POKING AROUND LOS ANGELES AT THE BEGINNING OF WEEK SEVEN OF THE 2ND 100 - UPDATE 3

The image TACO wants everyone to think is reality in Los Angeles - it isn’t

TACO has wanted this past weekend to happen since he was first in office during Maladministration I. Speaking at CPAC in August 2022, he lamented he had failed to use the military during the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations, when he was blocked by his Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He promised that, next time, things would be different. “In places where there is a true breakdown of the rule of law, such as the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago, the next president should use every power at his disposal to restore order. And, if necessary, that includes sending in the National Guard or the troops.”

During last year’s presidential campaign,TACO promised his crowds that he would use the U.S. military domestically against his opponents. After he won re-election, one of the first promises he made was that he wanted to see “military assets” used as an adjunct to mass deportations. This weekend has seen his first attempt to realize his dream of declaring war on America. This is a major escalation. TACO has declared his right to deploy the military against a protest of his government’s illegal acts.

TACO is getting the fight with California that he wants. He has the fight of his dreams over Immigration and fighting liberal California Democrats. It’s a great distraction from his coming losses in court this week, the failure of his tariffs, and the growing public recognition that this Maladministration II is completely incompetent. It will be interesting to see how he attempts to use this as a way of suppressing the coming No Kings Day demonstrations across the country on Saturday.

The essential point to remember as these fascist scum attempt to convince the rest of the country that a war has broken out is that these incidents have nearly all been in response to ICE provocation and isolated to specific areas: the site of an ICE raid or a detention facility. That’s not consistent with the kind of widespread “turmoil” that could justify a military intervention.

Let’s be clear: The City of Los Angeles is NOT “in a state of open rebellion.” What went on this weekend in downtown LA was no different from other protests that have happened here since TACO returned to power. Those demonstrations were easily handled by local law enforcement. Local law enforcement is handling this event, with the only problem being that the ICE goons keep trying to create new provocations.

The last time the National Guard was federalized against the wishes of a state governor under Section 10 was 60 years ago in March 1965, when LBJ federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, after an attack on their march by local and state police.

As Josh Marshall noted in a post at TPM this morning, “It gets somewhat lost in all the other high octane dimensions of this story that a raid on a Home Depot (which sparked things Saturday) is literally an effort to arrest people who are eager to work and whose labor is in great demand. It’s about as far as you can get from just going after the bad guys, as the White House routinely claims.” Josh went on to say: “But there’s a more specific point: all the federalizations during the Civil Rights Era were over the refusal of segregationist state governments to enforce federal law under court order. Trump’s argument is much different. And this is literally their argument, not one I’m imputing to them. It’s the right of the President to decide when a state government isn’t protecting or enforcing civil order to his liking and to intervene with federalized National Guard or the US military to do it at the point of a bayonet. Beyond all of our correct fears about Trump’s budding autocracy, this is in a very direct sense an attack on the sovereignty of the people of California.”

Last night, TACO proclaimed in a post to Lies Anti-Social that "we made a great decision in sending the National Guard," claiming that the city would have otherwise "been completely obliterated." (FACT CHECK: If you are not in downtown LA, you would have no idea that anything was going on if you didn’t watch TV. The city is peaceful.)

TACO’s supporters are calling for even more extreme action.

Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch, said Sunday that TACO should consider invoking the Insurrection Act because California officials “have placed themselves on the other side of the rule of law.”

Charlie Kirk, head of TPUSA, also used language that could anticipate invocation of the Insurrection Act invocation, tweeting: “Los Angeles doesn’t feel like a protest. It feels like an entire city is declaring open rebellion to American authority and sovereignty. It was bound to come to a head in a corrupt blue city, but it must be firmly stopped and law and order reestablished. The American people voted for law and order.”

Yesterday, Annoying Permanent High School Putz Stephen Miller reposted several images meant to convey the chaos in L.A., most especially one showing huge plumes of smoke billowing from a burning vehicle as demonstrators watched, one with a Mexican flag. The caption read “Let’s check in on how LAPD’s management of the ‘protests’ is going.” He went on to criticize Governor Newsom’s slamming of TACO’s decision to send the guard. Taylor Budowich sent out a video of a masked protestor on a car surrounded by other burning cars and demonstrators, captioned “Democrat mismanagement.”

TACO’s moves over the weekend appear to have brought back Unreconstructed Afrikaner White Supremacist Elmo back in the fold. Over the weekend, he meekly deleted his tweets about TACO’s alleged relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. This morning, he was loyally sharing messages about the LA protests, in support of the decision to activate the California National Guard. This is how authoritarianism works. He doesn’t want to go the way of Khodorkovsky in his confrontation with Putin.

Also last night, the LAPD declared all of downtown Los Angeles an unlawful assembly area. It is reported that on Saturday and Sunday a totle 56 protestors were arrested. More rallies and protests are planned in Los Angeles and other cities today.

This morning, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the state’s lawsuit against Maladministration II for their “illegal” nationalization of the California National Guard.

Also this morning, TACO threw some more gas on the fire, saying in remarks to reporters when he arrived back at the White House that maybe Newsom should be arrested after the Democratic governor dared Obergruppenfuhrer Tom Homan to do so. "I would do it if I were Tom. I like Gavin Newsom ... he's a nice guy, but he's grossly incompetent." He also said the people who are causing the problems are "professional agitators" and "insurrectionists." (FACT CHECK: No, they aren’t.)

It was announced this morning that David Huerta, President of the Service Employees International Union California, who was arrested during ICE protests in Los Angeles on Friday, has been federally charged with felony conspiracy to impede an officer. The felony charge carries a statutory maximum sentence of six years in federal prison. His initial appearance is set for this afternoon. SEIU California stated: “ICE picked the wrong side. The wrong state. The wrong person. and the wrong union. David Huerta stood up. And 750,000 SEIU workers are standing with him.”

This morning, the ACLU announced they will lead a peaceful rally and protest in downtown Los Angeles at noon PDT to demand the end of ICE raids, as anger toward government immigration politics simmers. They will be joined by workers, elected officials and supporters to demand the release of David Huerta from federal detention and the end of ICE raids in the community, according to organizers. The ACLU stated: “We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced.”

It will be interesting to see if this happens, since downtown LA is still an “unlawful assembly” zone.

Also this morning, Senator Schumer slammed TACO's order to deploy the National Guard, saying: "Trump should immediately revoke his command to use the National Guard, and leave the law enforcement to the governor and the mayor, who are more than capable of handling the situation. Americans do not need or deserve this unnecessary and provocative chaos.”

The LAPD appears to have targeted the news media (one of their standard practices in this kind of situation.) Saturday evening at 9:00pm PDT, British photographer Nick Stern was hit with a 14mm high-velocity "sponge bullet" in his thigh while covering a stand-off between protestors and law enforcement in Los Angeles. Stern was photographing two young women standing a few feet away with their backs to him, waving a Mexican flag toward a line of sheriff’s deputies who were massed farther down the street. Stern was wearing a press card around his neck and carrying a large camera when he said he felt “horrific shooting pain impacting my leg” before he blacked out. “They’re supposed to shoot the ground in front of people, not target individuals — but this hit me directly.” He suddenly felt faint, and eight protesters ran over to carry him away from the “danger area.” Medics then cut off his pants, put pressure on the wound and tied a tourniquet before taking him to the hospital where he was rushed into surgery to remove the bullet.

Nick Stern wasn’t the only foreign journalist who was shot at. Last night, Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi, a news correspondent with Australia’s Channel Nine, was broadcasting live from the protests when she was struck in the leg by what appeared to be a rubber bullet. In the video, a police officer was seen turning toward Tomasi and her crew before firing a round in their direction. Tomasi appeared to yell in pain as she stumbled to reach for her injured leg while the camera swiveled in the other direction. This was obviously not some cop firing toward the crowd to keep them away from something. It was intentional.

Tom Homan, told Faux Snooze early Monday that ICE “took a lot of bad people off the street”. Without providing specifics, he said: “We arrested a sexual predator, we arrested gang members, we arrested somebody that had an armed robbery conviction. We made LA safer … but you’re not hearing any of this. All you’re hearing is rhetoric about ICE being racist, ICE being Nazis and terrorists – and Governor Newsom feeds that, just like Hakeem Jeffries says he’s going to unmask ICE agents. We’re not going to stop.” He also told NBC News that more raids were coming. “I’m telling you what – we’re going to keep enforcing law every day in LA. Every day in LA, we’re going to enforce immigration law. I don’t care if they like it or not.”

What matters more is how Maladministration II seeks to direct public attention. The LA protests are the first that Maladministration II has turned its focus on. The question now is how far they’ll go. This is about showmanship, about manipulating fear. This is the old TACO playbook, distract the rubes from the truth of his incompetence and failure. He’s attempting - as he has done before - to create his own alternate reality while the Big Beautiful Bill is going down to the chainsaws the Senate is ready to deploy against it, to avoid accountability when the decision of the Court of Trade is upheld and his tariffs are declared completely illegal, to avoid responsibility for the coming recession.

It will depend on how large those coming failures are as to how much he will push to create this alternate reality of a country in chaos that requires the imposition of a police state to preserve it.

These acts are not going to be limited to Los Angeles. There is already talk of a smilar ICE invasion of Chicago. TACO’s plan is to invade cities run by Democrats, claiming that local officials are unable to control events, and provoke confrontations that distract people from his other failures while projecting a false image of “strength.”

If these acts continue, and they provoke response; if Americans holding signs and waving flags, voicing opposition to a government that’s stomping on the Constitution, I will change my mind about the likelihood of TACO setting off the civil war his most extreme supporters say they want. This could happen accidentally, as those not in on the joke take Maladministration II’s bullshit seriously.

There is an equally-plausible alternate future history in which Donald Trump plays TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) if there is no more response to his provocations than have already happened here in Los Angeles. As it becomes more and more clear in media reports that there is no escalation in violent protests, the obviousness of TACO’s attempt to light a match in a fireworks factory will become only more obvious. This is a future to be hoped for devoutly.

We have to remember: in the face of stalwart opposition, Trump ALWAYS Chickens Out.

UPDATE 1: 700 Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines at Twentynine Palms have been ordered to deploy in Los Angeles and are expected to arrive over the next 24 hours. Minutes before the Marines' deployment was confirmed, TACO was asked by ABC News if he planned on sending Marines to LA, and he said, "We’ll see what happens." He went on to say: "I mean, I think we have it very well under control. I think it would have been a very bad situation. It was heading in the wrong direction. It's now heading in the right direction." FACT CHECK: THERE IS NOTHING HAPPENING IN LOS ANGELES TODAY THAT IS IN ANY WAY AN ESCALATION BY PROTESTORS.

UPDATE 2: TACO is TACOing - Obergruppenfuhrer Tom Homan is furiously backpedaling after suggesting Governor Gavin Newsom could be arrested for interfering with the administration’s crackdown on protesters in Los Angeles.Speaking to Faux Snooze Monday morning, Homan said that Newsom could “absolutely” be arrested if found to have committed a crime such as impeding law enforcement, but claimed his original remarks on the matter were misconstrued by host Jacob Soboroff during an interview for MSNBC. “He’s just a joke. He’s a dishonest reporter. I said many times, ‘You can protest; you get your First Amendment rights’—but when you cross that line, you put your hands on an ICE officer, or you destroy property or impede law enforcement, or you’re knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that’s a crime. And the Trump administration is not going to tolerate it." Homan admitted that neither of the Democratic politicians is accused of breaking any law during the protests. (Trump Always Chickens Out)

UPDATE 3: The demonstration called today in downtown Los Angeles by the ACLU and the SEIU to support David Huerta was held outside the downtown Los Angeles Edwin Roybal federal building where Huerta was arraigned at 1:30pm. There was no violence by the demonstrators. Huerta was arraigned and released on bond and is now home with his family. There is a continuing demonstration at the federal building and it is still nonviolent. THERE WERE NO VIOLENT EPISODES IN LOS ANGELES TODAY. Despite that fact, TACO is still trying to throw matches on the gasoline he’s poured, and he has ordered an additional 2,000 California National Guard troops into the city. NOTHING IS HAPPENING.

Maladministration II is still tweeting out photos of demonstrators with Mexican flags standing on top of burned-out Waymo cars and claiming the city is “in flames.” Faux Snooze and the rest of Maladministration Media Inc. are showing these photos. An official Pentagon Xitter account has put up tweets that the city is in chaos. Numerous people in Los Angeles (your reporter included) have posted against these tweets, reporting the actual facts and calling out this account as the collection of traitors and lying scum they are (My hope is that Xitter will ban me for calling them bad names. I can say they have been “Cleavered”).

Chrystal M’s always-missed Boomer

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