President Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that the protesters in Los Angeles “are insurrectionists,” a term that several of his aides have been using as well, in what may become a rationale for him to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act.
Invoking the act would give Mr. Trump broad authority to use the United States military to deal with violent protests in California and possibly elsewhere.
“The people who are causing the problems are bad people, they are insurrectionists,” Mr. Trump told a small group of reporters after he landed on the White House lawn Monday. He arrived by helicopter from Camp David, where he had attended a meeting Sunday night.
California officials have pushed back against the administration’s language about the scale of the protests, which they say have been limited to a relatively small area, as well as the White House’s characterization of the situation. In an interview on CNN Monday, Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said Mr. Trump’s decision over the weekend to order 2,000 National Guard troops into the city felt like a “deliberate” attempt to sow chaos, and she pleaded with the Trump administration to “please dial this back.”
When Mr. Trump was asked about a frequent target of his ire, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who said on Monday that the state would sue over the order federalizing the National Guard, Mr. Trump called Mr. Newsom “a nice guy” but added that he considered the governor “grossly incompetent.”
When a reporter noted to Mr. Trump that Governor Newsom had dared Mr. Trump’s border czar, Thomas D. Homan, to have him arrested, the president replied: “I’d do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great.”
But Mr. Trump then added that “Gavin likes the publicity,” which left unclear whether Mr. Trump truly endorsed the idea or thought it would give the governor an advantage in his contentious interactions with the White House.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
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