Is Donald Trump's June 2025 mobilization of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles just like President George H.W. Bush's 1992 decision to mobilize the National Guard during riots in Los Angeles? No, that's not true: In 1992, both Gov. Pete Wilson and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley asked the President for National Guard to stop riots in Los Angeles. But, in June of 2025, neither California Gov. Gavin Newsom nor Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass requested National Guard assistance and opposed Trump's decision to send in the Guard.
The claim appeared in a June 9, 2025 X.com post (archived here) on the @kylenabecker account. It opened: "Don't let the media gaslight you."
It continued:
During the 1992 L.A. riots, President George W. Bush mobilized the National Guard, US Army, & US Marines to stop the violent rioters from wrecking Los Angeles. It's not "unprecedented." Trump is not a 'dictator.'
Here's what the post looked like at the time this fact check was written:
(Source: X.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
The post mistakenly refers to the 1992 president as George W. Bush, when it was his father, George H.W. Bush who in 1992 sent the National Guard to Los Angeles.
The most significant difference between the two cases is that California officials opposed National Guard mobilization in 2025, saying it will make the situation worse. Federal agents' actions in immigration raids appear to have sparked the at-times violent June protests, while in 1992 it was local police brutality that helped start the riots.
Newsom publicized a letter he wrote, telling Trump that sending the National Guard will inflame tensions and asking him to rescind the mobilization order. Mayor Karen Bass has also repeatedly said she does not want the Guard deployed to Los Angeles and issued a formal statement calling it "a chaotic escalation" (archived here.)
Trump disagreed with their assessment that local police were addressing street protests against ICE immigration raids and The White House issued a statement declaring he was within his rights to federalize the National Guard and send troops to Los Angeles.
In contrast to that, Bush repeatedly noted his cooperation with local officials.
The videotape of Bush's May 1, 1992 nationally televised announcement has been posted to YouTube by the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library. About 25 seconds into video of that announcement, Bush noted that he was working with Republican California Gov. Pete Willson and Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a civil rights lawyer who was also a former police officer.
At 1:13, Bush detailed the cooperative agreement by which he put 3,000 National Guardsmen on duty in the city of Los Angeles, with 2,200 more standing by. He announced 3,000 members of the 7th Infantry and 1,500 Marines were ready, too, at El Toro Air Station in California.
Tonight, at the request of the governor and the mayor, I have committed these troops to help restore order.
During his announcement, Bush was sharply critical of the officers who were caught on videotape beating Rodney King, a widely televised clip that is thought to have started what became known as the South Central riots. Starting at 3:13, Bush said:
... what you saw and what I saw on the TV video was revolting. I felt anger. I felt pain and I thought how can I explain this to my grandchildren, civil rights leaders, and just plain citizens fearful of and sometimes victimized by police brutality ... I know good and decent policemen who were equally appalled.
The scale of the 1992 and 2025 events is also different.
When the 1992 riots ended, the Los Angeles Times reported 63 people had been killed, 2,383 had been injured, more than 12,000 had been arrested, and estimates of property damage from thousands of fires reached $1 billion.
As of June 10, 2025, the LA Times and LA Police Department had not attributed any deaths to the protests, which were sparked by aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles. The LA Times reported 50 arrests as of June 8.
There are past cases of the President putting National Guard troops in harm's way against the wishes of a Governor - most notably Lyndon Johnson's mobilization of the National Guard to protect civil rights marchers from Alabama mobs - but Bush is not one such case.
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