Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told MSNBC Tuesday that she believes the LAPD could handle the city’s ICE raid protests without President Donald Trump deploying the military. She expressed the “stunt” is a “grand experiment” for the president to see how the nation reacts to future military takeovers.
Over the weekend, Trump ordered 2,000 National Guardsmen into L.A. to help crowd control the protests against ICE’s arrests of undocumented individuals in the city. As protests heightened in intensity with the National Guard’s arrival, the president ordered 700 marines to the city on Monday. Bass believes the deployments were a mistake.
“It’s unclear. We don’t know what they’re doing from one day to the next,” she told MSNBC Tuesdsay. “For example, we were told that the raids were going to go on for another 28 days. Is that going to be the case? Where are they going to take place? We have to wake up in the in the morning and find out which businesses, which workplaces were raided.”
Watch the full segment below:
When asked if she thought the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department could handle the protests without the military, the mayor responded she “100%” believes they could.
“Ironically on Saturday night, the president came out and said that the National Guard is the reason why the protests were quelled and the vandalism was stopped,” Bass added. “He went on to congratulate the National Guard, they weren’t even here. They weren’t even deployed until Sunday. As far as I’m concerned, I think this is unfortunate, this is a stunt, it makes me feel like L.A. might be a grand experiment to see what the response of the public would be if the federal government came in and took over.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom was also vocal in his contempt for Trump’s military action in recent days. On Monday, he threatened to sue the president for the decision and called the move a “deranged fantasy of a dictatorial president.” He filed a temporary restraining order on Tuesday in hopes of blocking the president from deploying more troops.
“U.S. Marines have served honorably across multiple wars in defense of democracy. They are heroes,” Newsom wrote on X. “They shouldn’t be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President. This is un-American.”
The protests against the Trump administration’s federal arrests of undocumented individuals began Friday and continued through the weekend – flaring in intensity after the president sent additional National Guard troops into the city.
Trump’s decision to deploy marked the first time a president sent the National Guard to a state without a request from that state’s governor since the 1960s. Protestors and officers clashed off and on all weekend.
