If you’ve been Back East watching the news coverage of the riots in Los Angeles, you probably don’t know what’s really been going on out here.
That’s because, as usual, the national news media are doing a shallow and biased job covering the latest chapter in the country’s illegal immigrant deportation story.
The media have showed cars set on fire and crowds of protesters blocking freeways, waving Mexican flags, shooting fireworks at cops and slathering anti-ICE and anti-Trump graffiti on office buildings.
But people across the country aren’t getting a sense of how big or destructive they are, who the rioters actually are and, most important, who are the left-wingers organizing and funding them.
The media provide little context or political background about why the riots were not handled effectively by Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.
The L.A. riots calling for the end of raids on illegal immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are big news. Many more anti-ICE protests were planned for Saturday in more than a thousand cities and towns, which makes Rachel Maddow very happy.
Last week she claimed President Donald Trump sending 4,000 California National Guard soldiers into Los Angeles is the first step in “an attempted authoritarian overthrow of the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. government. The attempted imposition of a dictatorial regime ….”
Maddow can’t help being hysterical. Her ratings are down 43% since Election Day.
But she and the rest of her liberal media friends never talk about why President Trump had to send troops to L.A. against the wishes of Newsom and Bass.
They were the ones responsible for failing to quickly and firmly end the chaos, destruction and violence when it first hit L.A.’s streets.
They refused to do their jobs properly by bringing in the National Guard, so Trump had to do it for them.
Since then, Newsom has been grandstanding and he and Bass have called for Trump to stop the ICE raids in L.A., which is a proud sanctuary city in a proud sanctuary state.
Watching Newsom and Bass each blaming Trump for sparking the deportation riots was no surprise. They blame Trump for everything bad that happens in their state. He’s the all-purpose excuse for their incompetence and failures.
The wildfires that swept through LA in February was a perfect example of how inept the Newsom-Bass tag-team is.
The fires were more destructive, unstoppable and deadlier than they should have been because of Newsom’s environmental policies and because Mayor Bass had badly mismanaged her fire department.
Bass has also underfunded and under-staffed her police department, which meant when the riots began she had to ask nearby towns for reinforcements.
Their help wasn’t enough, but she and Newsom hate Trump so much they were never willing to do what needed to be done – ask the president to send in the National Guard.
If you’ve been relying on CNN and MSNBC for your up-to-date riot information, by now you probably think a dozen protesters have been shot dead by the National Guard.
But the National Guard hasn’t interacted with rioters or shot a single soul.
Its role is not to arrest people. It’s to guard government buildings and protect the L.A. police so they can do their job of arresting protesters who commit crimes.
What most people don’t seem to understand, and what the media don’t bother to explain, is that serious law-enforcement problems occur when you have a sanctuary city.
If L.A. were a Red city where local police worked with immigration police, an illegal immigrant arrested for a crime would be taken to court and, if convicted, handed over to ICE for deportation.
In sanctuary cities like L.A. that doesn’t happen. When illegals commit crimes, they’re not handed over to ICE.
During the Joe Biden years, L.A. had an irresponsible district attorney who’d dismiss the charges and turn the illegals loose. He’s gone now and the new DA is doing his job properly.
It’s too bad the mayor and governor won’t.
Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. His column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
