Seth Meyers catches up on the Trump-Musk drama. Then he points out how the violent unrest in Los Angeles is nowhere near as widespread as the far right media wants its viewers and readers to think.
Gaby Hinsliff at The Guardian comments on the troop deployments in Los Angeles as an effort by TACO to shift the national gaze away from the unseemly drama with Musk.
Trump has got what he wanted, which is for everyone to switch channels: to stop gawping at his embarrassing fallout with Elon Musk over unfunded tax cuts, and flick over to the rival spectacle he has hastily created. After a brief interruption to scheduled programming, the great showman is back in control.
POLITICO's Melanie Mason in California shared this experience in a discussion with colleagues.
The protests have been isolated to downtown, as opposed to five years ago, when we saw demonstrations in all parts of the city. Also, the actual federal presence on the ground at this point is relatively minor: Newsom said that only 300 National Guard troops were actually deployed. The vast majority of crowd control was done by local law enforcement. [ ... ] Anecdotally, I got far more text messages from friends outside of LA concerned about what’s going on than from friends and family in LA having any personal encounter with the unrest.
Most people in L.A. have had no personal experience, even indirect, with the recent rioting.
