Trump scores win over Newsom in Los Angeles’ made-for-TV protests | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Trump gains public opinion edge by deploying National Guard without consent.
- Newsom challenges legality of deployment, citing lack of invasion or rebellion.
- Televised protest imagery boosts Trump narrative, undercuts Newsom’s stance.
An image of a burning car in the middle of a Los Angeles street and black-hooded protesters cheering the flames fills the TV screen at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Middle America in Ames, Iowa.
Horrified, the couple express thanks that President Donald Trump has ordered National Guard troops to LA to help quell the violence. But this typical Midwestern couple is aghast that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is angry over the president’s action.
Doesn’t the California governor want to end the violence, they ask themselves. “What is wrong with that guy?”
Such an imagined scene at a Midwestern home has all too real implications: When it comes to the optics war involving the demonstrations in Los Angeles, Trump is the big winner — and Newsom is a loser.
That is not to say that California’s governor is on the wrong side of history or democracy. Newsom is right to be furious at Trump for making the situation on the ground worse by going around him to order in the National Guard — a move no president had taken since 1965.
But Trump is a master of visual reality. Trump is a student of what works on television because that is precisely how he learns about the world. If his White House TV screen is filled with scenes of burning cars and rock-throwing protesters, that is exactly what most Americans are seeing, too.
So Trump ramps up the rhetoric and action. In defense of sending in the troops, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that if he had not done so, “Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.” That despite how the protests seen on TV were confined to a small area in the downtown of the city of 3.9 million. Los Angeles was nowhere close to being overrun or invaded, to use other imagery Trump and his advisers threw out.
Trump vs. Newsom
The last time a president called out the National Guard without a governor’s approval was in 1965, when then-President Lyndon Johnson directed troops to protect civil rights activists on a march in Alabama.
Trump’s order for National Guard members to go to Los Angeles upset Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass because they said local police and county sheriff’s deputies had things well under control, the images on TV notwithstanding.
Newsom called bringing in the National Guard “purposely inflammatory,” and said it “will only escalate tensions.”
National Guard troops were deployed to protect federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles. Trump justified requesting them to protect federal immigration agents hunting for undocumented people. That, in turn, gave rise to the demonstrations.
Newsom blamed Trump for “putting fuel on this fire, ever since he announced he was taking over the National Guard — an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday to overturn the National Guard deployment. The suit argues that the president exceeded his authority by invoking a law that justifies a call up whenever there is a threat of foreign invasion or when there is rebellion against the federal government.
“Let me be clear: There is no invasion. There is no rebellion,” Bonta said in a statement, as reported by The Washington Post. “The president is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends.”
Political optics
The idea that Newsom would sue Trump over violent protests in Los Angeles is a losing proposition for the governor in the court of public opinion. That’s because Newsom’s arguments, as worthy as they might be in an academic setting, are not easily reduced to sound bites and TV images. Trump’s arguments are.
The bottom line is this: Trump should have given local authorities more time to handle the demonstrations and respected Newsom’s right to use the National Guard as he deemed best. But Trump is instinctual and calculating. If he sees an advantage to be had, he will take it.
At least in the short-term, Trump has won this contest.
This story was originally published June 9, 2025 at 12:22 PM with the headline "Trump scores win over Newsom in Los Angeles’ made-for-TV protests | Opinion."
