President Donald Trump, hoping to restore “safety” to riot-hit Los Angeles, demurred on invoking the Insurrection Act to go full force with the U.S. military, but said “we’ll see what happens.”
“If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it: We’ll see,” Trump said in an Oval Office question-and-answer session with the media. “But I can tell you last night was terrible. The night before that was terrible.
“We have, as you’ve seen, it was on most of your networks, people with big heavy hammers pounding the concrete and pounding curbs, pounding and breaking up and handing these big chunks of concrete to people.
“And they were taking that concrete, going up in bridges and dropping it into the roof of a car. They were throwing it at our police. They were throwing it at our soldiers that are there. And we got it stopped, and we have them in custody right now.”
Trump stands by calling up of the California National Guard and putting an estimated 700 Marines on standby to keep the peace in the Democrat-run sanctuary city that has taken to violent protest to keep criminal illegal aliens from being deported by Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation forces.
“Look, if we didn’t get involved right now, Los Angeles would be burning just like it was burning a number of months ago with all the houses that were lost,” Trump said, pointing to the dangers of fire-starting leading to deadly and destructive wildfires.
“Los Angeles right now would be on fire, and we have it in great shape.
“We’re not playing around.”
Determination of an officially designated insurrection will come at the estimation of the president, Trump added.
“You’ll take a look at what’s happening; I mean, I could tell you there were certain areas of Los Angeles, you could have called it an insurrection. It was terrible.”
Trump also noted the rioters are paid agitators resorting to violence over protest to seek a political goal against the administration.
“But these are paid insurrectionists,” Trump said. “These are paid troublemakers. They get money.”
The Insurrection Act gives the president and the federal government the ability to deploy armed forces to enforce federal authority under 10 U.S. Code 252 :
“Whenever the president considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”
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