Did anyone notice the sudden abundance of American flags being waved around by participants in the Los Angeles anti-ICE riots on Monday?
At some point between Sunday night and Monday morning, it dawned on the event organizers that optics matter. The spectacle of protestors waving Mexican flags as they hurled rocks and other objects at law enforcement officers and torched vehicles over the weekend was sending the wrong message. After all, if they felt such reverence for the country they’d left behind, why were they fighting so hard to stay in the US?
Late Monday afternoon, independent journalist Aldo Buttazzoni observed organizers—dressed in matching black t-shirts reading “Anti Trump Social Club” in rainbow lettering—distributing American flags to protesters ahead of that night’s installment of the ongoing rage rally.
Later, he approached the group to ask why the flags had disappeared. One young woman replied, “We got rid of all of them. When they started coming, we were sitting ducks out here.”
Buttazzoni told them the flags were a good idea. They agreed—and said they planned to bring them back out later.
He posted this brief exchange on X, explaining, “It’s clear they realized the current optics were a disaster—now they’re intentionally using American Flags in an attempt to rebrand and reshape the existing media narrative of the riots.”
Make no mistake: this so-called “protest” is a carefully orchestrated operation, coordinated by the Democratic Party. Townhall’s Kurt Schlichter offered an excellent explanation of what’s really going on in a Monday op-ed.
“This is not a battle of cops versus rioters,” Schlichter wrote. “It is a battle between narratives. Most people see regime media video of Third World savages waving the tacky banners of their garbage homelands, lighting fires, hassling cops, and doing other things consistent with being barbarians, and think that Los Angeles is in chaos and therefore get scared.
He continued:
The idea behind this color revolution – it is organized and planned, not spontaneous or genuine – is to intimidate normal people into submitting and embracing the politicians associated with its goals in the hopes that it will stop. This is the work of the Democrat Party; the rioters are its useful idiots, acting to support the party’s goals while its maintaining deniability. But this scheme only succeeds if the target is feckless and weak, which such targets usually are. Trump isn’t. He’s going to win this because he understands this fight better than his enemies. The chaos is an illusion; his strength is reality.
The Democratic Party is second to none when it comes to protest planning. They are practiced at the art of rapid mobilization. Through a well-established social media network that includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and live-video apps, they can organize a protest on short notice.
Schlichter is correct when he says this is a battle of narratives. At the moment, Democrats are trying to thwart the Trump administration’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants — even if they are criminals. After all, they worked hard to get them here.
The party has two problems at the moment. First, President Trump understands their modus operandi too well by now to hand the party a win. He knows that Democrats are using the riots to stop his agenda and he refuses to let that happen. When California Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to provide protection to ICE agents and federal property, Trump went over his head and called in 2,000 National Guard troops. Next, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mobilized 700 U.S. Marines to support the troops.
And despite Newsom’s lawsuit against him, Trump authorized the deployment of an additional 2,000 National Guard troops on Monday.
[The last instance of a president deploying the National Guard without a governor’s consent occurred in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to safeguard civil rights marchers traveling from Selma to Montgomery—over the objections of Gov. George Wallace.]
The second challenge facing Democrats is that their tactics, through overuse, have become increasingly familiar—and predictable—to the public. A growing segment of the electorate now views them as the party of thugs. Many voters are beginning to perceive that the party is far more focused on consolidating power than on serving the best interests of the American people.
With the pivotal 2026 midterms approaching, Democrats are eager to broaden their appeal. They want to project patriotism and reconnect with mainstream voters—hence the idea of handing out American flags to protestors to neutralize the effect of the Mexican flags on display throughout the weekend.
Hopefully, voters will recognize this for what it is: a hollow and calculated gesture.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn or X.
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