President Trump on Tuesday vowed to “liberate Los Angeles” from “Third World lawlessness” on night five of the anti-ICE riots raging through downtown LA in a fiery speech to US troops.
Trump, defending his decision to deploy the National Guard and US Marines to the City of Angels amid violent riots, argued that without the reinforcements, LA would be “burning” like it did when wildfires swept through Southern California in January.
“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, like is happening in California,” Trump told soldiers during a speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. “As commander in chief, I will not let that happen.”
The president declared that the 4,000 Guardsmen and 700 Marines he dispatched to Los Angeles will “protect federal law enforcement” carrying out his mass deportation order “from the attacks of a vicious and violent mob.”
“If we didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a Los Angeles. It would be burning today just like the houses were burning a number of months ago,” Trump argued, referring to the wildfires.
“Within the span of a few decades, Los Angeles has gone from being one of the cleanest, safest, and most beautiful cities on Earth to being a trash heap with entire neighborhoods under the control of transnational gangs and criminal networks,” the president said. “It’s horrible.”
“As the entire world can now see, uncontrolled migration leads to chaos, dysfunction, and disorder.”
“Very simply, we will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean, and safe again,” Trump pledged. “It’s happening very quickly.”
Protesters have been clashing with local police and federal authorities in Los Angeles since Friday.
The unrest was sparked by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids targeting criminal illegal immigrants in the sanctuary city, where officials, including Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, refuse to go along with Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“What you’re witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags,” Trump said.
Mexican and Palestinian flags have been a ubiquitous presence in the demonstrations and violent rioting that have plagued the city for the last five days.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the presence of foreign flags arguably makes the LA riots “worse” than the unrest that broke out in Minneapolis in 2020 after the death of George Floyd in police custody.
The senator called on Trump to consider invoking the seldom-used Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow US troops to conduct law enforcement activities, to quell the rioting.
After Trump’s speech, Bass announced that a curfew would go into effect in parts of downtown Los Angeles in response to the violence and looting.
“We reached a tipping point,” Bass said at a news conference, declaring a local emergency after 23 businesses were vandalized Monday night.
