WASHINGTON — President Trump has called for Los Angeles rioters who burned American flags to be jailed for at least a year and suggested that California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has so botched the response to the bedlam that he could “in theory” be charged with a crime.
In the inaugural episode of Post columnist Miranda Devine’s “Pod Force One” — which will feature some of Washington’s most influential movers and shakers every week — Trump said all rioters found to be setting the Stars and Stripes ablaze should earn an “automatic” one-year jail sentence.
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“I happen to think if you burn an American flag — because they were burning a lot of flags in Los Angeles — I think you go to jail for one year,” he said. “Just automatic.”
Asked whether he was still in favor of arresting of Newsom for thwarting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Los Angeles, Trump sounded off: “Well, he’s not doing a good job.”
“In theory, you could” charge the governor, the president added. “It’s almost like a dissipation of duty. Nobody’s ever seen anything like that.”
Trump and Newsom spoke by phone late Friday, on the first night of the unrest about the possibility of deploying National Guard troops.
“It was late at night,” the president recalled. “I said, ‘You know, your city’s burning down. Your state is in bad trouble’ … He said it was a set-up.”
“All I want him to do is do a good job,” Trump insisted. “I’d rather have him do a good job than a bad job, even though politically, I guess, you could take the other extreme. He’s doing a poor job.”
Trump has long called for the incarceration of people who disrespect the US flag and even backed a bill in his first term that would’ve codified the prohibition in a constitutional amendment.
Legal experts — including the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — have pointed out that flag burning is a protected activity under the First Amendment.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan threatened Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass over the weekend with possible prosecution for obstructing ICE agents from deporting illegal migrants in Los Angeles.
“You cross that line, it’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien,” Homan told NBC News. “It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.”
The border czar then claimed in a subsequent interview with the Peacock Network his words were taken out of context and that he “never threatened to arrest Governor Newsom.”
The Department of Homeland Security said that 118 illegal migrants had been arrested in the deportation sweep, including five gang members and others with drug trafficking, assault, robbery and domestic violence charges on their record.
On Friday, more than 1,000 rioters descended on a federal building and clashed with ICE officers, assaulting several as well as slashing tires and destroying property. The LAPD failed to respond for two hours, according to DHS.
Trump the next day called up 2,000 members of the National Guard to quell the unrest — later calling up 2,000 more and mobilizing 700 Marines to protect federal property.
“If we didn’t do the job, that place would be burning down,” he told reporters Monday. “I watched Minneapolis burn [in 2020]… There’s so many different places where we let it burn. We wanted to be politically correct … I think Gavin, in his own way, is probably happy I got involved.”
The tumult has seen protesters lighting cars on fire, taunting law enforcement by brandishing flags of Mexico and other nations, looting, and hurling rocks at federal law enforcement.
Newsom’s administration filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging that Trump had violated California’s 10th Amendment rights by invoking a law enabling federal control of the National Guard.
The Democratic governor also shot back at Homan in an NBC News interview Sunday night, saying: “Come after me. Arrest me. Let’s just get it over with, tough guy.”
