Last Friday (6 June), a series of protests broke out across Los Angeles after it had emerged that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were carrying out raids in areas of the city with prominent Latino populations.
The LA protests only grew further on Monday (9 June), when United States President Donald Trump - who has previously vowed to launch the 'biggest deportation operation' in US history, as part of a 'complete restoration of America' - ordered another 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to deploy to the city following an initial deployment of 2,000 troops, a highly criticised decision which he is now being sued over.
In light of the latest news, a video of Trump's Democrat opponent in the last election, Kamala Harris, making an eerie prediction about the 78-year-old Republican wanting 'unchecked power' has resurfaced on social media with one post of the clip being captioned: "She *warned* us in just 3 minutes." Have a look:
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"Federalising the National Guard in California isn’t 'normal'. It’s the first move. Kamala Harris called it: Trump wants unchecked power and praised Hitler’s generals," the X post declared.
In the video in question, sees Harris, 60, discuss how Trump's former chief-of-staff, John Kelly, 'a retired four star general', said to her that Trump 'wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had'.
"Donald Trump said that because he does not want a military that is loyal to the United States Constitution. He wants a military that is loyal to him," she stated.
"He wants a military who will be loyal to him, personally, one that will obey his orders even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States.
"In just the past week [late October 2024], Donald Trump has repeatedly called his fellow Americans the enemy from within, and even said that he would use the United States military to go after American citizens."
Harris continued: "And let's be clear about who he considers to be the enemy from within, anyone who refuses to bend a knee or dares to criticise him would qualify, in his mind, as the enemy within, like judges, like journalists, like non partisan election officials.
"It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans."
She went on to label Trump as a 'fascist', claiming he had become 'increasingly unhinged and unstable', before adding that in a second term 'people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions'.
"Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be there to rein him in," she concluded. "So the bottom line is this, we know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power."
Trump's decision to deploy thousands of troops of the National Guard to the LA protests has been met with widespread backlash, with California Governor, Gavin Newsom, warning that US Marines 'shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfil the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President. This is un-American'.
The Governor of California also added that violence in parts of LA over ICE raids and arrests is 'exactly what Trump wanted'.
According to Newsom, the president had 'flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalise the National Guard' with his weekend decision that brought thousands of soldiers into federal service for two months to tackle 'a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States'.
He also highlighted the unsettling point that Trump’s memorandum effectively opens up the possibility of using both National Guard and active duty military to suppress protests nationwide.
"It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing," Newsom said, adding: "We’re suing him."
Topics: Kamala Harris, Politics, US News, News, Donald Trump
Rhiannon Ingle