President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned what was meant as a celebration of the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary, for soldiers at one of the nation’s most storied military bases, into a bellicose campaign-style rally as he attacked Democratic elected officials and denigrated the country’s second-largest city as a cesspool made rotten by “uncontrolled migration.”
Speaking before a crowd of uniformed soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Trump defended his decision to send National Guard soldiers and active duty Marines to quell protests against his anti-immigrant deportation operations in Los Angeles as necessary to prevent attacks on federal law enforcement from a “violent mob.”
He claimed that had he not ordered the soldiers into federal service over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles would be on fire, and compared the guardsmen’s mission to past overseas battles in which the Army had fought over its 250 years.
“Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness here at home, like is happening in California. As Commander in Chief, I will not let that happen. It's never going to happen,” Trump said, overstating the current state of affairs in LA by several degrees.
Trump told the soldiers that the protests and unrest in Los Angeles represented a “full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags, with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country,” before segueing into a partisan attack on former President Joe Biden.
He accused “stupid people or radical left people or sick people” in the previous administration of having allowed “millions of people” to “come into our country, totally unchecked and unvetted” and claimed those people were responsible for attacks on police in Los Angeles over the last few days.
“They're hurling bricks and cinder blocks at law enforcement ... they're breaking up the sidewalks and the curbs, breaking it up with big, strong hammers. These guys are professionals. These are not amateurs,” he claimed.
“These are animals, but they proudly carry the flags of other countries, but they don't carry the American flag. They only burn it.”
The president cast his effort to use military force to tamp down protests against his immigration policies as a battle against a foreign foe rather than repression of the free speech rights guaranteed to all by the U.S. Constitution, telling the soldiers who’d been ordered to attend his speech that his administration would “not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy.”
“That's what they are. Lot of those people were let in here by the Biden administration. They just poured right in. They came from prisons. They came from jails from all over the world. They came from mental institutions. They were the leaders of gangs. They were drug lords, allowed to come into our country,” he said.
Trump’s partisan commentary to the troops touched on many of the anti-immigrant tropes that have long been a staple of his political stump speech during his three campaigns for the presidency, including claims that other countries have deliberately sent criminals and mental patients to the United States to claim asylum with the consent of the Biden administration and the aid of Democrats in state and local governments.
He also praised the thousands of National Guard soldiers and Marines he has dispatched over the past two days for “standing guard to protect federal property and personnel and uphold the supremacy of federal law” while accusing Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of fomenting the violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
“In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor — they're incompetent and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists, they're engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders,” he said.
Continuing, the president praised his own election as a turning point when the country rejected Democratic rule and slammed Los Angeles as having “gone from being one of the cleanest, safest and most beautiful cities on earth to being a trash heap with entire neighborhoods under the control of transnational gangs and criminal networks.”
Echoing the openly racist rhetoric of European far-right parties, Trump blamed “uncontrolled migration” for the city’s supposed condition of “chaos, dysfunction and disorder” and suggested that European leaders should adopt his anti-immigrant stance.
“They have it in Europe too. It's happening in many of the countries of Europe. They don't like it when I say it, but I'll say it loudly and clearly. They better do something before it's too late,” he said.
The president’s rabidly partisan denunciation of duly elected officials in the nation’s most populous state came just hours after he made a chilling threat against free speech rights of Americans in the nation’s capital ahead of the military parade he has ordered up to celebrate his own birthday on Saturday.
Speaking in the Oval Office following an impromptu event to discuss forest management ahead of the upcoming summer wildfire season, Trump was riffing on what he described as violent excesses by protesterswho’ve been demonstrating against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles when he was asked about the possibility of protests against the June 14 parade.
The president said it would be an “amazing day” and cited the “tanks ... planes ... all sorts of things” that will be on display during the spectacle, which is ostensibly meant to mark the Army’s 250th.
He compared the parade, which breaks from the American tradition that largely eschews militaristic or jingoistic displays of the sort routinely seen in authoritarian countries, to European celebrations of the end of the Second World War.
“We won the war, and we're the only country that didn't celebrate it, and we're going to be celebrating big on Saturday. We're going to have a lot of and if there's any protest that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force,” Trump said.
He reiterated the explicit threat a moment later, telling “those people who want to protest” that they would be “met with very big force” once more.
He also opined further that any protest against the parade on Saturday would consist only of “people who hate our country.”
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