Tom Trento

Thomas Anthony Trento (born ) is an American conservative activist, radio and web show host, and founder of the Florida-based counter-jihad group the United West, the successor to the Florida Security Council. He has also been the national security chairman for the Tea Party National Convention.

Background Trento hails from Jersey, and later studied at the Florida Atlantic University under Walid Phares, a leading scholar of "stealth jihad". He received the Carnegie Medal from the Carnegie Hero Fund in 1983 for having rescued an unconscious man from a burning car while he was a seminary student in Denver. He identifies as an evangelical Christian, in the late 1980s, who was once arrested for trespassing outside a Denver abortion clinic.

The United West Together with Florida Republican state representative Adam Hasner, Trento launched the Florida Security Council in 2007, the predecessor to the United West. which according to Trento has been "extremely effective in waking people up" to the threat of radical Islam. The associated group Security Research Associates then received funding from the Donors Capital Fund. He was one of the co-authors of the Center for Security Policy publication Shariah: The Threat To America in 2010. The group has been described, and describes itself as a counter-jihad organization, with strong support for Israel, and is based in Lake Worth.

Trento has also been the national security chairman for the Tea Party National Convention, and a director of the Tea Party Founding Fathers.

In 2013, Trento held a controversial speech at an event at the September 11 Memorial in Patriots Park, Venice, Florida, attended by the Venice mayor and public officials, in which he denounced not only radical Islam, but "all Islam". In 2015, he called out Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel at a rally for hiring a "terrorist", due to the sheriff's decision to hire deputy Nezar Hamze, who was also the director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Trento has later collaborated with former Trump administration Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Tom Homan. In November 2022, the United West organized a private fundraising event at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, during which it said it premiered a television program associated with Homan's Defend the Border and Save Lives project.