I know it seems like a long way away, but in just 25 months, the final Olympic torch runner will be a block from their final destination to open up the Los Angeles 2028 Games, but will never make it as they’re slammed to the ground by a thrown cinder block. And by the time a first responder feels the zone is safe enough to enter, the perimeter of the stadium will have been tagged with “F*** ICE.” This is Karen Bass’ Los Angeles. This is Gavin Newsom’s California.
Welcome to #NewsomRiots
I have been in this business of media for 30 years. I believed that at least professionally, I was about as jaded as I could get. Then I watched as thousands of people who hate this city, hate the state, definitely hate law enforcement, and hate the country, were provoked to violence by the mayor of the city, the governor of the state, their representatives in Congress, and the media. The last time I was this disgusted watching a societal breakdown in real time was the January 6th riot. What I saw over the course of the last six hours as I sat down to write this column Sunday night was far worse than what took place at the Capitol.
We’re now on Day 3 of this nonsense, whereas on January 6th, both chambers were back in session later that same night. For three days, the wishcasting by local media has been to parrot the line of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom that it’s a mostly peaceful protest, and it’s really not affecting that many people.
After flashpoints in the communities of Paramount and Compton to begin the weekend, by Sunday afternoon, the violence had moved to Downtown. Near famed Olvera Street, the southbound lanes of U.S. 101 were closed as hundreds of rioters streamed down the onramp on foot and set up camp in the middle of the freeway.
It took the California Highway Patrol a long time to mass enough forces to form a wall and push them off the road and back up the onramp, but in the process, smoke canisters by the dozens were disbursed. And for a time, it looked like a human game of Pong.
Arrests were made, rioters were pushed back onto surface streets, but CHP made a tactical mistake. They left themselves vulnerable to those on higher ground. And someone provided those people with hammers. And with those hammers, they knocked chunks of concrete loose, and using gravity as their guide, tried to play lawn darts with both CHP vehicles and CHP officers themselves.
Several vechicles were destroyed by falling concrete and debris. Some of it hit hard enough to deploy the airbags in the cars. A few times, CHP officers tried to time their move to get into the cars and move them out of harm’s way, only to miss deadly falling debris by inches. The smoke canisters were replaced by tear gas. And dozens of those canisters were launched at the mob looking down on them.
Being that July 4th is just a few weeks away, and absolutely nobody in this state obeys the strict laws against fireworks in almost every city in the state with very few exceptions, those fireworks were used as weapons all afternoon and evening.
Several police were hurt. Molotov cocktails were thrown at them. Where was the National Guard, you ask? Primarily guarding the federal buildings in both Downtown and Westwood, near the campus of UCLA.
By mid-afternoon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had Northcom put Marines on stand-by from 29 Palms, which followed up a possible deployment of Marines the night before from Camp Pendleton in Oceanside. As of Sunday night, the military had not been used. The lawlessness and absolute disregard for any law enforcement authority after the sun set should have warranted it.
Donald Trump bypassed the feckless California Governor Saturday night and used his Title 10 authority to federalize the California National Guard. Within minutes, X was filled with a seemingly endless parade of Posse Comitatus experts to say it’s the latest impeachable and illegal act by this President. I seem to recall a Colonel in the California National Guard, a guy named Schlichter, who knows a thing or two about this very thing taking place. How does he know? He was federalized by then-President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992 to quell the L.A. riots that year. It was legal then. It’s legal now.
Kuirt will guest host the Hugh Hewitt Show on Tuesday, and I promise you, you’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know about Posse Comitatus.
Back to the governance in this state, or lack thereof, the reaction to being sidelined was predictable by a wannabe tough guy.
His office demanded Sunday morning that the Trump administration relinquish control of the Guard back to his authority. Based on what, you ask? The fact that the protests were mostly peaceful and calling in the Guard was not warranted.
This would seemingly put to rest Newsom’s request.
The City of Angels’ idiotic mayor, Karen Bass, was, to her credit, at least in the country when the riots began. She was not off on a junket on another continent. She was at her post. That’s the good news. The bad news is she’s still an idiot.
Now I could be wrong, but if I’m on the smallest square of a media inset box saying there’s no need for the National Guard to be called in because the situation is being handled, while simultaneously on the biggest box on screen is the situation not being handled, I might want to rethink my career choices. But not Karen Bass. She later held a press conference and blamed the mostly peaceful violence on Donald Trump, and instead of telling people to knock it off and go home, she actually encouraged them to stay out there and protest, but do so peacefully. Apparently, everyone Sunday night only heard the first half of her sentence and were already out the door to film their own selfie version of an Allstate Mayhem commercial.
Former California Senator and Vice-President Kamala Harris made her statement Sunday afternoon as well, proving once again that there is a God in Heaven, and that His hand of protection is still upon this country. Just imagine someone tone deaf enough to write this possessing the nuclear codes for four years.
About the time she was inciting violence and downplaying the rioting and looting that had already taken place this weekend, rioters in the street had figured out the little flaw in the system of Waymo self-driving taxi service. It appears that if you order one to come pick you up in a riot zone, and you throw something at it to make it think it hit something, it stops cold wherever it is, which is usually in the middle of the street. In this case, when half a dozen are ordered to roughly the same spot, and all are stopped, guess what they become? That’s right, toxic tiki torches.
Local CBS affiliate KCAL-9, which I’ll turn my attention to in a little bit, amplified the problem. Not only do they become bricks in the middle of the road if they’re struck by something, these all-electric beauties do like to burn when lit on fire. And those lithium ion batteries? They’ll burn for hours if you let them, which the L.A. Fire Department had to do because it wasn’t safe enough for them to travel to the scene and put them out. Remember, it was too dangerous for the fire department in a mostly peaceful protest.
And all that smoke going up in the air? That’s not exactly wood smoke. It doesn’t have that mesquite-flavored scent you’d get off a Solaire Grilled steak. That’s about as toxic of a fire as you can get. So much for the environmental good the all-electric self-driving car gets you. What do you want to bet Waymo 2.0 will feature a ‘Get the Hell out of there’ mode?
As for media coverage, from 4pm West Coast time until late into the evening, without taking one commercial break, we were treated to scene after scene of mostly peaceful violence. In between, the anchors incessantly repeated the talking points of Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom, and incited more protesting by saying the cause of all of this was the Trump ICE raids and deportation policy. They cherry-picked one case at a time to say people were unjustly plucked off the streets, which naturally would enrage low information viewers watching them in the first place. Then, they acted shocked, shocked, that there’s gambling in the casino, and riots, looting, fights, and mayhem in the streets for hours.
In the roughly six hours I watched their coverage, they were able to make use of two people in their rolodex – L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, a Democrat, and Norma Torres, another Democrat. Both were given as much uninterrupted time as they desired to go on anti-Trump screeds. There was zero pushback from the media, and not even an attempt was made to hear from the Trump administration. There is only one viewpoint in this state, and it’s one that’s shared by the Democratic Party and the media. It’s truly a one-party state, with media being part of that party.
Jim McDonnell is the poor chief of L.A.P.D., and he wasn’t singing out of the same hymnal as the Democrats and media. He wanted the National Guard deployed, and deployed immediately.
I told you the National Guard was deployed. Here’s proof. The problem is they’re being heckled by Maxine Waters, another Democrat.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, former sentient ESPN sports anchor Keith Olbermann has a solution for Gavin Newsom to fight back at having the Guard taken out from under him.
That’ll show ’em. Don’t pay the feds any taxes. Why not just go ahead and secede from the Union? I live here, and I’m all for it. California pays about $692 billion annually, and only receives $609 in federal spending, a net loss for the federal government of $83 billion if Keith gets his way. If you’re telling me the country’s deficit goes up less than $100 billion, and in return we get two less Democratic Senators, including Adam Schiff, 34 fewer Democrats in the House of Representatives, including Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, and as a kicker, Gavin Newsom’s United States citizenship is renounced in the secession along with his chance to run for president? Where’s Howie Mandel when I need him?
So back to the Olympics in Los Angeles in two years. Who’s going to pay for the damage caused this weekend?
L.A., and frankly, the entire state of California, is absolutely broke. They simply do not have the hundreds of millions of dollars it’s going to take to repair the damage. How many more nights will the rioting go on? Who knows? ICE is nowhere near finished depopulating the Sanctuary State of its most prized possessions – criminal illegal aliens. We could be at this for a long time.
Who’s going to want to come here for the Olympics? Our biggest feature used to be weather. Now, it’s wildfires, homeless encampments, excrement in the streets, criminals openly flaunting law enforcement, graffiti being sprayed literally in front of cops, and looting. Hell, one of KCAL’s reporters spotted an actual coyote in Downtown confused by all the explosions echoing from the fireworks, getting freaked out, and running away as fast as possible, sorta like Republicans have been doing in this state for the last decade or so.
That phone call in a week or so between Gavin Newsom and President Trump where Newsom asks the President for a disaster zone declaration is going to be absolutely lit. If I were the White House Coms Team, I’d offer the call up on pay-for-view, with the proceeds going to reduce the national debt. It’ll make a fortune.
