In a deeply politicized, partisan speech to troops at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, Trump spread conspiracy theories, maligned California’s Democratic leaders and misleadingly portrayed protesters as part of a “foreign invasion.”
The speech was pitched as a rally for the bigly military parade in Washington on Saturday commemorating the Army’s 250th anniversary, but Taco Trump used his time calling protesters in Los Angeles “animals” and “a foreign enemy,” repeating election lies, disparaging Joe Biden, and performing his infamous double-jerk “YMCA” dance.
Soldiers shown in the background of the speech were cheering at his partisan attacks and mistruths.
Right outside the security checkpoint — but still on the base — two stands were selling Trump political hats, T-shirts and other paraphernalia.
The President of the United States, which includes Los Angeles, called the city a “trash heap,” and promised to “liberate” it, and “make it free, clean and safe again.”
An initial deployment of 300 National Guardsmen, federalized by Trump over the objections of Governor Newsom, is expected to quickly expand to 4,000. An additional 700 marines began arriving on Tuesday.
SecDef and DUI hire Pete Hegseth also spoke to the troops.
“We’re not a college or a university. We’re not interested in your woke garbage and political correctness,” Hegseth said. The troops cheered.
Among the lies Trump peddled:
- “Many of them came out of prisons and jails – the most heinous people, they came from all over the world. They came from the Congo in Africa, they came from Asia, they came from the prisons of these places, they were put into the United States and allowed to stay here,” Trump said at one point. At another, he said, “Their countries would bus them or drive them right to our border and say, ‘Go in there. If you ever come back, we’re going to kill you.’”
- He made the baseless claim that the protests against immigration raids in LA are being led by paid “rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion”.
- He said pallets of bricks were left out for protesters to hurl at police officers in LA. “They came in with bricks.”
- “In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor of Los Angeles, they’re incompetent and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists. They’re engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law, and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”
For further reading, consider the opinion here at MSNBC.
