Former Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine said Monday that the Democratic Party has “gone crazy” in its response to the riots in Los Angeles, California.
The unrest began Friday following a series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the Los Angeles area, during which rioters assaulted federal immigration officers and vandalized public property, according to a Saturday statement from the Department of Homeland Security. Speaking on The Morning Meeting, Turrentine suggested he believes the Democratic Party is effectively condoning the actions of the rioters.
“Is [President] Donald Trump potentially playing politics a little bit? Yeah, I think he probably is. I find it hard to believe the timing is not a coincidence, that he had a bad end to last week. That said — and, you know, this is politics in general — both parties engage in stuff like that,” Turrentine said.
“I think the Democratic Party has kind of lost its mind. I think that you cannot tolerate that people are harming government property and harming federal officials executing the job that the president or the, you know, secretary of DHS or whomever has ordered them to do. Like, you just simply cannot do this,” the former strategist continued.
Turrentine also accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of hesitating to take action because they sympathized with the anti-ICE sentiment behind the riots. “I think one of the reasons Newsom and Bass at first didn’t really move is they didn’t really see a problem with it. Like, okay, there’s a little bit of violence, okay, but like this is okay because it’s in the name of what we believe, which is to not help enforce immigration,” he said.
“We’ve always talked about — at some point, good, you know, kind of normal people are going to start getting swept up, whether it’s the busboy or the people at Home Depot getting ready to try to go paint a house or pick up day labor work,” he added. “But the bottom line is, you cannot tolerate people in this country illegally — or anybody — banging on cars, throwing rocks at people,” he added. “You just can’t allow that. It looks like a third-world country.”
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters claimed during an appearance on The Situation Room Monday that “no violence” occurred in Los Angeles, despite video evidence showing rioters setting vehicles ablaze and at least one federal agent being assaulted. She also pushed back against Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McConnell’s description of the situation as a surge in violence.
