THE TROOPS: "We're overwhelmed," the police chief said!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 2025

At Fort Bragg, the president rants: What has been happening in L.A.? 

It isn't easy to say! One set of troops will say one thing. A second set will then say something different. 

In Blue America, we've largely been told that there's nothing to look at there—or at least, nothing much. That tribal (or national) storyline may seem hard to maintain at certain times—for example, when the Los Angeles chief of police is saying this, as he did on Sunday night, the third night of the event:

CHIEF MCDONNELL (6/9/25): As far as people have worried about the violence, it is violence I’ve seen that is disgusting. It has escalated now since the beginning of this incident. What we saw the first night was bad. What we've seen subsequent to that has been getting increasingly worse and more violent.

Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial-grade fireworks at our officers—that can kill you. We have adapted our tactics to be able to have a chance to be able to take these people into custody and to be able to hold them accountable.

We are overwhelmed as far as the number of people out there engaged in this type of activity and the type of things that they’re doing. They’ll take backpacks, and the backpack will have a cinder block in it. They have a hammer, and they'll break up the cinderblock and use that, pass it around to throw at officers, to throw at cars and throw at other people. 

We’ve seen people with hammers, and you've broadcast it, breaking the bollards behind the federal building and taking the rocks, if you will, or pieces of concrete, and throwing them at officers. We’ve had liquids of who knows what description thrown at officers. There’s no limit to what they’re doing to our officers.

Again, as I mentioned in my statement, I can’t thank our officers and partner police officials enough for going out there and taking care of the community and trying to be able to put themselves between the threat and the overall community. They do this night in and night out. In these past couple of nights, we’ve seen it at a level that I think disgusts every good person.

"We're overwhelmed," he said at one point. For the videotape, click here.

We don't know why Chief McDonnell said those things—but on the third (3rd) evening of the event, that's what the police chief said. His remarks have been cited by news orgs aimed at Red America. Among news orgs aimed at Blue America, we'd have to say not so much.

Has there really been (little or) nothing to look at as these events have unfolded? Here are excerpts from a report in Red America's National Review, a report in which Chief McDonnell's comments were quoted (no paywall):

L.A. Police Chief Admits Officers ‘Overwhelmed’ as Thousands of Rioters Block Freeway, Torch Cars

Thousands of anti-ICE rioters descended on a major freeway in Los Angeles Sunday evening, blocking traffic in both directions, while rioters downtown set off fireworks and torched several self-driving cars.

[...]

Around 4 p.m. local time on Sunday, a crowd of at least 2,000 rioters blocked both lanes of traffic on the 101, prompting authorities in riot gear to create a line to prevent them from moving forward. They pushed the crowd onto an exit ramp, though two motorcyclists attempted to break through the skirmish line, injuring two officers.

The road was reopened around 5 p.m., but had to be shut down again around 7:30 p.m. when rioters started throwing objects and damaging police vehicles.

In downtown L.A., rioters were seen destroying self-driving Waymo taxis and spray painting anti-ICE messages on them. At least three were set on fire while protesters slashed tires and smashed windshields. Lime electric scooters were also thrown into the flames. One rioter appeared to have a makeshift flamethrower, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Those events occurred during the event's third day. Along the way, the National Review report quoted parts of what Chief McDonnell had said.

Homer's famous siege of Troy was a siege of the Late Bronze Age, fought with Bronze Age weapons. The current events are part of a war of the Information Age. The troops of the warring tribes (or warring nations) are employing the weapons of that age.

Red and Blue troops have tended to sift ongoing events in familiar ways. Then too, out went the commander in chief to perform this own aggressive acts of messaging.

With Secretary Noem eager to help, the commander drove his own messaging. Below, you see headlines from reports in Mediaite about yesterday's events—about messaging the commander performed yesterday alone. 

The commander was whipping up a storm. The headlines in question were these:

Trump Calls the Second-Largest City in Country He Governs a ‘Trash Heap’

Trump Goads Troops at Fort Bragg Into Booing the Media: ‘Look What I Have to Put Up With!’

‘They Are Animals’: Trump Attacks Los Angeles Protesters, Calls Them ‘Paid Insurrectionists’

Noem Accuses Mexico’s President of Inciting LA Protests From Oval Office: ‘I Condemn Her’

NOW: Trump Threatens to Use ‘Very Big Force’ to Put Down Any Protests At His Birthday Military Parade

DHS Secretary Noem on Los Angeles: ‘They’re a City of Criminals’

Trump Asked Why He Thinks He Can Arrest Gavin Newsom—Says He Committed ‘Crime’ of ‘Running For Governor’

Trump Says His Border Czar Should Arrest California Governor Gavin Newsom

By our reckoning, the ranting at Fort Bragg was especially inappropriate. At any rate, we haven't linked to those reports. You can find them by scrolling back through yesterday's posts at Mediaite.

We ourselves might have amended a few of those headlines, even a few of those reports. That said, we think those headlines give you the gist of what President Trump was doing yesterday as the messaging war raged on.

The war continued early this morning. On Red America's Fox News Channel, it seemed to us that the misinformation started early in the five o'clock Eastern hour. 

The broadcast day on that "cable news" channel starts at 5 a.m. At 5:02 a.m., whether knowingly or not, news reader Brook Singman was already saying this to unsuspecting viewers of Fox & Friends First:

SINGMAN (6/11/25): [Governor] Newsom claims President Trump never called him when the protest broke out. But the president is bringing in the receipts, providing a screen shot to Fox News of a 16-minute phone call between him and Newsom on Saturday.

Sad! The 16-minute phone call in question occurred early Saturday morning in D.C., late Friday night on the west coast. As part of yesterday's messaging onslaught, Trump had said that he spoke with Newsom on Monday—a claim which has apparently turned out to be false.

Having said that, so what? The commander sent "the receipts" to Fox, and John Roberts and Molly Line produced a bungled report about the matter yesterday afternoon. This very morning, at 5:02, Singman extended the bungled reporting, whether knowingly or not. 

Yesterday, Mediaite reported the bungle by Roberts and Line. We'd like to spell it out in more detail, but knowing how way leads on to way, we'll admit that we might never be coming back.

On the other hand, this:

In yesterday's report, we started calling the roll of the Fox News Channel's troops. We started by calling the roll of certain Fox News Channel programs. 

Over the course of the past few months, Line has struck us as an especially comfortable propagandist. We've received that impression from watching her as a panelist on The Big Weekend Show.

To our eye, Line seems to be unusually comfortable in the propagandist role. By our reckoning, that doesn't mean that she's a bad person; it suggests that she's a person person. We humans are strongly inclined to behave in these tribal ways. 

It's as we noted yesterday. When he started calling the roll of the troops in the siege of Troy, Homer restricted himself to calling the names of the Achaeans (the Greeks)—the furious, rage-filled aggressors.

Tomorrow, we'll start to call the names of some of the Fox News Channel troops. Full disclosure:

It's almost impossible for those Red American troops to be totally wrong in the things they say. The endless bungles of our own Blue American troops have created that sad situation.

The bungling of our own Blue nation has been a key player for years. Our bungling has taken many forms.

Does our bungling continue today? Are we Blues able to spot it?

Tomorrow: Changes among the troops