Democratic senators on Tuesday were walking a line between criticizing the White House for sending troops to put down protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles and the violence the administration says caused it to act.
Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania called out some in his party for not condemning the violence.
“I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that. This is anarchy and true chaos,” Fetterman said in a post on X on Monday.
MORE: ICE protests live updates
“My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement,” Fetterman continued.
But some of his colleagues on Capitol Hill say they can support the sentiment behind the protests without condoning violence.
“We can do two things at one time. We can condemn protests that get out of control, and we can acknowledge that Donald Trump has no interest in standing up to violent protesters,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday when asked about Fetterman’s comment.
“He pardoned every single violent protester that tried to attack our Capitol and destroy our democracy,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, Donald Trump is not looking to create peace. He’s not looking to calm the situation. He’s looking for a fight,” Murphy continued.
Murphy and other Democrats repeated that local and state government officials in the city of Los Angeles and the state of California have said they don’t need federal help with holding protesters that have engaged in violence or property destruction accountable.
“[They] all say, ‘We’ve got this under control.’ It is unfortunate — not necessary to mobilize U.S. Marines who are trained for the Pacific, not for the streets of Los Angeles,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons said.
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“It is, of course, important that anyone who attacks police officers or sets fire to vehicles or carries out vandalism, being interrupted and arrested. I support peaceful protest,” Coons said.
Coons and Murphy said Trump’s moves are a distraction from other — perhaps more important — matters in Washington, like the “big, beautiful bill” Trump wants to get passed to fund his agenda, which Democrats are lobbying against.
“Last week, every one of you was asking me about the fight between Elon Musk and Trump, and how Musk was denouncing the ‘big, beautiful bill’ as debt and deficit and how a few nervous Republicans were recognizing that taking health care away from 16 million Americans was a really bad idea,” Coons told reporters.
“No one’s asking me about that this week. You’re only asking me about Los Angeles. It is a critical issue … I’m not diminishing the significance of the issue, but it’s a reminder that here in the Senate — what is right in front of us is the so-called “big, beautiful bill, which will have consequences for millions of Americans in terms of increasing hunger and decreasing access to health,” Coons added.
Murphy said Trump is trying to “create headlines in other places.”
Republican senators stood behind the president’s decision to send in the troops.
Sen. Rand Paul said Democrats’ reaction to the protests is “appalling” and a reason why voters don’t agree with them.
“I think it’s another reason why you’re seeing the demise of the Democrat brand around the country. You got a city on fire. You got people marching with foreign flags, people marching with a Mexican flag in L.A., resisting federal law, interfering with federal law. You have the governor and the mayor, both Democrats, saying they will interfere and will not uphold federal law,” Paul said.
MORE: Speaker Johnson, backing Trump’s LA actions, says Newsom should be ‘tarred and feathered’
Republican Sen. Rick Scott blamed Democrats’ position on immigration for the unrest.
“If you look at what’s going on in LA, it shows exactly what Biden Democrats did by opening their borders the way they did, and allowing people, millions and millions and millions of people, to come in here. They’ve caused all this,” Scott said.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, who stirred controversy in Trump’s first term in 2020 for urging him to deploy the National Guard to stop the George Floyd riots, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday calling for “an overwhelming show of force to end the riots” and blaming Democrats for letting them happen.
“Is anyone surprised? Democrats also stood idly by or even celebrated as the Black Lives Matter riots ransacked our cities five years ago,” he wrote. “If anything, these riots are worse. At least the [Black Lives Matter] rioters didn’t wave foreign flags.”
