WASHINGTON – One group was considered a rampaging mob whose members bear-sprayed and beat police officers while breaking into the seat of American democracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
The other was a more dispersed and uncoordinated group of violent agitators burning empty cars, looting and throwing rocks at police.
In the first incident, the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, then-President Donald Trump never called in the National Guard, despite pleas from local officials and some congressional lawmakers. They said troops were needed to prevent further violence from an angry mob that Trump himself had riled up to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.
In the second case, which is still ongoing, Trump not only deployed the California National Guard over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, he also called in 700 active duty Marines to quell anti-ICE protests that erupted in Los Angeles over aggressive immigration raids.
The contrast between Trump’s actions in 2021, when the U.S. Capitol was overrun by a violent mob, and this month in Los Angeles is proof, his critics say, the president is using the U.S. military for political purposes.
But some supporters of the president say the more appropriate comparison isn’t with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, but the riots and disturbances that rocked American cities in the summer of 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd.
The Floyd protests showed “you’ve got to put out small fires before they turn into forest fires,” Jay Town, who served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama during Trump’s first administration, told USA TODAY.
Trump said the troops were needed in Los Angeles to put down a “form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
The protests in Los Angeles are seen as more tepid compared to the Jan. 6 riots in terms of constituting a rebellion or threat to the federal government, according to Newsom, Democratic lawmakers, and legal experts.
They accuse Trump − who was impeached and criminally indicted over Jan. 6, though the charges were dropped after his reelection − of deploying soldiers to serve his own political ends.
“There was not plausibly a rebellion in Los Angeles, under any reasonable interpretation of the term,” said Chris Mirasola, a law professor at the University of Houston and a former Department of Defense legal advisor.
Critics saw a cracked mirror image of Jan. 6 in Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard in Los Angeles.
“This is a reverse of Jan. 6, where Trump allowed his most violent supporters to attack the Capitol on his behalf,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., told USA TODAY, “and here he is sending in federal troops to provoke his opponents to attack them.”
“In both instances, his aim is chaos,” Swalwell said.
What happened on Jan. 6, 2021?
Four people died during the Jan. 6 assault on Congress and five police officers died in its aftermath − one from a stroke the following day and four by suicide. About 140 other law enforcement officers were injured.
More than 1,575 people were charged in connection with Jan. 6, ranging from misdemeanors such as trespassing to felonies such as assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy. At least 600 were charged with the felony of assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to the Police Executive Research Forum.
Damages for Jan. 6 surpassed $2.7 billion, according to an investigation by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
How much damage in LA?
In the current case, at least nine LAPD officers and an unknown number of protesters have been hurt, with most sustaining minor injuries.
The Los Angeles Police Department has arrested more than 500 people in eight days of protests, the majority of them on minor charges such as failure to disperse or not obeying a nighttime curfew.
Two were charged with throwing firebombs, authorities said on June 11.
Though the extent of damage from the current LA protests are unknown, it is far less significant than on Jan. 6, Democratic lawmakers and city and state officials say.
What’s Trump’s response?
Trump and other administration officials repeatedly have said there’s no comparison between Jan. 6 and the Los Angeles violence, and that California and LA officials forced the President’s hand by failing to quell the growing protests.
“Generations of Army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion,” Trump told Army soldiers in a June 10 speech at Fort Bragg, N.C. “As commander in chief, I will not let that happen.”
Trump didn’t make any such pronouncements four years ago as a stunned nation watched the Capitol attack unfold, with organized groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia taking leading roles.
In 2021, Trump spent 187 minutes watching the Capitol assault on TV, while mobs ransacked Congressional offices and hunted for Democratic lawmakers and even his own vice president, Mike Pence, according to a House committee investigating the attack.
Hours later, only after the crowd began dispersing, Trump posted a video on social media at 4:17 p.m.: “Go home. We love you, you’re very special.”
It wasn’t until 5:20 p.m. on Jan. 6 that the first National Guard troops arrived at the Capitol, while police secured the complex.
“In a bipartisan way, on Jan. 6 − with violence against the Constitution, against the Congress and against the United States Capitol − we begged the president of the United States to send in the National Guard,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., told reporters. “He would not do it.”
“And yet, in a contra-constitutional way, he has sent the National Guard into California,” Pelosi said on June 10. “Something is very wrong with this picture.”
On June 13, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted a federal judge’s order blocking Trump’s Guard mobilization in Los Angeles.
‘Small fires’ vs ‘forest fires’
Supporters of Trump’s National Guard call-out in California point to a different set of disturbances to justify his actions.
Jay Town, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2017 to a 2020 and a former Marine, described a more complex set of circumstances than Pelosi.
He cited statements by Steven Sund, the U.S. Capitol Police chief at the time, that he begged for National Guard assistance on Jan. 6 but that it was congressional officials who reported to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who delayed approval.
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Town said the appropriate comparison isn’t with Jan. 6, but the National Guard deployments in 2020 during riots following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis.
“What we learned in 2020, as a guy who was in office then, is that you’ve got to put out small fires before they turn into forest fires,” Town told USA TODAY. “President Trump is not going to let what happened under the failed local and state leadership in Minneapolis and Seattle and so many other places happen again.”
Trump’s order in Los Angeles
On his first day back in office in 2025, Trump pardoned all but 14 of the approximately 1,270 convicted Jan. 6 rioters.
He and Cabinet members including Attorney General Pam Bondi say they will prosecute anyone who even touches a law enforcement official in Los Angeles to the fullest extent of the law.
Asked if that was hypocritical in light of Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons, Bondi said, “Well, this is very different.”
“These are people out there hurting people in California right now,” Bondi said in an on-camera gaggle with reporters at the White House. “This is ongoing.”
Newsom, who is suing Trump over the Marines and Guardsmen in Los Angeles, disagreed.
“Trump, he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence, as long as it serves him,” Newsom said. “What more evidence do we need than Jan. 6?”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump’s LA National Guard orders draw comparisons to Jan. 6
