“We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy. That’s what they are,” Trump said.
The president also called Los Angeles “a trash heap” with “entire neighbourhoods under control” of criminals and said the federal government would “use every asset at our disposal to quell the violence and restore law and order”.
US President Donald Trump after his speech at Fort Bragg on Tuesday.Credit: Bloomberg
“We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean, and safe again,” Trump said
Democrats led by Californian Governor Gavin Newsom have accused Trump and his allies of inflaming the situation in Los Angeles by quickly deploying the National Guard, then the Marines, to quell what began as relatively small demonstrations involving a few hundred people on Friday.
Senior Pentagon official Bryn MacDonnell told a congressional budget hearing in Washington the deployment would cost about $US134 million ($206 million) over 60 days, including travel, housing and food.
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News agency Reuters quoted an unnamed US official saying 700 members of the US Marines had arrived in Los Angeles as of Tuesday morning (Wednesday AEST), and were in a staging area awaiting dispatch to specific locations.
Trump stood by his decision to send in the troops, saying “Los Angeles would be burning” otherwise.
“You’ve got to remember we have the Olympics coming, and we don’t want people looking at Los Angeles like it was, like it would have been,” he said. “It would have been bad.”
Early on Tuesday afternoon, Los Angeles police were trying to block a demonstration they had declared to be an unlawful assembly.
Protesters gather in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday.Credit: AP
Officers had been hit with projectiles and protesters were ordered to disperse, the LAPD said, and the use of “less lethal” weapons such as tear gas had been authorised.
The demonstration was a block from the Federal Building in downtown LA, which has been one of the epicentres of demonstrations over the past five days.
The National Guard arrives in Los Angeles.Credit: AP
A wall of police officers blocked the street to prevent marching demonstrators converging with a group of about 50 protesters stationed outside the building, which was being guarded by the National Guard.
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Newsom has filed an emergency motion, seeking to stop what he contended was the illegal deployment of the National Guard and US Marines in Los Angeles, the country’s second-largest city.
A court notice indicated the petition was filed before judge Charles R. Breyer in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
“Trump is turning the US military against American citizens. The courts must immediately block these illegal actions,” Newsom said.
Earlier, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said his department had not been given formal notification the Marines would be coming to the city and that their presence would present “a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city”.
He also said the people committing acts of violence and vandalism after nightfall were not the same people protesting during the day, who were legitimately exercising their right to free speech.
Workers remove graffiti from the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and Courthouse in Santa Ana.Credit: AP
“These are people who are all hooded up, they’ve got a hoodie on, they’ve got face masks on, they’re people who do this all the time – get away with whatever they can, go out there from one civil unrest situation to another,” McDonnell said.
“Some would call them anarchists. They’re people we run across routinely, city to city, and this is what they do.”
After a long stand-off outside a federal building on Monday afternoon, police slowly drove protesters away from the civic centre into downtown LA before night fell.
A convoy of buses moves after leaving the Marine Corps base in Twentynine Palms, California on Monday.Credit: AP
Local media reported several businesses, including an Apple Store, were broken into and looted after dark. The LAPD arrested 96 people for failing to disperse and 14 for looting, television network NBC-LA reported. One was arrested for assault with a weapon and another for vandalism.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she would discuss a potential curfew in a meeting with police later on Wednesday (AEST).
While she condemned the violence and vandalism as “unacceptable”, she also said footage of the protests “make it seem like our entire city is in flames, and that is not the case at all”.
