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With members of the National Guard in the background, Rep. Maxine Waters speaks to reporters outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, California, on Sunday.
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With members of the National Guard in the background, Rep. Maxine Waters speaks to reporters outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, California, on Sunday. (Frederic J. Brown - AFP / Getty Images)

Fact Check: Is Maxine Waters Right that Just '1 Or 2' People Have Committed Violence in LA Riots?

 By C. Douglas Golden  June 10, 2025 at 7:27am
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It’s not unusual to find Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California in the midst of a controversy whenever mass lawbreaking is in effect. The question is, is she telling the truth?

Waters, a notorious firebrand, was in the news over the weekend as parts of Los Angeles burned due to riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that began last week.

Most of the news involved the fact that Waters, whose district includes part of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, was one of five Democratic lawmakers who said they were turned away from an detention facility where those who were being held after the raids or due to protests against the raids were being held.

“All five members — Representatives Maxine Waters, Jimmy Gomez and Norma Torres of California and Representatives Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez of New York — said that they should have been allowed to enter the buildings as members of Congress,” The New York Times reported Sunday.

However, Waters managed to make a bit more news on Monday when she appeared on CNN and insisted that the violence in Los Angeles was so non-existent that it could be characterized as actions carried out by “one or two or a few people.”

“I just want to point out, and I’m sure you know this, congresswoman, there has been some violence in the course of these protests,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer told her toward the end of the interview.

“Some police officers were assaulted, and some vehicles were damaged in the process. So, there has been some violence out there, right?”

Not so much, as far as Rep. Waters was concerned.

Should Maxine Waters be voted out of office?

“Well, the thing about it is you may have people, one or two or a few people who will not conform,” she said.

“That happens everywhere. That happens in our workplace. There’s always someone who does something. But we are saying to people, ‘Don’t be goaded. Don’t be goaded into a confrontation. Don’t be goaded into violence because that’s what Trump wants.’

“He wants the violence, so that he can send in the military and create martial law. That’s what he wants. And if a few people were doing that, I’ve not heard of anybody being shot. I’ve not heard of anybody being killed. I’ve not heard of anybody being beaten. So, I don’t know what all this so-called violence is all about.”

As you may have heard, President Trump has taken quite the opposite tack, writing on Truth Social Sunday that “violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations” and that he was authorizing the federal government “to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots.”

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In a presidential memorandum issued the day before, Trump authorized military presence in Los Angeles “to temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.”

And, if you looked on social media, it wasn’t difficult to find videos that indicated it wasn’t “one or two or a few people,” unless your definition of “a few” is indeed very broad — so broad as to be almost sarcastic in its application, which almost certainly wasn’t Rep. Waters’ intention.

WARNING: The following videos contain vulgar language and images of violence that some viewers will find offensive.

This is hardly just “a few” people engaging in violent lawlessness. And in terms of lawlessness against law enforcement, that wasn’t hard to find, either:

Meanwhile, local station KTLA-TV reported that “scooters and other items,” including “commercial grade fireworks” and “Molotov cocktails,” were being thrown at police officers.

“That can kill you,” Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell.



While it is impossible to judge the scale of these protests at the moment or the damage they present, and it’s also impossible to know what Rep. Waters meant when she said “one or two or a few” rioters were responsible for this kind of violence, this is simply too widespread and self-evidently destructive to justify her remarks — or CNN airing them unchallenged without correction.

We rate this claim as false.

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C. Douglas Golden
Contributor, Commentary
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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