President Donald Trump’s ally and talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw was embedded with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during contentious raids that sparked furious protests in Los Angeles, allowing him to use footage from the operation for his streaming show.
CNN.com said that the footage being filmed will be part of his “Dr. Phil Primetime” show, which is streamed on his conservative channel.
“McGraw’s presence on the ground in L.A. reinforces the made-for-TV nature of Trump’s immigration crackdown,” wrote CNN.com.
He was in Chicago with Ice back in January. I might have thought that was enough. But apparently it’s a regular show now.
He’s supposedly a psychologist and he’s exploiting people’s agony for MAGA and money. What a horrible person.
Oprah must be so proud. First Dr. Oz and now Dr. Phil. Is it only a matter of time before Rachel Ray and Bob Greene join up?
James Fallows makes the case I’ve been anxious to read. He spent lots of time in China and therefore sees this phenomenon very clearly:
This post is about three aspects of China’s modern history that Americans should pay more attention to—for our own good. Two of them are well-known Chinese (and American) success stories that Trump-era policy is ignoring. The third is a self-inflicted disaster in China with all too many similarities to the current MAGA path. All are being discussed non-stop in the China-hand crowd, but they should move more into mainstream attention. (This post is occasioned by Donald Trump’s talk this past week with Xi Jinping, and the increasing insanity of the US approach toward China.)
Donald Trump may not know any Chinese history, or any history at all.1 The people around him may not care. The rest of us can’t afford to ignore it.
Let’s start with the two clear success stories, now being reversed.
I’ll leave it to you to read the success stories that are being reversed. It’s about higher education and industrial policy.
This is the bad news:
In the first week I was at college, in September 1966, I attended a campuswide lecture by the renowned China scholar John King Fairbank. Something big is happening in China, he said. But we’re not sure exactly what it is. The mystery was because China was then so sealed off from the outside world.
That something turned out to be the launch of Mao’s disastrous Cultural Revolution, then just dawning, which unleashed forces of nihilism, victimization, and violence across the country through most of the following decade.
Everyone who’s read about Chinese history knows about the carnage that followed. But not that many Americans are Chinese history buffs. And for people in China, this is one of three awkward moments of 20th century Chinese Communist history being erased from public awareness, through info-control. (The other two are the devastating nationwide famines during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” of the 1950s, and the years of political repression that followed the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.3)
Despite nonstop reminders that China and the rest of Asia really “matter” to Americans, it’s still a far less accessible-seeming part of US public knowledge than info about most of Europe (or the Americas). It’s too far away, the languages are too different and difficult, fewer people have ongoing ties or familiarity there. An intriguing data point: Only about 1,000 American students are now enrolled in Chinese universities. More than 22,000 now attend schools just in the UK.
One result of this imbalanced familiarity is that when Americans hear or talk about dictatorship, fascism, and oppression, we’re likely to talk or think about Nazis. (Or maybe about Stalin’s gulags, or Putin’s enemies falling out of buildings.) The weakness of these as examples or analogies is that they’re so over the top.
Instead I wish Americans would start reading, thinking, and talking even more about the disaster of China’s Cultural Revolution. Because it is all too easy to imagine that most of what Mao and the Red Guards did to China, Trump and Doge and Miller and Noem and Bondi can be doing to the United States.
Just after Trump took office again, many China hands wrote valuable essays about just this parallel. For instance: Our friend Orville Schell with “Trump’s Cultural Revolution.” Or one in CleanTechnica titled “Science Purge Is Part of United States’ Echoing Of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.” Or this by Geremie Barme likening Trump to Mao during Trump’s first term. There are many more. Recently Michael Bonin, in “Can Today’s American people learn something from the Chinese Cultural Revolution?” laid out a set of unnerving parallels. (These are direct quotes, with parenthetical comments as in the original.)
– First, it is a revolution which mobilizes people about culture…
– This purging is the result of an irrepressible desire for revenge…
– The victims are at the same time intellectuals and officials, although bureaucrats appear as the main target…The destruction of the administration is based on a lawless terror implemented by radicals protected at the highest level (Red Guards in China, members of DOGE in the US), putting into jeopardy entire branches of the administration.
– This “revolution” is quick and bewildering, leaving everyone overwhelmed.
– The great leader is trying to reform the ideology of the entire people by destroying nefarious ideas (“woke”, “LGBT+” in the US, “revisionist”, “counterrevolutionary” in Mao’s China).
– This ideological reform relies on the imposition of a “correct” vocabulary by coercive means (thus the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America as decreed by Trump.)…
– An essential method for controlling the minds of the people is the cult of personality of the great leader…
– Finally, an important similarity is the ideal of a “purified” society that is free of dangerous outsiders.
What the Cultural Revolution boiled down to was a cult-driven assault on knowledge itself. On scholarship, on expertise, on rules, on institutions that might outlast one mood or one set of rulers. It was “feed it into the wood chipper,” before wood chippers were invented. It was “move fast and break things,” in a country too poor to afford much breakage. It was “some men just want to watch the world burn.” It is what China did to itself, and what some Americans are doing to this country now.
Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.
And they are trying to re-order society in a dozen different conflicting ways. Trump wants to be a king, Stephen Miller wants to be Hitler, Russell Vought wants to create an authoritarian theocracy, RFK Jr. wants to destroy medical research so he can be a wellness and supplement influencer, Elon Musk wants to go to Mars, Pete Hegseth wants a drink and JD Vance wants to be a real boy.
Unfortunately, I think the Supreme Court majority wants to believe that this is all going to be fine so they are taking the opportunity make the presidency super powerful for someone like Ronald Reagan or George Bush, a very unlikely occurrence.
None of this has any justification beyond these people’s rank, primitive desire to wield power over anyone they choose. And the Republican party has given it to them. And yes, that includes the voters who did vote for all this.
Trump pretends that Homan’s in charge but endorses arresting Newsom — because of his “train policy” ???
Newsom’s been on my shitlist lately but I thought this was pretty good. How else can you respond to this pig?
Meanwhile, Trump works to calm the situation as he usually does:
Trump: "This is a statement from the president concerning the catastrophic Gavin Newscum inspired Riots going on in Los Angeles … IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!" pic.twitter.com/Mlgr4VFmaC
By happy coincidence, the city is currently bathed in purple. The jacaranda trees seem to bloom later and later every year, and right now they are dropping their violet flowers across streets and sidewalks. This served as an unintentional tribute to David Huerta, president of the California chapter of the purple-and-yellow-clad SEIU union, who as of Monday morning was detained in the bowels of the downtown Edward Roybal Federal Building for a third straight day.
In response, thousands of Angelenos flocked to Gloria Molina Grand Park to sing, dance, chant, and demand Huerta’s release. By mid-afternoon, they got it—along with a federal conspiracy charge that the Department of Homeland Security was in such haste to produce that they redacted the name of the special agent supplying claims in an affidavit, only to reveal that name halfway down the page. (It was Ryan Ribner.)
The crowd in Grand Park, and at a handful of downtown hotspots on Monday, mixed intense anger at Huerta’s detention, the immigration raids he was protesting when he was injured and arrested, and the presence of National Guard troops at the Roybal Federal Building, with determination, pride and even joy. You could see mini-reunions break out in the crowd, people reconnecting to join in common purpose. (I had a couple of these moments myself.) Los Angeles has thus far emerged from four days of protest with a clear set of goals: driving ICE, the National Guard, and apparently now the Marines from the city and county. And there’s a sense of this as a beginning, a cross between an organizing kickoff and a backyard barbeque, complete with the ubiquitous bacon-wrapped hot dog carts, manned by migrants as well.
The spasms of defiance, impressive though they may be, are scattered. Practically the entirety of the city is going about its business, blissfully unaware of what’s mainly taking place within a five-block radius. Even from block to block you could encounter nothing, followed by a combination of cries of “¡Chinga la migra!” (“Fuck the border patrol!”) and Tejano music. And while lingering images of burnt-out self-driving Waymo cars continue to play out on television and social media, the mood and spirit on Monday was overwhelmingly peaceful. The tensest standoff was led by clergy.
Trump’s escalation of federal forces may yet produce the violence he so eagerly seeks. But it’s just as important to note that these federal forces are not really doing anything, confined to the perimeter of the federal building and nowhere else. It’s unclear what Marines will do other than line up behind them. The front lines are manned by LAPD, armed with flash-bang grenades and less-lethal munitions and a gallery of other weaponry.
The idea that anyone must be deployed to defend heavily armed officers from “increased threats,” as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth squawked Monday night, could not be more ludicrous, unless you identify threats as teenagers holding signs.
Read it all. This whole thing is a provocation for Trump to perform his manly, racist throwback strongman routine for the cult. Unfortunately the act requires massive human sacrifice.
During the last months of the presidential campaign Donald Trump would hold his campaign rallies in places like Pennsylvania and complain about Vice President Kamala Harris’s home state of California being a violent hellscape that had its residents cowering in terror of the rampaging hordes of immigrant criminals who were routinely killing people in their beds. He would often complain that the police were hamstrung by “woke” policies that wouldn’t allow them to take the gloves off. At one of them he even daydreamed about what he would do about it if he became president again — allow the cops to have “one really violent day.”
Trump says his idea for stopping crime is to allow for “one really violent day”: “One rough hour, and I mean real rough…” pic.twitter.com/6XeVXL6R8b
His crowds obviously loved it. He’s always entertained them with his lurid, violent fantasies. It’s one of the things they love about him.
Californians didn’t love it so much, though. The fact that Harris hailed from the state was certainly an invitation for him to trash the state but he’d been doing that long before she was in the race. In fact, despite owning a house and a golf course in Los Angeles, he was openly hostile toward the state ever since it failed to vote for him in 2016.
During the first term he raged at the state for failing to “clean the floors of the forest” which he claimed was responsible for the fires that hit Northern California. As The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein reported, during the global pandemic crisis, he demanded that if the state wanted pandemic supplies and federal help they would need to “ask nicely” and be prepared to capitulate on issues like sanctuary cities. He and then-Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called such requests a “blue state bailout” and suggested that the state should go bankrupt if they needed relief during the emergency. He behaved similarly to other blue states, but reserved a special portion of his ire for California.
He started off his second term by maligning Los Angeles during the devastating wildfires in January. He fatuously insisted that if the state had listened to him about “turning on the valve” in northern California to release water to the south from Canada, there would have been no fires. He even ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release millions of gallons into a flood plain and then weirdly claimed that he’d “invaded” Los Angeles and solved its water problem.
Trump: "I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water and the water is now flowing down. They have so much water they don't know what to do … we broke in to do it." pic.twitter.com/p2A8Yql9VN
All that was bad enough. But now he’s pretty much declared war on Los Angeles.
Ever since Trump came into office with his mandate for “Mass Deportation Now” he’s been impatient with the pace and the numbers. What was touted as a plan to rid the country of violent gang members has proved to be less fruitful than he promised and anyway, he always meant to deport as many immigrants as possible regardless of their legal status or criminal history. (Why else would he pounce on the Haitian community as he did?) As the Washington Examiner reported last week Trump’s enforcer and shadow president Stephen Miller brought the hammer down on ICE in recent days, instituting a quota and demanding that they stop looking for criminals and start arresting people at their workplaces, schools and outside places like Home Depot and 7-eleven.
They’ve been doing smaller raids around th country for some time. But after Miller’s edicts they are now waging full-scale assaults and they’ve come to L.A., with its large Latino and Asian immigrant communities, carrying assault weapons and wearing masks, to make an example of the already stressed city which is still recovering from an epic natural disaster. What better way to demonstrate our new constitution shredding, authoritarian police state? (And, naturally, it happens to be Stephen Miller’s home town, which he has loathed since he was an angry xenophobic misfit at Santa Monica High.)
Last week ICE began a series of large scale raids, naturally provoking protests from the community. As the demonstrations against them escalated over Friday and Saturday ICE lied about the LAPD failing to help protect them, clearly as a way to allow Trump to deploy the National Guard.
He claimed it was a riot. Los Angeles knows what a riot is. We have had real ones here and this is not that. He did not ask the Governor to deploy the Guard as he is expected to do. He instead evoked a very rarely used law that was last applied in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson to protect civil rights workers from local police, which allows him to federalize those troops.
He issued a memorandum ordering “at least 2,000” troops to the city of L.A. for “no less” than 60 days. It instructed former Fox News weekend host Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to have active duty military on stand-by as well. Several hundred of these federalized California National Guard troops entered the city on Sunday and all this action did was escalate tensions and prompt more unrest. But then, that was the point.
I live here and I can validate the fact that immigrants in this city are part of the fabric of our lives. There have always been many undocumented workers here and they’re part of the community — they’re are our families, friends and co-workers. We value them and the contribution they make culturally and economically. Nobody here is asking for this. Having militarized federal cops and active duty troops raiding our neighborhoods and violently grabbing people off the streets is the real invasion, not the people who’ve been living and working here forever.
And it isn’t going to be just us. Liza Goiten director of the National Security Project at the Brennan Center told CNN:
[Trump’s] memorandum doesn’t even mention Los Angeles. It authorizes the deployment of federalized national guard forces and active armed duty forces anywhere in the country where protests against ICE activity are occurring regardless of whether those protests involve any violence or in places where protests are simply likely to occur. And that could really be anywhere in the country. That kind of pre-emptive nationwide deployment of the military to effectively police protests is unprecedented incredibly dangerous and an abuse of any law the president might be relying on. ”
On Sunday Donald Trump spoke to the media and said this.
Trump: Well, we're going to have troops everywhere.
Reporter: What’s the bar for sending in the Marines
We can probably expect to see more escalation by Trump in the coming days. The state of California is filing suit so perhaps the court will stay his hand temporarily. But that won’t be the end of it. If they rule that he cannot use this rarely used law, he will almost certainly invoke the Insurrection Act and if necessary Martial Law. It’s clear that this is just the beginning. Anyone who lives in a blue American city should get ready. They’re coming for you too.
Salon
And by the way — the whole city is not under siege as the media would have you think:
And if you add in protests from Friday/Saturday, the entire weekend would look like this.
After assembling the long rant earlier, I meant to run something humorous. Then I ran across this man addressing national guardsmen outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Los Angeles. He is not hurling rock or bottle or epithets. He’s come armed with truth.
I hate cliche expressions like “speak truth to power.” Usually, because it’s not done as masterfully as this.
🔥 “You’re on the wrong side of history. You should be standing here with us… you took an oath to the constitution, not the fascists in the White House— he’s laughing at you… You’re tough behind your masks & fatigues, but how do you feel on the inside?” 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/imb0pX7un7
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) June 9, 2025
Damn. Put this man on television tonight, Rachel Maddow.
Remember that time protests reduced Minneapolis and Portland to ash following the murder of George Floyd? Neither do the residents. Occasionally one hears about someone’s surprise on their first visit to New York City, home to Fox News and Donald Trump’s former home, to find that it’s not a crime-ridden battlescape.
But Fox News and Trump make every effort to paint those pictures. Pull back the lens and what appears massive on TV is very, very local. Someone sets trash alight in the street and photographers lie on the ground to capture a conflagration closeup. (I can’t find the clip I saw now.) Blocks away, people go to work and buy groceries and gas.
The clashes btw authorities & protesters in Paramount & Compton were "far from widespread." They covered the area directly around the Alondra Blvd Home Depot, but provided dramatic video for Fox & an excuse for a White House eager to deploy the Natl Guard.www.latimes.com/california/s…
The usual suspects are revving up their propaganda machines (and Elon Musk’s) again to declare Los Angeles invaded, under siege, the whole city “burning.”
Ask a few people who live there what’s really not happening.
Spiro’s Ghost responded on Sunday afternoon to Trump’s claims that the city has been “invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals”:
This is beyond delusional insanity, it needs its own new terminology for how devoid of reality it is. This man is a deranged lunatic.
I live in L.A., am out doing errands. L.A. is exactly like it is on any other day, with a few hundred protestors in a couple of spots in a city of nearly 10,000,000
But no! It’s an “insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States,” declares a frothing Stephen Miller.
What you retweeted below is a peaceful protest. This, in contrast, is what an insurrection against the sovereignty of the United States looks like:pic.twitter.com/Ng78R2ITDQhttps://t.co/kkQxMoCaRC
The few who set fire to vehicles or threw rocks at police or their vehicles are acting outside the law and deserve prosecution (and due process). But the cameras love them. They’ll be in your faces for days providing Trump the justification he craves for going full-on autocracy.
Trump stopped just shy of invoking the Insurrection Act for the entire country on the pretext of a neighborhood protest against ICE raids in Los Angeles. Rarely in the field of human protest has so little crime by so few been blamed on so many. But Trump, Fox News, and MAGAs are up to the challenge.
Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.
Trump’s demands for law and order, and his call to deploy National Guard in Los Angeles are especially rich given that Trump sat on his hands as thousands of his followers sacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Hahaha. Mike Pence's successor claims that Donald Trump will never tolerate rioting and violence.
The administration that declares its “zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior” is giving the world a master class in presidential criminality as well as incompetence. Trump, already a convicted felon, has taken bribes, defied federal court orders, pardoned convicted insurrectionists, murderers, money launderers, embezzlers, fraudsters and tax evaders while dispatching masked police to snatch people off the streets without due process in violation of Constitutional.
As we covered on Sunday, the lack of self-awareness and shamelessness from Trump and his cohort of un-American enablers is breathtaking. But then so is the swiftness with which they’re working to turn this once-proud republic into The United Police States of America.
