Trump Says He's Done Playing By The Rules With Military Forces

He also cited the Los Angeles Olympics, which are three years away, as a defense for sending in National Guard troops.

Explaining his decision to deploy National Guard troops in California without Gov. Gavin Newsom’s support, President Donald Trump said Tuesday he’s fine with defying protocol.

“You have to remember, I’ve been here before and I went right by every rule. And I waited for governors to say, ‘Send in the National Guard.’ They wouldn’t do it,” Trump said from the Oval Office as protests mount against his mass deportation campaign in Los Angeles.

“I said to myself, if that stuff happens again, we’ve got to make faster decisions, because they don’t want to do it,” he said of his thoughts during past mass protest events.

Trump’s remarks come a day after California sued Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for federalizing and deploying the California National Guard to help crush the protests, which have gone on for days in the Los Angeles area and are now spreading nationwide.

“Deploying over 4,000 federalized military forces to quell a protest or prevent future protests despite the lack of evidence that local law enforcement was incapable of asserting control and ensuring public safety during such protests represents the exact type of intrusion on State Power that is at the heart of the Tenth Amendment,” the lawsuit argued.