Former Democratic Strategist Dan Turrentine said on Monday that the Democratic Party has gone crazy based on its reaction to riots in Los Angeles, California.
Riots initially erupted on Friday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the Los Angeles area, with rioters attacking federal immigration officers and vandalizing taxpayer-funded property, according to a Saturday Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statement. Turrentine, on “The Morning Meeting,” suggested he believed the Democratic Party was condoning the rioters’ actions. (RELATED: Dem Rep Really Upset That ICE Agents Wore Masks When Making Arrests)
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“Is [President] Donald Trump potentially playing politics a little bit? Yeah, I think he probably is. I find it hard to believe the timing is not a coincidence, that he had a bad end to last week. That said — and, you know, this is politics in general — both parties engage in stuff like that,” Turrentine said. “I think the Democratic Party has kind of lost its mind. I think that you cannot tolerate that people are harming government property and harming federal officials executing the job that the president or the, you know, secretary of DHS or whomever has ordered them to do. Like, you just simply cannot do this.”
The former Democratic strategist also accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of hesitating to take action because they sympathized with the anti-ICE sentiment behind the riots.
“I think one of the reasons Newsom and Bass at first didn’t really move is they didn’t really see a problem with it. Like, okay, there’s a little bit of violence, okay, but like this is okay because it’s in the name of what we believe, which is to not help enforce immigration,” he said. “We’ve always talked about — at some point, good, you know, kind of normal people are going to start getting swept up, whether it’s the busboy or the people at Home Depot getting ready to try to go paint a house or pick up day labor work.”
“But the bottom line is, you cannot tolerate people in this country illegally — or anybody — banging on cars, throwing rocks at people,” he added. “You just can’t allow that. It looks like a third-world country.”
Moreover, although there have been violent riots in Los Angeles, some Democrats have attempted to frame the protests as peaceful.
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters asserted on “The Situation Room” Monday that “no violence” took place in Los Angeles, despite footage of rioters setting cars on fire and at least one attack on federal agents. She took issue with a characterization by Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McConnell that violence was surging.
“Well, I was surprised at the way that the police chief was describing all of this. There had been no violence where anybody that was protesting hit anybody, shot anybody, threatened anybody,” she said. “Nothing had happened. And so he doesn’t know what to do, probably, because this is a sanctuary city, and the police don’t have the authority. All that he’s got to do is work with the governor.”
McConnell detailed how rioters were attacking his officers during a Sunday press conference, ABC7.com reported.
“Tonight we had individuals out there shooting commercial-grade fireworks at our officers that can kill you,” he told reporters.
Video posted to social media also showed a person donning a motorcycle helmet throwing rocks at the windshields of vehicles holding ICE agents.
Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin also accused Democrats of stoking violence against ICE officers in the DHS’ Saturday statement.
“Make no mistake, Democrat politicians like Hakeem Jeffries, Mayor Wu of Boston, Tim Walz, and Mayor Bass of Los Angeles are contributing to the surge in assaults of our ICE officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of ICE,” she said. “From comparisons to the modern-day Nazi gestapo to glorifying rioters, the violent rhetoric of these sanctuary politicians is beyond the pale. This violence against ICE must end.”
Trump announced Saturday that he would deploy the National Guard, which arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday. Newsom decried the deployment in a Saturday X post.
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