At a press briefing held by California Democrats on Tuesday, Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) spoke about Marines being deployed to California amid protests.
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00:00Representative Mike Levin. Thank you, Jimmy. Good morning, everybody. For the past six and a half years, I've had the great honor to represent our Marines and sailors on Camp Pendleton. And during my time in Congress, I've fought for them. I fought for their families. I fought for our veterans to ensure that our service members are the most prepared anywhere in the world. And through my work, I've had the privilege of meeting with so many Marines stationed right at Camp Pendleton and
00:29the surrounding communities. And I can tell you that none of them signed up for what the Trump administration is doing right now. Our Marines did not sign up to repress civilians. They didn't sign up to be used as pawns in a political agenda. The decision to deploy Marines to Los Angeles is an abuse of power. Full stop. The state of California, as has been said, neither requested the National Guard nor the Marines. The president sent them anyway. It's all about power.
00:58Let me be very clear. As my colleagues have said, we all support the right to peaceful, peaceful protest. It's essential for a healthy democracy. We strongly condemn the agitators who are committing acts of violence. Their behavior is completely unacceptable. And you're giving people like Stephen Miller exactly the images that they want.
01:19And that makes it even easier to then pick a fight over political retribution. But by sending the Marines to Los Angeles, the president is fanning the flames of a very delicate situation.
01:32He wants the protests to spiral so we can crack down even further. I'll always support our service members. And the vast majority of Marines are not trained for this. They're training for nonlethal weapons and for crowd control and for civil disobedience. It's happening right now because they haven't had it before.
01:50It's a total of four days. It's a total of four days, four days that they're training for this purpose. It's dangerous. It threatens the very apolitical nature of our armed forces. Again, the president's sending Marines into a state that has not asked for their help, into a situation they're not trained for. I'm concerned this is not going to end well.
02:09We're going to continue to fight back against it in every way that we can.