Conservative commentator Michael Knowles tore into Gov. Gavin Newsom on "TMZ Live" -- ripping his response to the L.A. ICE protests and claiming it was such a mess, Trump had no choice but to step in.
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00:00What do you make of this, of the troops being deployed in Los Angeles and while this is all
00:10going back and forth between Trump and Newsom? So I'm going to say something nice about Gavin
00:14Newsom. That speech that was on TV, that was the best speech Gavin Newsom has ever given,
00:18at least about four minutes of it. I thought that first four minutes were really great.
00:22It went downhill when the sound was put in there. No, I don't think this is just a personal fight
00:26between two guys. Obviously, Newsom does want to run for president. I don't think that comments,
00:30the comments from Trump on the houses burning down, I don't think they were distasteful
00:34because Trump actually warned Newsom about the risk of fires in LA. What was it, six,
00:39seven years ago? He said, if you don't deal with your brush, if you don't stop diverting water into
00:43the Pacific Ocean, you're going to have a massive fire problem. Newsom didn't listen. So he bears a
00:47lot of responsibility for that. He's been a terrible governor. And so, yeah, the federal
00:50government's got to come in now when you got cop cars being lit on fire, when you got cops being
00:54assaulted. Los Angeles is not on fire. Parts of downtown Los Angeles are on fire. Are you telling
00:59me right now that I should not believe my lying eyes when I look at the pictures of multiple cop
01:04cars on fire, of an illegal alien arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a cop trying to
01:09murder a cop? I don't know. I see a lot of fire in those pictures. And all that is awful. And all that
01:13is in a five, six, seven blocks, square block radius, right? So to be saying that Los Angeles is
01:22burning is disingenuous and the president knows it and you know it also, but that's the message
01:27that you want to put out to the world. Guys, I don't care. I don't care if it's a one square mile
01:32radius or a 10 square mile radius or a hundred square mile radius. If you have gangs of foreign
01:36nationals running around your country, throwing Molotov cocktails to kill cops and waving the flag
01:41of a foreign nation, I think the federal government has an interest in putting that down.
01:45We have seen a crackdown on that by the police. The local police are the ones who established a
01:52curfew. The local police are the people that are arresting these folks. The National Guard
01:58are protecting one building, which is great, or a few different federal buildings, but not really
02:04the ones that are going after these folks. Is it necessary to have the National Guard and
02:10potentially the Marines when we still don't even know what the Marines are going to be doing?
02:13Yeah, Alex, I think you're actually helping to make my point in defense of Trump's relative
02:18restraint here. Had Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom taken care of this on day one, day two, day three,
02:23Trump would not have needed to federalize the National Guard and activate the Marines. But there
02:27are federal properties there that need to be protected. As you point out, he's allowing the LAPD finally
02:32to get some control over the situation. But Trump does need to come in, especially when you're dealing
02:38with a federal issue, which is immigration. I mean, guys, don't forget, whatever Kim Kardashian is
02:43babbling about. President Trump won the popular vote on a program of mass deportations. And what's
02:49funny is Trump has been restrained in the deportations. There's an estimated 11 to 16 million
02:54illegal aliens in the country. At this rate, President Trump, by the end of his term, might
02:58deport, I don't know, 400,000, probably tops. So he's been very restrained here. And even that is
03:04impelling the left to go out and wave, notice, not really the American flag. They're waving the Mexican
03:09flag and they're assaulting cops. I think that's going to give Republicans even more of the popular
03:13vote next time. What Trump is doing is popular and it's popular because it's right.
03:17Would you be cool if a Democratic president did this in a Republican state like where you now live?
03:24No, we talked on our show. The issue is for years about how you left California because you didn't
03:29like the leadership of Gavin Newsom. You're now in Tennessee because you believe in states' rights.
03:34if all of a sudden President Gavin Newsom, I know what a concept, right, decides to send in
03:44the troops to Tennessee because he disagrees with your governor. Would you like that?
03:49Well, it's not just that he would be doing it because he disagrees with my governor. It would
03:52be if my governor were violating federal law and really basic aspects of federal law, like who gets
03:57to come in here and use American services and obtain birthright citizenship for his kids and
04:01transform the electorate. That's really why President Trump has to have the federal government
04:06get involved here, because what Governor Newsom is doing is violating federal law in an egregious way
04:13that the American people, including those voting in the popular vote, were able to reject back in
04:19November. So that's the issue here. If it were just Mussolini trying to chase me all the way to
04:24Tennessee where I'm getting low taxes and free air and trying to bother me for smoking cigars or owning
04:29guns or something, that would be a different issue. But here you've got a major national issue going on
04:35after an election. I don't know. Frankly, I think that Newsom's terrible response here
04:40is going to preclude that horrible outcome of him ending up in the White House anyway.