Washington DC: US President Donald Trump while attending 'Les Miserables' Opening Night at Kennedy Center with US First Lady Melania Trump said that he was proud of the work done in Los Angeles in curbing the riots.
Trump said that the protests were caused by the radical left.
He said, "I am very proud to have helped Los Angeles survive... If we didn't bring the National Guard and the Marines, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground, and that's not over yet... These are radical left lunatics that you're dealing with. They are tough, smart. They are probably paid many of them."
"What happened in Los Angeles was caused by gross incompetence. They did not have the police to handle it, the police were asking us to come handle it," he added.
Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt during her press briefing too echoed Trump's remarks on radicals.
"What we have seen transpire in Los Angeles, California in recent days is shameful. Left-wing radicals waving foreign flags viciously attacked ICE and Border Patrol agents as well as Los Angeles police officers," she said.
"These criminals injured police, threw rocks at police, cars and officers, burned vehicles, shut down freeways and lobbed Molotov cocktails- all because the Trump administration was removing violent criminal illegal aliens from the city," she added.
Leavitt said that these attacks were aimed at American society itself.
"These attacks were aimed not just at law enforcement, but at American culture and society itself. Rioters burned American flags, chanted death to ICE and spray painted anti-American slogans on buildings," she said.
She said that the mob rule will never prevail in the Trump administration.
"But President Trump will never allow mob rule to prevail in America. The most basic duty of government is to preserve law and order and this administration embraces that sacred responsibility," she said.
Demonstrations against the Trump administration's deportation crackdown are taking place beyond California as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conduct raids. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that Trump's order to federalize the National Guard in California to respond to the protests could extend to other states, as per CNN.
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