Trump Acts, Gavin Newsom Bloviates While California Burns
I'm on X: @writejohnseiler
As the riots were heating up in L.A., a friend of mine was heading out of the state for a long-planned exodus to a state with more freedom, more civilization and lower taxes. He was partly raised here and lived here for decades. He is joining family members, with others to follow.
The L.A. wildfires in January and now the riots are just the latest symptoms of California being a failed state. There’s also good evidence these riots have been well organized, for example with piles of bricks left in strategic locations. See this on X.
Yet Gov. Gavin Newsom keeps insisting we’re the world’s fourth-largest economy and a separate “nation state.” He’s even talking about withholding California’s income tax payments to the federal government, as if he were seceding like South Carolina in 1861.
Meanwhile, with Newsom and Mayor Bass unable to quell the riots, Trump nationalized the California National Guard and put the Marines in Camp Pendleton on alert, a two-hour drive up to the 5 freeway to Downtown L.A. The gov tweeted on X:
I have formally requested the Trump Administration rescind their unlawful deployment of troops in Los Angeles county and return them to my command. We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved. This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed. Rescind the order. Return control to California.
Clueless. James Woods, one of my favorite actors, on his X feed is putting up a running series of pictures of the rioters burning down the city. Here’s one of police cars burning.
“We expected this, we prepared for this,” Newsom said in a statement to The New York Times. “This is not surprising — for them to succeed, California must fail, and so they’re going to try everything in their tired playbook despite the evidence against them.”
But California already is a failed state. If you live here, you know that. If you don’t, you can see that on TV.
A good perspective comes from my friend Chuck DeVore, a former California assemblyman and, like me, a veteran of military intelligence, who moved to Texas a few years back to escape the insanity:
I'm an Army National Guard veteran of the 1992 L.A. Riots.
Huge differences, then and now.
Virtually all of the murders, injuries, looting, arson, and arrests happened before we showed up in force. When we arrived, the criminal activity almost completely ceased. I was issued two teargas grenades as were most other commissioned officers. I never used them and I don't believe anyone else did either.
Today, the National Guard is facing people more interested in confrontation than looting, more inclined to attack federal law enforcement than flee.
In 1992 there were cases where people shot at firefighters trying to extinguish the flames of chaos. We even had one fellow who tried to run down two Guardsmen at a check point - three times! On the last pass, about a dozen well-aimed rounds put an end to that dangerous nonsense.
It was speculated he was trying to impress a street gang.
Today has a completely different vibe. It's more dangerous, more professional, and more aggressive. Stay safe!
Trump also remembers the national riots five years ago after the death of George Floyd. Minneapolis and other cities suffered mayhem and arson on a major scale. But Trump waited for governors tardily to ask him to mobilize the Guard. This time, he’s not waiting. Let the lawyers argue later whether or not it is constitutional. Although given the threats to federal ICE agents, and the refusal of Newsom and Bass to protect them, it’s obvious what Trump had to do.
And why has Newsom been so inert? He could have called up the Guard himself. He also controls 7,600 California Highway Patrolmen. And he could call in sheriffs and police from the 10 counties and 191 cities in Southern California. He has a bigger army than SoCal native Gen. George S. Patton had when he relieved the Allies at Bastogne in 1944.
Instead, Newsom sits in his posh, $9 million compound up in Marin County and bellyaches about those doing his job for him. Enjoy the hot tub, governor!
As horrible as the riots are, the good news is they finished off any hope he had of becoming president. Democrats are trying to appeal to working-class voters, especially young men. But there’s nothing that turns off such voters more than a lily-livered politician who takes the side of rioters over the people he’s supposed to protect. That includes not just white voters, but all voters. That’s the reason 55% of Latino men voted for Trump. It’s their neighborhoods being terrorized by the Venezuelan gangs, not Marin County.
Which brings up foreign policy. If Newsom can’t deal with some rioters, how will he be able to deal with Putin, Xi, the Ayatollah and Little Rocket Man? If you read my stuff, you know I’m hopeful Trump can make peace deals with all of them. But he only can do so from a position of strength – including strength on the domestic front. Again, Trump has learned from his first term he can’t vacillate with the rioters. And aside from the domestic damage of letting our cities get burned down again, such a disaster would indicate to the foreign potentates the U.S. president has no authority even in his own country.
I grew up in Wayne, Mich., a shot-and-a-beer town, where even now 1/6th of the city is the Michigan Assembly Plant. It was a lot like the domestic scenes in “The Deer Hunter” movie. No doubt there are a lot of differences now. Last November, Michigan was one of the seven swing states that went for Trump. In the Democratic primaries, let alone the general election, Michiganders will laugh Newsom out of the voting booths.
Finally, it remains to be seen if California Republicans can capitalize on state Democrats’ cluelessness and timidity during crises. The problem remains so many elephants keep escaping this zoo state.