Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Democrat Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum a history lesson on Tuesday in regard to how her party handled the riots of 2020 as she criticized President Donald Trump.
McCollum criticized Trump’s “premature and escalatory” decision to deploy the National Guard and U.S. Marines in light of the Los Angeles, California, riots that broke out over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrests of illegal immigrant criminals. The congresswoman attempted to contrast Trump’s handling to Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s response to the 2020 riots; Hegseth reminded her of the chaos that occurred in Minnesota under Walz’s leadership during that time.
“Governor Walz made the decision to call up the Minnesota National Guard [in 2020],” McCollum said. “At no point did we need, of the citizens of Minnesota, to request that the Marines be deployed. Our state and local law enforcement, along with our National Guard, who have worked on crowd control, they were more than enough. They were more than capable of handling this situation. History has proven that law enforcement and the National Guard are more than capable of handling situations more volatile than what happened this weekend.”
In response, Hegseth told the congresswoman that Walz allowed violence to prevail in his state and for the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct building to be “abandoned” and “burned to the ground.”
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“Well congresswoman, thank you for the question. You are right, we are both originally from Minnesota and that’s why I recall 2020 quite well when Governor Walz abandoned a police precinct and allowed it to be burned to the ground,” Hegseth said. “And [he] also allowed five days of chaos to occur inside the streets of Minneapolis. The police precinct, ma’am, was abandoned and burned to the ground and because of that, the National Guard, was eventually, far too late, mobilized.”
“And President Trump recognizes a situation like that, improperly hindered by a governor, like it was by Governor Walz, if it gets out of control, it is bad a situation for the citizens of any location,” Hegseth continued. “So in Los Angeles, we believe that ICE, which is a federal law enforcement agency, has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country.”
Trump deployed at least 2,000 National Guard troops and around 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles in response to rioters setting cars aflame, throwing fireworks and Molotov cocktails, as well as looting local stores and businesses. While CNN aired live footage of rioters setting an object on fire, Democrat Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass claimed on Monday that her city was “calm.”
Democrat California Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with Gov. Gavin Newsom, sued the Trump administration over this action.
In May 2020, rioters breached and set the Third Precinct in Minneapolis on fire after police surrendered the area on May 28, 2020, The New York Times reported. The riots, which left Minnesota with an estimated $500 million in damages, erupted in response to the police-related death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, causing rioters to loot, burn and destroy property across the U.S.
After the Third Precinct burned down, Walz criticized the “abject failure” of the city of Minneapolis’ response and took responsibility for the delayed deployment of the state’s National Guard, which he approved for a limited activation on the night the precinct burned, the Times reported. He then issued a full mobilization of the National Guard on May 30, which deployed thousands of troops.
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