Trump Asked: 'Will You Invoke The Insurrection Act To Deal With The Situation In California?'

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump was asked about possibly using the Insurrection Act.

Transcript

00:00We'll take a few questions.

00:01Mr. President, would you invoke the Insurrection Act to deal with the situation in California?

00:06If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We'll see.

00:10But I can tell you, last night was terrible. The night before that was terrible.

00:16We have, as you've seen, it was on most of your networks, people with big, heavy hammers

00:21pounding the concrete and pounding curbs, pounding it, breaking up all,

00:26and handing these big chunks of concrete to people. And they were taking that concrete,

00:31going up on bridges and dropping it into the roof of a car. They were throwing it at our police.

00:36They were throwing it at our soldiers that are there. And we got it stopped. And we have them

00:41in custody right now. Look, if we didn't get involved right now, Los Angeles would be burning,

00:50just like it was burning a number of months ago with all the houses that were lost.

00:54Los Angeles right now would be on fire. And we have it in great shape.

00:59We're not playing around.

01:00How will you determine whether or not there is an insurrection?

01:04Well, you'll take a look at what's happening. I mean, I could tell you there were certain areas

01:07of that, of Los Angeles, that you could have called it an insurrection. It was terrible.

01:13But these are paid insurrectionists. These are paid troublemakers. They get money.

01:19And when you take a look at what they do, where they show up and everyone's saying,

01:22what's he doing? He's pounding the curbs. This one guy's pounding the curb, breaking the curb

01:26and handing big pieces of granite. In some cases, it's granite, granite and concrete to

01:33other people. And they're running out with it. And then we watch the other people and they try and

01:39throw it into the face of the soldiers, throw it into the face of the police. And they hurt some

01:44people very badly. They go up on bridges, they drop it down on the cars as the cars are moving.

01:49They're not breaking the curb because they're doing a demolition service. They're breaking it

01:54to hand out to people as a weapon. That's bad. It's bad stuff. I've never seen that before.

02:00Just throw it in.