseph, Corey Johnson, and many, many others have somehow gotten exactly the opposite idea doesn’t ever make authorities pause and reflect upon their core assumptions.

All this willful ignorance accomplishes nothing other than to ensure that the story of Trevor Bickford will recur again and again. The Biden regime’s all-consuming focus on a fictional “white supremacist” terror threat only ensures that those who converted and taught Bickford and others like him will have a freer hand than ever to recruit and train new jihadis. In this case, as in so many others, the Biden regime’s willful ignorance and politicization of counterterror activity come at a high human cost.