The Washington Examiner’s Joe Concha was critical of Democratic leadership in Los Angeles and California and their response to riots being held to oppose U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the city.
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deployed 2,000 National Guardsmen into Los Angeles to combat the rioters, whom the secretary described as “violent mob assaults” against the deportation of illegal immigrants. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has condemned Hegseth’s “deranged behavior” for deploying U.S. Marines “against its own citizens,” prompting Concha to argue the governor is against “a 99-1 issue.”
“Ninety-nine percent of Americans probably do support gang members and drug traffickers and child molesters being deported out of the country if they’re here illegally, and the other 1% are probably drunk,” Concha, a senior writer for the Washington Examiner, explained on Fox News’s The Big Weekend Show. “And the fact that Karen Bass, who is the mayor of Los Angeles, second-largest city in the country, and Gavin Newsom, the governor of the largest state in the country in terms of population, are somehow criticizing ICE here — if leadership isn’t going to condemn this, then this is going to continue to go on. And again, Democrats on the wrong side of an issue that most people say ICE is doing the right thing here.”
Trump expressed thanks to the National Guard for its response to the riots, warning that these acts of opposition “will NOT BE TOLERATED.” He also deemed Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass as “incompetent,” recalling how both leaders responded to the city’s wildfires at the start of this year.
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Both Newsom and Bass have pushed back against Trump’s statement that the National Guard had been deployed in Los Angeles, with the governor stating that the deployment had not taken place when Trump gave his thanks early-Sunday morning. Bass similarly claimed that the National Guard had not been deployed, giving her thanks to Newsom and the city’s police department.
We will take back America.
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) June 8, 2025
On X, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the Los Angeles riots an “insurrection.” In a separate post, he wrote, “we will take America back.”