Los Angeles is losing the war for public opinion

It was, by any stretch of the imagination, an ugly Sunday of violence and vandalism in downtown Los Angeles.

After U.S. President Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of bypassing the authority of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and summoning the National Guard, ostensibly to quell protests over federal immigration raids, thousands of Angelenos angrily took to the streets.

Tear gas canisters were thrown. Then bottles and fireworks. And by late afternoon, some protesters had blocked traffic on a vital stretch of the 101 Freeway and set ablaze a few vehicles and dumpsters. It didn’t take long for those images to start ricocheting around both social and legacy media. The sense of being on the brink was amplified by the Trump administration and buttressed by an assessment from Los Angeles’ own police chief that "this thing has gotten out of control.”

But California Democrats have a story about what happened and they are sticking to it. Too bad it’s a story that’s going up in flames about as fast as a spray-painted Waymo.

"This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted,” Newsom said Monday on X, echoing what he’d said Sunday, when he warned protesters not to act out Trump’s rhetoric about Los Angeles: "The president is attempting to inflame passions and provoke a response. ... Don’t give them the spectacle.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had also urged "protestors to remain peaceful.”

Nevertheless, a spectacle is exactly what happened. And on Monday, a Defense Department official told Bloomberg News that 700 Marines were headed to join the National Guard troops, in a dramatic escalation.

California Democrats are losing control of the narrative.

Trump’s claims about Los Angeles being some sort of dystopian hellscape are false. Only a few miles from the downtown protests on Sunday, an annual Pride parade wove through Hollywood and numerous peaceful protests unfolded across the county, from Long Beach to Pasadena.

Protestors who scorched cars and scuffled with security forces celebrate in front of a Waymo vehicle that was set on fire during a demonstration on Sunday following federal immigration raids in Los Angeles. | AFP-JIJI

After all, the city of Los Angeles is more than 500 square miles and the county is more than 4,000 square miles. Yet Trump seems determined to portray all of Los Angeles as beset by "RIOTS & LOOTERS,” and Newsom and Bass as too incompetent to stop it. He insisted on Truth Social that "violent, insurrectionist mobs” have taken over in a "rebellion,” and are "attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations.”

Trump has a long history of creating his own reality and persuading other people to live in it. But as a resident of Los Angeles, let me assure you that there is no "rebellion.” What there is, however, is a lot of anger over a string of aggressive raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that began on Friday.

Agents in paramilitary gear surrounded a Home Depot parking lot, arresting day laborers at random. By the time agents entered a clothing store downtown, word had spread on social media and hundreds of protesters showed up. Among them was David Huerta, an influential labor leader whom agents knocked to the ground so violently that he had to be hospitalized, setting off a fresh wave of fury.

On Saturday, ICE attempted another raid, this time in Paramount, a suburb in Los Angeles County. Protesters showed up again. A car was set on fire. Large rocks were thrown at agents fleeing in SUVs. Tear gas was used.

"It was a riot,” Trump told reporters. "I think it was very bad.” The Los Angeles County sheriff, Robert Luna, has said more than 100 deputies were dispatched to clear the crowd, but stood by his department’s ability to handle the situation without the National Guard. "Deputies will be defending themselves,” he said.

On Sunday, ICE agents raided two car washes, without drawing protesters, and also arrested a street vendor they happened to spot selling fruit outside of a Trader Joe’s.

The administration has promised 30 more days of these raids, presumably now with the National Guard in tow, which is sure to further inflame members of the public. Recent polling shows 7 in 10 Californians see immigrants as a "benefit” to the state and want a path to citizenship for those who are undocumented.

In a county where 34% of the population — or 3.5 million people — are immigrants, more than 800,000 are undocumented and more than a million live with someone who is undocumented, the randomness of the raids has led to widespread fear and outrage.

Trump’s border czar, Thomas Homan, argues that if Los Angeles city and county weren’t sanctuaries and if California weren’t a sanctuary state, prohibiting local law enforcement from helping with immigration operations, ICE wouldn’t have to be so disruptive. In other words, agents have no choice but to show up in military gear, their faces masked and armed with flash-bang grenades.

I’d argue the agents do have a choice. After all, under former President Barack Obama’s administration, in which Homan worked, ICE agents managed to arrest many undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles — and do so without this level of cruelty or chaos. And they certainly did it without the National Guard.

But Trump, ever the showman, knows how to shape narratives. And he knows that what doesn’t look good is a split screen on CNN of protesters taking selfies next to flaming Waymos and Eleni Kounalakis, the lieutenant governor of California, blaming ICE for helping provoke such behavior.

Meanwhile, what’s getting lost are the reasons so many Angelenos took to the streets in the first place: to defend undocumented immigrants and the social fabric of California.

"We’re losing focus on what’s important,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the immigrant rights group CHIRLA, told CNN, chiding protesters who had resorted to violence and vandalism. "You’re not putting the attention on the people you say you want to help.”

Some of those arrested have already been sent to other cities. Members of Congress who have tried to check on the well-being of those left in detention in Los Angeles have been turned away. So have legal aid groups.

Newsom, citing a "serious breach of state sovereignty,” has officially demanded that the Trump administration return control of the National Guard to his office — and has filed a lawsuit to that effect. He and other California Democrats better hope they have better luck in that court than in the court of public opinion.