Rioters tore down a statue of George Washington in Grand Park near Los Angeles City Hall on Thursday evening, the latest monument to fall in the ongoing left-wing demonstrations around the country.
The monument to the first President of the United States was apparently vandalized and draped in the American flag when it was toppled.
Unconfirmed video and images of the tearing down and the aftermath circulated on social media (language warning):
Local CBS affiliate KCAL-9 reported:
Seven people were arrested Thursday night after a statue of George Washington in downtown Los Angeles was defaced and torn from its base, the L.A. Police Department said.
According to initial reports, a group of protesters gathered in Grand Park at about 7 p.m. and defaced the statue, located on Hill Street between Temple and 1st streets, before forcibly removing it from its base.
The statue has stood in the city since 1933, KCAL noted.
In 2017, when asked why he opposed removing Confederate monuments, President Donald Trump said that the left would not stop there, but would soon seek to tear down monuments to American heroes, including George Washington.
“So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee, I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week?” Trump asked. “And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after. You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
The media mocked Trump at the time for his prediction.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.