U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday continued to defend his decision to call upon National Guard troops and marines to quell demonstrations in Los Angeles, following up on earlier claims the city would have been “obliterated” if he hadn’t done so.
It’s an unprovable claim, and one that has received pushback from local officials including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. Newsom and Bass, among others, have stressed that the protests that began on Friday have mostly occurred in a small section of the city’s downtown area. (A curfew enacted Tuesday covered a 2.5-square-kilometre section of a city that encompasses roughly 1,295 square kilometres.)
There has undoubtedly been a wave of violence since word spread late last week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from the federal government were conducting raids to find undocumented city residents, with people setting vehicles afire, vandalizing buildings and looting businesses.
…