MSNBC host Rachel Maddow claimed Monday night that President Donald Trump was in a state of panic, with the riots in Los Angeles representing the “joyful and sustainable opposition” to his agenda.
Trump ordered 700 Marines to back up the National Guard deployment Monday as the riots following raids by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a Home Depot continued. After MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell spoke dismissively of the impact of the anti-ICE riots, Maddow espoused her theory.
“One of the important things that Mayor Bass brought out when you were talking to her about what’s happening in Los Angeles tonight, and you know this, but just how isolated and tiny a spot of Los Angeles we’re talking about, Downtown Los Angeles, where in the areas where these office buildings are, very few people live anywhere near that. It’s not a residential area,” O’Donnell claimed.
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“Most people living in Los Angeles, most Los Angeles local taxpayers never set foot in that part of Los Angeles,” O’Donnell continued. “You can easily live a life there and never see it. And so it is this — this really isolated little spot that doesn’t in any way disrupt any protest that’s being held down there outside a federal building, doesn’t in any way disrupt anything about the way life is lived in Los Angeles.”
Video posted to social media Saturday showed an individual wearing a motorcycle helmet throwing rocks at the windshields of vehicles containing ICE agents. The Federal Bureau of Investigation offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to that person’s arrest, with the agency later identifying the suspect as Elpido Reyna in a post on X, warning he was armed and dangerous.
“I mean, even with — I mean, even if these protests were 100 times the size that they are, there still wouldn’t be an operational reason to bring in active-duty troops or federalized National Guard. I mean, it’s just — it’s not that sort of thing. This is obviously not operationally necessitated, right, in terms of the security of the city,” Maddow said. “He’s doing this because he’s panicking and thinks that he looks weak, and therefore he has to do something that seems strong.”
“And so we will have tanks destroying the streets of Washington this Saturday, and we will have National Guardsmen and active-duty U.S. Marines standing around Los Angeles wondering what their — what this has to do with their military careers,” Maddow continued. “And it’s all because he has no freaking idea how to deal with this politically, and he’s absolutely panicking about the, I think, trenchant and joyful and sustainable opposition against him.”
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin posted video showing the perspective from inside one of the vehicles being hit with rocks Saturday. Melugin also posted additional video and photos of the aftermath of the incident, including a photo of an injury suffered by one federal law enforcement officer while the video showed a windshield with significant damage after a rioter threw a rock at it.
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