Merkley: Trump Trying to ‘Make the Protests Worse,’ ‘Create, If You Will, Riots’ in L.A.
On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Weeknight,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) stated that the Trump administration is trying “to make the protests worse, to create, if you will, riots” in Los Angeles.
Merkley said, “I was watching what was going on in L.A. and thinking about Portland during the first Trump administration, my home state of Oregon. And what Trump did then is he sent out folks who had no insignia at all and they had unmarked vans and they were grabbing people off the street at the protests and throwing them into these unmarked vans. And I’m like, that’s what happens in a fascist country. My God, this is happening in the United States of America. And there is now a law in place that says you have to have insignia, because of what Trump did.”
He continued, “But as soon as you have an overreach by the federal government, it produces counterdemonstrations, it just pours fuel on the fire. And that’s what Trump’s trying to do here, don’t look at how much I’m ripping off ordinary families to help billionaires, look at the fact that I’m sending troops out to California, pay attention to that. And it’s — I must say, it’s an effective strategy, and it leaves us with a challenge, because we must call out how wrong it is to overrule the governor, how wrong it is to send Marines, how wrong it is to try to make the protests worse, to create, if you will, riots. At the same time, we can’t just focus on that, or we’re achieving exactly what Trump’s asking us to do, which is to look at California, not look at this horrific budget bill that he’s putting forward.”
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