MORNING GLORY: Trump acted quickly in LA and super majorities support him
On April 29, 1992, Reginald Denny was driving his truck through the part of Los Angeles known as South Central. Protests following the acquittal of Rodney King had begun around 3:15PM that afternoon, shortly after the acquittal of the four Los Angeles Police Department officers who had been on trial for the beating of Rodney King.
Mr. Denny’s truck was stopped at the corner of Florence and Normandie Avenues shortly before 7PM —it was still daylight. The truck was attacked and Denny pulled from it and savagely beaten.
A television news helicopter beamed the brutal beating live to tens of thousands of televisions tuned in throughout the region, and while most were horrified, some took the extended absence of a police response to mean that the Los Angeles Police Department was not going to respond to violence that afternoon and evening.
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The Los Angeles Riots followed, and for four days the city was engulfed in violence, shooting and flames. 63 people were killed, thousands injured and an untold number of businesses burned to the ground. It is my opinion and the opinion of many other journalists who covered the riots in real time from Los Angeles that the televised beating of Denny combined with the invisibility of police triggered the widespread rampage.
Only after the National Guard arrived in force was order slowly restored. (My television studio then was PBS-affiliate KCET in the Los Feliz neighborhood, and because it was behind a fence and protected by gates it was not damaged while the Circuit City across the street was looted and burned.) The city’s attempt to “Rebuild LA” met with, at best, mixed results despite the leadership of Los Angeles Olympics chairman Peter Ueberroth and his team’s relentless efforts to assist the destroyed businesses and ruined home-owners.
Riots may end in days, but their impacts linger for years. They can start in an instant in this age of immediate communication of online images and exhortations without an “eye in the sky” to transmit the signal, and spread as quickly as the urban wildfires that plagued LA early this year.
At this writing, LA is convulsing again, this time with demonstrations and violence triggered by ICE doing its job and being met with violence. President Trump is not waiting on California Governor Gavin Newsom or LA Mayor Karen Bass to ask for help in quelling the unrest after it has spread beyond a few outbreaks.
Trump federalized the California National Guard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the Marines at Twentynine Palms down the 5 Freeway and other Army units to ready for deployment to LA. June, 2025 is not going to be April, 1992, and everyone who lived through and remembers the former cannot want a sequel. Good for President Trump and thanks to local law enforcement, the Guard and the military.
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The left wing of the Democratic Party quickly distributed or picked up on the talking point that President Trump’s actions constituted a “dangerous escalation,” including former Vice President Kamala Harris. This is an absurd, politicized narrative, of course, because even one death would represent an infinite cost and the attacks on ICE agents were savage and occurred throughout the city.
LAPD was visible in some areas but impotent to stop violence and Trump rightly sensed the dangerous potential for an instant escalation fueled by professional activists of the sort who have made Portland and Seattle so unstable. Trump did not want a repeat of the summer of 2020 when riots rocked the country following the murder of George Floyd.
The reality of this age of encrypted messaging apps and the inability to contain online provocateurs is that inaction will inevitably lead to intimidation and violence.
The vast majority of people watching from afar, but especially those with ties and roots to Southern California want the region spared another catastrophe. The country voted for border control, for order and for the rule of law. President Trump won in overwhelming fashion. Democrats siding now with the criminals attacking ICE agents or any man or woman in law enforcement will not be able to erase their posts and their past come November of 2026.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
