A woke senator encouraged Americans to get “out in the streets” and protest President Trump’s response to the violent anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles, saying that the president was trying to escalate the conflict and arguing that if protests stayed peaceful, they could preserve democracy.
For context, in a video shared on social media on June 8, 2025, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) criticized President Trump’s decision to authorize the deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles, California, in response to violent anti-ICE protests that started on June 6. In addition, in a subsequent interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Murphy called for nationwide protests in response to what he described as President Trump “looking for a fight.”
In his initial video, Sen. Murphy said that the “crisis in California” was “of Donald Trump’s making,” arguing that the protest had escalated into a riot because of the president’s deployment of the National Guard. The senator said, “Anytime a protest turns violent, that’s unacceptable. But California has made it clear that, between local and state authorities, they have the means to keep the peace. They don’t need Donald Trump. They don’t need the National Guard.”
Continuing, the senator said that the president has sent the National Guard to Los Angeles “to create a conflict,” adding that President Trump did not want “to solve a problem, but to create one.” He went on, “Donald Trump has always wanted an excuse to impose martial law, to invoke the Insurrection Act.”
Attempting to back up his point, the senator said that the president has been trying “to destroy our democracy and undermine the rule of law” since the beginning of his term, adding, “he steps Donald Trump is taking right now are not designed to calm a serious situation. They are designed to inflame it. They are meant to increase the chances for violence so that Donald Trump will have an opportunity to further destroy our democracy by invoking some kind of martial law.”
In addition, Sen. Murphy sang a similar tune when he appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on June 9, 2025, telling viewers to “keep it peaceful,” but calling for Democrats to “be on the streets all over the country to protest what’s happening to our immigrant community, but more broadly, to protest what’s happening to our democracy.”
Continuing, the Connecticut lawmaker said that President Trump was “looking for a fight,” adding, “There’s nothing in what he is doing that is about peace or about restoring order. He’s taking a protest that is relatively isolated.” The senator then attempted to make the case that the riot in LA was a “pretty small” protest, saying that the president wanted to turn it into “an even bigger confrontation so that he might actually be able to invoke the Insurrection Act.”
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Concluding his comments, Sen. Murphy said that if President Trump were able to invoke the Insurrection Act as a means to quell the riots, it would “be a defining story of the week,” adding, “I think we have to make sure that we understand to not take him at his word. He’s looking for a fight. He’s not trying to calm tensions.”
Watch Sen. Murphy’s comments:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video