Send In The Marines!' - Can Trump Tame California?
As riots in Los Angeles and other parts of California expand. President Trump has called in more National Guard troops and even US Marines, however they have no authority beyond guarding Federal facilities. California governor Gavin Newsome is auditioning for the Democratic Party presidential nomination as he butts heads with Trump. Who will blink?
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Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good.
Good.
We're always looking for things to talk about and tell them what they should have done.
They didn't do it.
And that's why they have trouble.
That's right.
Anyway, we'll give it another effort because there's lots in the news.
You know, there's this little episode going on in California.
Newsom is not a libertarian, I guess you've noticed.
He's not a libertarian, and he likes activities.
And, of course, the people trying to fix it, those in charge of Washington, they have good instincts, but they're not exactly libertarians either.
So we want to talk certainly about that.
But before I do that, I want to mention the fact that there are other things going on in the world that are real important.
You take the economic conditions right now.
They're not even talking about it.
They're not talking, you know, they've sort of put them aside.
They're not talking about the deficit.
They're not talking about inflation.
But there's a big argument going on in monetary policy now because, you know, weeks ago, Trump, with his instincts of knowing there's a recession coming, he says lower interest rates, lower interest rates.
Of course, that stimulates inflation.
There's no problem with inflation.
So that argument is still going on.
There are some people just calling Powell chicken because he won't lower the interest rates because he says we have to watch inflation.
In a way, he's sort of in the right side of that, but maybe not exactly a sound money person.
But anyway, they're trying to decide on policy.
And this is a big deal.
Right now, they're saying that Powell just hasn't had the courage to do what is right.
But the argument on this goes is that don't worry about inflation.
Some have argued that the jobs numbers are weak, even though they sort of ignore this.
And the consumer demands are going down.
People are recognizing that.
And there's no, for the consumer, there's no pricing power.
And the businessman can't raise prices because of the weakness in the economy.
So there's an argument for that.
But the argument that, of course, we'd present is just get the government out of it, balance the budget.
Don't allow the Fed to print the money.
And maybe we wouldn't have this tremendous dilemma.
But that, you know, if you were adding up in dollars, I think both that and what's going on in California, very important because that thing, you know, I saw one article where there were some riots and things breaking out around the country.
I mean, this, yeah, what it made me think of is we worry about escalation in Ukraine.
You know, if country A does this, what's country B going to do?
And it has escalated and now they're running out of money, might not be going as well.
But the escalation here could happen.
It might not be a 24 hour.
Well, it's way past 24 hours already.
Government Intervention Escalates00:15:07
And they're talking about more troops.
You know, first it was a couple guard troops going in there.
And now the Marines are going in.
So this is serious.
And I think it deserves attention.
But in some ways, it's government intervention.
How did we get into this mess in California with the governor's official government people in the last administration subsidizing illegal immigration and not paying any attention to who's coming in?
And now they're here.
How do you deal with it?
So it's not so simple to solve the problem as it would have been, as is usual, prevent the problem.
And of course, a different type of foreign policy would go a long way.
But today, we want to talk more specifically also about what Trump is doing.
He has sent in National Guard troops, and now he's sending in the Marines.
And the images are pretty astounding.
And it refreshes my memory about my wife, Carol, when she first saw a couple of years ago, I guess it was during the COVID and all, where the mob would just go in and break the windows in clear daylight and the police standing around.
And that's what we're seeing again.
And it does motivate people to do something about this.
I mean, I think libertarians are dedicated to nonviolence, but they have to come up with an answer.
Of course, it's much easier for me and other libertarians to say, why don't you just prevent it?
And that's what I think we can do.
But right now, Daniel, I think things don't look exactly good.
I assume things won't clear tonight and all these images will be erased.
I don't believe that's going to happen.
Yeah, I mean, there is this distinct feeling, as like we had during the George or the Floyd riots, when I think that was what Carol was talking about.
There's this feeling that these things can be ramped up at will.
And at the right time, they can just dial up.
We need a riot.
We need looting.
We need chaos in the streets.
That's certainly how it feels like.
And I think there probably would be a lot of people who are not satisfied with our take on it.
Not our viewers, of course, because they're much more savvy.
But a lot of people want us to talk about white hats or black hats.
Who's the good guy?
Who's the bad guy?
Who should we be rooting for?
But as we said yesterday on the show, I think our obligation is deeper than that.
It's to try to take a good look at what's happening.
Well, let's set the stage with what is actually up this morning.
This first clip is a good summary from our friends at Zero Hedge.
There have been four days of protests and riots since they broke out in LA on June 8th.
President Trump has now federalized and deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to LA.
He's deployed 700 Marines to LA to help the LA Police Department.
There have been dozens of arrests since the protests and riots broke out.
Defense Secretary Hegseth and other top military officials are heading to Capitol Hill to be asked questions about it.
And the FBI is investigating any and all monetary connections responsible for these riots, said Kash Patel.
So the issue of the troops is an important one, Dr. Paul, because we touched on it yesterday.
What is the authority to deputize California National Guard troops, federalized, I should say, California National Guard troops into the streets and what is their role?
Now, if you go to the next one, this is a pretty good summary, I think, Dr. Paul, of where they are at in the streets, the National Guard.
These troops are considered to be in a Title 10 status, meaning they've been activated under 10 U.S. code, which permits the president to order guardsmen into service with or without the support of a state governor in the event of, quote, a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States, alongside additional circumstances such as invasion.
However, and this is important, Dr. Paul, I think, without an invocation of the Insurrection Act, their authority is limited solely to protecting federal interests in the region.
And they are not authorized to make arrests or carry out general law enforcement functions.
Newsom was critical of the move, suggesting that it was unnecessary.
So they're not there to arrest people.
They're there right now, legally, at least their current status is to protect federal interests in the area.
And things can get out of control rather quickly.
And memories of the 60s and Kent Stake, we know that human beings make a lot of mistakes and things can happen that they didn't plan to do.
And that's what concerns me about this type of situation.
But you know, just theorize that for a minute, preventing this could have been prevented if we had had a much better immigration policy and not subsidize it and invite people in and just let a lot of these people who are real, really troublemakers come in.
But we didn't have that.
So now we have to still try to follow the rules.
And the big thing that constitutionalists and good conservatives and libertarians are concerned about is the militarization of the police force.
And of course, I see that as a much bigger problem than what we're talking about, because I think there's a police force in that little organization called the IRS.
I think everything is done by government force.
And of course, the solution to that would be a major revolutionary idea is that the governments can't disobey the law any more than we're allowed to disobey the law.
So if people aren't allowed to lie, cheat, and steal, and kill and regulate and take care of these and create these problems, then we shouldn't be permitted.
And that is what happened.
And they're still doing it.
This is why, you know, the governor of California is out there trying to protect these people and taking on the federal government.
And I think this could have happened, and I don't know enough about the details, but you've already mentioned some of them, is do it more deliberately.
I would like to see, of course, if you had a state governor that was meeting it and felt like need, they go through a different process.
They don't defy the government.
They can go.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, why couldn't a state legislative body quickly meet and endorse this?
That's what Jefferson did early in our history.
He did use forces around the world at the time, but he's very, very careful that he always had, he didn't want to declare war, but he would get the authority from the Congress.
But this time, it's a personality fight is what we're involved in.
And just like with the George Floyd riots, I mean, these ostensibly in LA, ostensibly the chaos started.
The violence started in protest over ICE raids of people who were here illegally.
But like the Floyd riots as well, they quickly morphed into something completely differently.
And you mentioned looting, violence, destruction.
Now, here is LA Mayor Karen Bass.
And here's the comment, this first video.
Here's her comment.
And her blame, of course, is on Trump himself for trying to enforce the immigration.
You might want to put your earpiece in, Dr. Paul.
And listen, this is the LA mayor talking about what caused the problem.
We need to stop the raids.
This should not be happening in our city.
It is not warranted.
And it does anything.
The only thing it does is contribute to chaos.
This was chaos that was started in Washington, D.C. On Thursday, the city was peaceful.
On Friday, it was not because of the intervention of the federal government.
We need to clearly they don't want anyone deported.
Most Americans do.
That's why they voted for Trump.
But here's an interesting take.
Now, this jumped out at me immediately because you've talked so much for the past couple years about chaos and how it's desired by certain factions.
This is actually Governor Newsom turning it upside down.
If you go to that next clip, not the video, but just the next JPEG.
Here's what Governor Gavin Newsom put out on X. Chaos is exactly what Trump wanted, and now California is left to clean up the mess.
We're working with partners to surge over 800 additional state and local afforders.
So he is blaming President Trump for wanting to have chaos in the streets.
It's a bit of a twist, but Newsom, you know, is a strange person.
If you go to that next clip now, he's filed a lawsuit against Trump against the Trump administration.
Here is the lawsuit.
I'm filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration to end the illegal takeover of the California Guard, which has escalated chaos and violence in L.
It's all the Guard's fault in L.A. Donald Trump's violation of the U.S. Constitution is an overstep of his authority.
We will not let this stand.
So he's coming out now as the defender of states' rights, which is something pretty unusual and unique for the left in America.
In a way, they do this in foreign policy too, because there might be an ongoing battle in a country like Ukraine, and it might have been decided in 2014, and it was explicit how we participated in setting this whole stage.
And here, you know, Newsom comes out and says, oh, the federal government came in and aggravated the whole thing.
You know, it's trying to shift the blame.
And, you know, in this day and age, you know, with the sophistication of the media, they can do that.
Except Musk has been challenging that system.
You know, he can get information out and take another different position.
Now, Georges, we want to thank him for sending in $40.
And his point is that what are we not talking about?
Gaza, which is true now, but I would add to it the big, beautiful bill.
Many other things we're not talking about right now because the nation is obsessed with now California.
You wonder if that's not by design.
But I want to go to that next clip, though.
Here's the thing that really gets me about this is the ostensibly, again, it's about ICE raids, taking people out of the country who don't belong here.
But here we have something different.
Go to that next, not the video clip, but the next that post from Chef Gruhl.
This is what gets me, and it gets you too, Dr. Paul.
It makes me very angry.
These are looters.
They broke into a sushi shop in LA to which Chef Andrew Gruhl, if you're not familiar with him, he is a restaurant owner in California.
Very interesting, good guy.
If you're into recipes, you definitely want to look into his sub stack.
But anyway, as a business person, LA, he says, this will ruin this restaurant.
Employees will have no job now.
Unemployment won't pay for months.
Insurance probably won't even cover losses.
So this riots over the ICE AIDS raids have destroyed this business and have taken the jobs, probably just guessing, there are probably some Hispanic people working in these restaurants now who've lost their jobs.
But like we've often mentioned, they don't care about what they have created.
They care just about the violence and the aggravation.
And now more people are turning out.
You know, I think it did probably, I'm assuming, that the demonstration started probably more peaceful, and they were demonstrating.
And it might have had something to do with Gaza, who knows what.
But then when it gets a little bit rambunctious, then the people who want the opportunity to get on TIA television and shift the whole scenario and they're able to do it.
And then People, the people get a little bit confused, but right now, it looks like Trump might be winning that PR battle.
Yeah, possibly.
We'll go into the political side, but I did have a couple clips of looting.
This really drives me crazy.
This has nothing to do with deporting illegals.
No, go back.
Let's do those two video clips, actually.
The first one is an Apple store.
Just watch about 20 seconds of this.
I mean, just to get the sense.
Now this has nothing to do with illegal immigration that's snatching everything out of the store.
We can go to the next one now.
This is the Adidas store in LA.
Same thing.
Running in there, stealing shoes, stealing clothes.
Security guards are watching.
He's not going to take them on.
He's no dummy.
Look at that.
Just grab and go.
They're protesting what?
That's probably enough.
You know, if somebody came into a house in Texas.
That would be a mistake.
It did it.
You know, a lot of people in Texas, you know, they still lean towards supporting the Second Amendment.
But, you know, of course, California would be the worst.
You know, you just, even if you had some type of a warning system, sometimes they don't let you do anything.
But if the owner, there'd be a lot of things the owner could do and have it set up where, you know, at eight o'clock, this stuff's coming on.
You better not.
But the worst thing is, is the police are on their side.
They do it in the middle of the day.
Yeah.
And nobody stops them.
Well, a lot of these companies, Apple, I'm sure, probably Adidas, they're woke too.
So they don't want to feel like they're oppressing these people who come in and steal all their stuff.
Instead, the rest of us have to pay full freight for it, plus the extra added on because half of the stuff is stolen.
So that's what we get there.
But it's terrible.
I wanted to do a quick aside, though, if you don't mind, Dr. Paul, because this is an insurrection.
Some people are saying this isn't an attempt to break California away.
This is a coup.
Well, Russians with Attitude is an account that I follow on X.
And he made, it's in a departure from what we're talking about.
But it's an interesting analogy if you can put that up, because it's definitely worth thinking about that Russians with Attitude post.
No, the go back one.
Police On Their Side00:07:59
Yeah, here we go.
So here's what they wrote.
Imagine if Russia funded California protest.
Medvedev flies to LA handing out cookies.
Kremlin NGOs flood the media.
Russian-backed Laraza militants torch ICE.
Moscow-trained opposition sets up a shadow government.
It's still tamer than what the U.S. actually did in Kiev in 2014.
And isn't that the truth?
You know, imagine if that had happened, the Russians moved in.
So anyway, the other part we want to look at is a Wall Street Journal article that we read this morning about the political dimension to this.
If you put that first one up, LA protests provide Trump with an opening for a show of force.
I'm sure you've seen it.
What's the political setup right now with Trump and Newsom facing off on this?
Boy, I'll tell you what, that's going to be a hard one.
But it is the big issue, you know, because it's set up right now.
It may be strengthened Trump's issue and galvanized the people.
But this is, you know, it's a grandstand to have images there to get the people to support it, which is important.
But I think, I don't think it should be hard to, well, I don't know.
It is a little bit difficult for a constitutionalist to say, I'm against this violence, go out there and do something.
And that's where the danger comes from.
That's why I still like the idea of prevention.
You have to argue the case for why does this stuff happen?
How did we get this far along?
Because it becomes really messy to solve the problem.
But and then the gangs join.
And who knows?
Who knows who might be organizing the demonstrations today?
It might not be people at all interested in sending somebody back to their country.
They just use it to promote their cause.
If their cause, they admit their cause is chaos.
We like chaos in the streets.
They'll figure out, well, the country's going to the dogs and we're going to put us in charge with it.
We'll show you what real chaos is all about.
We'll go to that next clip from this article because it does talk about the political dimension.
For a man who understands the power of images, sometimes the sometimes violent protests in Los Angeles over immigration enforcement have, and I highlight this, presented President Trump with the ingredients to once again burnish his tough on crime message.
Videos of demonstrators protesting Trump's deportation orders, some burning cars or lining up face to face against newly federalized National Guard troops, creates a set of political foils the president is gambling are advantageous to him.
And I would think that they are.
I would think that this, him standing up to California, standing up to these rioters is going.
It sort of reminds me of when I was a little bit young, but when Reagan was governor of California in the 60s and he did a similar thing, I think it was in Berkeley or something.
No, I think most people are of goodwill.
It's just that they're bombarded with propaganda, you know, from cradle to grave, you know, and that's the way Soros and others have worked.
And it's a little bit hard.
It's a bigger challenge.
But when things get too bad, I use the analogy so often in the short span of time, COVID was a big lesson.
You know, everybody rolled over and did exactly as they were told.
They trust the doctors, they trust the government, and they're scared to death.
And the government's there to protect us and they're going to give us the vaccines.
And all of a sudden, it isn't true.
And yet there was a reversal.
You know, right now, I think people are more leery than ever about what they take.
That doesn't mean they have to be against vaccines.
It's just that we should be aware of these kind of things that they do.
And in this case, this builds up where this authoritarianism is accepted.
Well, these guys are mean.
We better shoot them all.
That sort of thing.
Well, I don't know if you've seen any clips of Gavin Newsome.
He's been around.
He's been on TV a lot.
He's all over Exos clips.
But he's also playing the game.
I mean, this, I wrote myself some notes.
This is really his practice session, his audition for the nomination to the 2028 presidential.
You know, he's standing up to Trump.
He's even with that blow-dried hair, he's looking like a tough guy.
Come and get me, President Trump.
Come arrest me.
Put the handcuffs off.
Yeah, put the handcuffs.
He would love that, wouldn't he?
You mentioned that before.
Could you imagine?
That would be a campaign poster.
Watch for somebody faking it.
Oh, I'm just making a point.
This is what's coming.
Yeah, but he really, I mean, in a Democratic Party absolutely devoid of any leadership, any personalities who would be the logical next step, next generation of Democrat leaders, he's definitely stepping up on this one.
He's definitely auditioning for the president.
Now, I have two more clips from the Wall Street Journal article.
This next one, just too quickly, Democrats counter, they counter Trump show of force, that Trump's decision to send the 2,000 members of the guard into the nation's second most populous city over the weekend only inflamed the situation while raising legal issues about states' rights.
Again, we mentioned that earlier.
All of a sudden, they're interested in states' rights.
Now, go to the next one.
This is another issue that we touched on before the show, but is important.
Trump's actions come with risk, which some potentially viewing them as, with some potentially viewing them as norm-breaking authoritarian overreach.
By federalizing National Guard troops over the objection of California Governor Gavin Newsom and local officials, Trump took a step that, and I highlighted this, hadn't been deployed since President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 chose to override a segregationist governor in the civil rights era.
That has been a long time, making this an historic event.
And I think the only way you can get around that when you have a Gavin Newsom, but I was going to say, what you need are more controls and more acknowledgement, like the legislative bodies and other people that would rally to this and give him some type of an authority.
But what if you end up in a state like California where the majority of the people want this kind of nonsense?
And they're going to want this.
I thought they would back off.
And I imagine they have backed off a little bit with this radical crazy stuff.
But eventually they're going to have to quit because, you know, the whole system of liberalism, of spending, and deficits.
And I tried to point out the difference of the economic problems we facing versus these.
So the economic problems are very serious.
And eventually people will have to pay attention to it and say, well, why do they do it?
You mean if it's deficit, it's definitely spending.
You mean just lowering interest rates is not the solution?
You know, they have to have this, but that's we're not there yet.
And we're not there on foreign policy.
And this is a mixture of economics, border patrols, and foreign policy.
Yeah.
Well, pop the popcorn because I don't think this is going to be over soon.
I'm going to close out with an announcement, Dr. Paul, if you think we're done, which is that last clip.
Here we go, guys.
I've been, it's taking a while, but this is, we can make that a little bigger.
I don't know if we can.
This is our August 16th, 2025 conference, Blueprint for Peace, Dulles, Virginia.
Blueprint for Peace Tickets00:02:06
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You know, some people have a misinterpretation of individuals who promote peace.
They see them as weakling.
They don't want to defend their own country.
And they want to lean toward pacifism and support it.
And it has nothing to do with that.
I mean, to be peaceful, sometimes, and we've mentioned this before, sometimes it takes more strength to resist the temptation to use the government force.
And I think what we're dealing with today in this argument, the door is open for this because if something more happens, they might send 10,000 troops in or something.
It might just escalate.
And then you have to be, how am I going to do this?
How can I stand up to people without looking weak?
But there's a lot of times to stand up for what is right.
It comes up lonely, but that doesn't mean weak.
Sometimes I think those are the people like a Thomas Massey and other good people in Congress.
I see them as strong people.
They have strong beliefs and they're willing to take the lumps that they know they're going to get from the demagogues.
So anyway, we're going to continue our arguments for and our promotion of peace and prosperity.