Trump Says He's Done Playing By The Rules With Military Forces

Explaining his decision to deploy National Guard troops in California without Governor Gavin Newsom’s support, US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he’s fine with defying protocol.

“You have to remember, I’ve been here before and I went right by every rule. And I waited for governors to say, ‘Send in the National Guard.’ They wouldn’t do it,” Trump said from the Oval Office as protests mount against his mass deportation campaign in Los Angeles.

“I said to myself, if that stuff happens again, we’ve got to make faster decisions, because they don’t want to do it,” he said of his thoughts during past mass protest events.

Trump’s remarks come a day after California sued Trump and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth for federalising and deploying the California National Guard to help crush the protests, which have gone on for days in the Los Angeles area and are now spreading nationwide.

“Deploying over 4,000 federalised military forces to quell a protest or prevent future protests despite the lack of evidence that local law enforcement was incapable of asserting control and ensuring public safety during such protests represents the exact type of intrusion on State Power that is at the heart of the Tenth Amendment,” the lawsuit argued.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said on Monday it was clear there was “no risk of rebellion, no threat of foreign invasion, no inability for the federal government to enforce federal laws” when Trump sent in the National Guard.

The Trump administration defended it actions by citing a federal law allowing the president to deploy National Guard units if the US is invaded or faces “rebellion or danger of rebellion” or if the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

Trump remained adamant on Tuesday that the Los Angeles Police Department was unequipped to handle the protests, which were largely peaceful but involved some vandalism of cars, buildings and other infrastructure.  

“Los Angeles was under siege until we got there. The police were unable to handle it,” he said, claiming the city was “out of control when we got there.”

He also defended his use of the National Guard because Los Angeles is hosting the Olympics in three years, adding, “You’ve got to remember, we have the Olympics coming, and we don’t want people looking at Los Angeles like it was, like it would have been.”