Trump Response to L.A. Riots Applies Lessons Learned in 2020
Despite the intervening Biden administration, the players and politics remain fundamentally identical, except that Trump enjoys a stronger position.
The Los Angeles riots have driven California progressives back to a familiar strategy: blame Trump. For instance, after days of dallying, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) on Tuesday finally declared an overnight curfew in Downtown Los Angeles “to stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the President’s chaotic escalation.” But Trump has “been here before,” and he knows how events play out.
“You have to remember, I’ve been here before,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I went right by every rule, and I waited for governors to say, ‘Send in the National Guard.’ They wouldn’t do it, and they just wouldn’t do it. It kept going on and on [and] got worse and worse.”
Trump was recalling the fiery protests in the summer of 2020, for which a mainstream media outlet devised the anti-description, “mostly peaceful.” After seven days of rioting in Minneapolis, Trump continued, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) “wouldn’t call the National Guard, and we ultimately just sent in the National Guard. We stopped it, but that was after seven days.”
“And I said to myself, ‘If that stuff happens again, we’ve got to make faster decisions because they don’t want to do it,’” Trump added. “If we didn’t send in the National Guard quickly, right now, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground.”
Some politicians disagree — or at least claim to. “You all don’t think that somehow, because they called out the National Guard, there was violence?” queried Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). “There was no violence. I was on the street. I know.” The curfew imposed by Mayor Bass would beg to differ.
But the mainstream media is all too happy to back up the argument that Trump’s handling of the crisis has been heavy-handed. “Trump is acting like an authoritarian,” complained CNN. “This Is What Autocracy Looks Like” agreed The New York Times. “Sending the National Guard into LA is the administration’s clearest step yet towards authoritarianism,” echoed the Financial Times.
When the left-biased media calls a Republican president’s actions “authoritarianism,” it says less about the action itself than about the commentators’ dislike of authority wielded by their political opponents.
“What’s happened so far is that Trump has acted within the law … to use the National Guard (and now a contingent of Marines) to protect federal personnel and property in L.A.,” argued Rich Lowry. “Most people don’t feel threatened or provoked by guys in camo standing impassively in front of a federal building.”
At least at first glance, a federal judge agrees. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, a judge on senior status in the Northern District of California, denied Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) emergency request for a temporary restraining order to prevent Trump from federalizing the California National Guard. Judge Breyer is a former Watergate prosecutor and the brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the court’s liberals.
Breyer scheduled a hearing on the motion for Thursday. He gave the federal government until 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday to file arguments, then California has until 9 a.m. on Thursday to respond.
The more time that passes, the more evidence suggests that Trump was right to categorize the L.A. riots as a re-run of 2020. Despite the intervening Biden administration, the players and politics remain fundamentally identical, except that Trump enjoys a stronger position. Even the cause — opposition to law enforcement — is nearly the same, although that is certainly no requirement to draw out leftist activists. Already, anti-ICE protests have spread across the country, including New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta. NBC News “counted at least 25 rallies and demonstrations coast to coast” on Monday and Tuesday.
Trump provided further explanation for his actions while speaking at Fort Bragg, days before the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday. The point of defending American property in American streets is the same as defending it abroad, he said. “Generations of Army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness here at home — like is happening in California,” Trump urged. “As commander-in-chief, I will not let that happen.”
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
