Once again, Americans are witnessing violent riots driven by leftist fifth columns and supported by Democrats. And once again, they don’t like it. At all.

The violent riots in the streets of Los Angeles protesting the deportation of illegal aliens who flooded into our country under the shadowy Biden cabal are precisely what the subversives that have infiltrated our government and institutions have always wanted. This is all part of their next-level revolution, similar to what was attempted during the George Floyd riots.

But it’s simply not what Americans want. The polls clearly showed in 2020 that, had Covid and the unconstitutional changes to election laws not occurred, allowing mail-in ballot cheating, President Trump would have cruised to re-election. That would have been a two-pronged victory: A strong economy and law and order are the prescription for winning elections. And we are setting that exact table for the 2026 midterms.

This particularly leftist-inspired crisis began Friday when ICE officers conducted raids across Los Angeles, arresting or detaining 118 illegal aliens. The US Department of Homeland Security said those arrests included convicted gang members, sex offenders, child abusers, violent gun offenders, drug dealers, and other criminals. 

Insurrectionists have been patrolling the streets of LA and identifying ICE officers by name, face, and vehicle, both warning illegal aliens and planning for future targeting efforts. The fifth column groups include the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Marxist supporters of illegal aliens, and maybe most notably, the Mexican separatist movement La Reconquista, which for years has been demanding that most of the Western United States be returned to Mexico. (Why is this group even allowed?)

Former CIA analyst Brian Dean Wright reported that these groups are trained for “direct action”—a euphemism for everything from normal-appearing protests to violence, riots, firebombs, and even killings. Anthony Cabassa reported with video on prepositioned pallets of bricks used to assault law enforcement officers, including ICE, police, and deputies. There are more videos of rioters building Molotov cocktails, setting fire to cars and properties, and putting old appliances and other trash onto roads and highways to create mayhem. 

From a purely political angle, the Democrat Party’s reaction has been both predictable and just suicidally dumb. And definitionally Orwellian.

The Democrat-run LA Police Department put out a statement saying that the weekend’s violence, all captured on video documented above, “remained peaceful…While today’s events concluded without incident, the LAPD remains fully prepared to respond swiftly and appropriately to any potential acts of civil unrest.”

In what would make National Guardsmen an absolute necessity, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said: “Our brave officers were vastly outnumbered, as over 1,000 rioters surrounded and attacked a federal building. It took over two hours for the Los Angeles Police Department to respond, despite being called multiple times.”

LA Mayor Karen Bass said that ICE arresting criminals was a form of terrorism and that the arrests “disrupt basic principles of safety.” So, not the insurgents conducting terrorism or the criminals committing the worst of crimes. It’s the law enforcement that is terrorist and criminal. Bass said that her office is working “in close coordination” with the radical, insurgent leftist groups to organize a response against ICE.

This is George Orwell’s "1984" brought to life: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” And so it is for Democrats.

In his first term, President Trump deferred a considerable amount of response to the 2020 rioting to local law enforcement, even allowing blocks of downtown Seattle to be taken over and declared independent from America (resulting in two deaths).  But no more. This is the new President Trump, who learned enormous lessons in his first term and the intervening years of relentless personal attacks. 

Over the weekend, the President swiftly federalized 2,000 California National Guardsmen and sent them into Los Angeles to secure federal buildings and be prepared for further deployment, as protesters have long expected kid glove treatment in Democratic cities. They can bully, harass, disrupt, and destroy with little to no consequences. But President Trump is having none of it, and you can almost hear the American people cheering him on.

And yet the Democratic Party continues to cut its wrists. Democrats throughout California, including Governor Newsom, are siding with the radicals. But so is every Democrat governor, who issued a unified statement condemning and blaming President Trump for using California’s National Guardsmen against peaceful protests. 

“President Trump’s move to deploy California’s National Guard is an alarming abuse of power,” every Democrat governor signed off on. The statement goes on: “Violence is unacceptable, and local authorities should be able to do their jobs without the chaos of this federal interference and intimidation.”

The chaos the federal government is bringing—not the chaos and destruction of the rioters funded and organized by the fifth column, is the real problem. Simply Orwellian.

The thing is, as much as he prophetically saw ahead, Orwell did not envision social media and the ability to immediately disseminate video proof of the truth by any citizen in the area. While the Democrat base and media will eat up the Orwell spin, Americans can see with their eyes. They supported crushing the 2020 riots, and they endorsed deporting illegal aliens, not just the ones who committed crimes after breaking in. They help law and order every time.

The Democrats are the Keystone Cops of finding the side of an issue that Americans support. They are incapable of taking any position that Americans overwhelmingly support because Trump owns those, and their TDS will not allow them to agree.

If the rioting continues long-term, which seems likely as the deportations will continue, it will not be great for America in the short term. But it might be great long-term as it will continue to unmask the captured Democratic Party for who they are — anti-American radicals ultimately bent on destroying America as it has been.

Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren, and a rapacious hunger to fight for America on their behalf. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].