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EXCLUSIVE: GOP Rep. Darrell Issa is blasting elected Democrat officials in his home state of California over their response to the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles after he called for a congressional investigation into the response time of local law enforcement.
“These are the same people that tell us, you know, Biden was fine, he was on the top of his game,” Issa said about Democrat narratives responding to the riots that have been unfolding in Los Angeles since Friday.
“So their credibility goes with what you see versus what they say. I can’t think of a better example of why you shouldn’t believe or vote for people in that party as long as they’re willing to literally lie to your face on what you’re seeing with your own eyes.”
Democrats across the country, from California to Washington, D.C., have downplayed the rioting and focused on the claim that the majority of the anti-ICE displays have been “peaceful.”
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Additionally, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other Democrats have blamed President Donald Trump’s mobilizing the National Guard for making the situation worse.
Issa, who represents California’s 48th Congressional District, took issue with that narrative.
“First of all, there was damage, both vandalism and actual destruction done before Trump got involved, and that’s the reason he got involved, but there’s another thing that some people miss,” Issa told Fox News Digital.
“When ICE agents called for police support when they were being assaulted, they hunkered down and waited two hours before police responded because police couldn’t get authority to react. So that alone gave a reason for the president to bring in additional federalized troops to protect the ICE agents.”
On Tuesday, Fox News Digital exclusively reported Issa’s call for an investigation into the Department of Homeland Security’s claim that the LAPD took two hours to respond to assist ICE agents being assaulted on Friday night.
The LAPD, in a Sunday press conference, denied that allegation and said it took 40 minutes to respond due to traffic.
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“Understand that we have over 10 million people who were let into this country, and tens of thousands of them are serious criminal aliens,” Issa said. “There were warrants. There were orders to deport. There are reasons that we’ve got to go after many of these people in cities around the country. If ICE agents can’t be protected or won’t be protected by people like the mayor and my governor, then the president’s going to have to continue to do this, eventually create escorts for ICE agents.”
Issa told Fox News Digital that Trump is doing a “great job” in his response to the unrest in Los Angeles.
“One thing that I’m very happy about is, I know that by taking strong action here, he’s keeping it from occurring in other cities around the country, because what you don’t want is what ultimately happened in 2020 where we saw it happening not just in one city but in city after city where more than two dozen people died and billions of dollars of damage occurred because it wasn’t handled quickly enough, and we’ve learned from that.”
Issa told Fox News Digital that he finds it curious why Democrats have used the word “insurrection” to describe the Jan. 6th riots that lasted hours but have not used the term to describe what has unfolded in Los Angeles over several days.
“We heard the word ‘insurrection’ for a couple of years nonstop, and now in Los Angeles, when people are directly assaulting property and law enforcement, that’s the very definition of insurrection; and particularly when they’re doing it on behalf of people who are sitting in jails because they were arrested for crimes, not just for entering the country illegally but for actual felonies,” Issa said.
“And it’s sort of amazing to believe that high-ranking elected officials like Gov. Newsom would actually try to defend any of that action. And yet they’re doing it.”
Issa went on to say that Newsom’s response to the riots “might have worked in the era of print or maybe even the era of radio” but that video evidence of rioting from the scene makes his position untenable.
“Television and podcasts and everyone having a cellphone, those images are going to be what the American people [is going to] see when he tries to pretend that he was a good governor,” Issa said. “They’re going to see a failure to do his job and an absolute resistance against those who came in to do it for him.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of Newsom and Bass for comment.
“Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals,” Newsom said on Tuesday night. “His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses. That’s just weakness. Weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities. They’re traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point.”
“When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes. This moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our Founding Fathers’ historic project.”
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