Donald Trump made a possibly unwitting reference to his own past usage of a notorious quote attributed to a Miami police chief who cracked down on protests in Black neighborhoods on Saturday as he threatened local and state officials in California with a massive federal response.
The president issued a statement on Truth Social on Saturday evening ahead of his attendance at a UFC match in response to demonstrations across the city of Los Angeles on Friday and Saturday — themselves the result of ICE raids across the city.
His statement, which asserted that “looters” were present amid the chaos, was not yet supported by any publicly-available evidence — which indicates that the demonstrations are centered around the Los Angeles Federal Building after word spread that ICE detainees were allegedly being held at the location. Other individual clashes between citizens and members of ICE were reported around the city as raids were carried out at businesses and other locations.
“If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!” the president wrote on Truth Social, using an epithet for the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom.
His reference to “looters” did not immediately appear to have any connection to the reality on the ground in Los Angeles.
But it does harken back to similar statements he made during the final year of his presidency, when passionate demonstrations broke out in nearly every major city around the country in response to the shocking police bodycam footage of the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin.
The heart of that passion was centered at the time in Minneapolis, the site of Floyd’s murder. Days of violent confrontations between heavily-armed police and demonstrators was condemned by the Republican president in a tweet that claimed the protesters were dishonoring Floyd’s memory.
“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!” he wrote in the summer of 2020, before his post-January 6 Twitter ban.
The phrase used by the president in the penultimate sentence of his 2020 tweet was copied from a Miami police chief, Walter Headley, who coined it in 1967 — amid heightened racial tensions nationwide and the push for Black civil rights. Headley was thought to go on to repeat the phrase to justify violent suppression of riots in the mostly-black Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, where riots took place the following year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Trump has not repeated the phrase verbatim since being called out for using it. He has shown no hesitation against using other dehumanizing language, however, and during a rally for Ohio’s now-Senator Bernie Moreno in March of 2024 said of undocumented immigrants, “in some cases, they’re not people.”
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Critics say Saturday evening’s escalation of federally-deputized force in California marks an authoritarian turn to the second Trump presidency that was previewed during Trump 1.0 when the president ordered law enforcement agencies to clear a park in Washington, D.C. in order for him to conduct a photo opp at a church. As protests continued into Saturday evening and images of a burning vehicle in the city’s Compton neighborhood circulated on social media, the president ordered 2,000 California National Guard troops to deploy and quell the demonstrations.
“President Trump has signed a Presidential Memorandum deploying 2,000 National Guardsmen to address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester. The Trump Administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
She added: “These criminals will be arrested and swiftly brought to justice. The Commander-in-Chief will ensure the laws of the United States are executed fully and completely.”
Local leaders in California attacked the action as an unnecessary escalation of the protests. Governor Gavin Newsom accused the president on Twitter of seeking a violent “spectacle”.
“The federal government is taking over the California National Guard and deploying 2,000 soldiers in Los Angeles — not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle. Don’t give them one,” urged the governor. “Never use violence. Speak out peacefully. “
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