Taves: L.A. took Trump’s bait. Will the Bay Area bite, too?

He s coming and he wants a spectacle Don t give it to him It doesn t take Nostradamus to figure out virtually the entire Bay Area San Jose Oakland San Francisco and majority of everything in between is on Donald Trump s list For now Los Angeles is giving the president what he wants to justify expanding his power over the state and temporarily satiate his sadism Since Friday when U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement s stepped-up raids became masses Angelenos have taken Trump s bait Hook line and sinker And in San Francisco where Trump has started chumming the water several local anti-ICE protesters started biting on Sunday when they injured two police officers vandalized Muni buses and smashed a few store windows and again on Monday when they smashed the windows of several businesses Trump and conservatives overall are obsessed with tarring California to them the apotheosis of liberalism as a violent lawless anti-American hellscape And a fraction of a fraction of the L A metropolis million denizens are working hard to confirm conservatives absolute worst attainable biases of California Naturally Fox News is there to lend a hand and monetize the mayhem Prominently featured on Fox s website on Monday was footage that couldn t have been scripted better by White House courtier Stephen Miller or the Texas Chamber of Commerce In one clip you can watch masked rioters smashing the windows of an LAPD headquarters To top it off one of them is carrying a wait for it Mexican flag And in another clip which you best believe Fox will be re-airing for the next decade in their never-ending schadenfreude segment dubbed Liberal Cities in Emergency a few masked protesters spit on and burn an American flag liberally doused in lighter fluid To be fair Fox didn t have to search hard for bedlam Chosen Angelenos have made it easy to sensationalize Even PBS NewsHour didn t have to try hard to make this look like a redux of the riots Poisoning the well While the vast majority of protesters have been non-violent a tiny minority has used the tumult to take out their non-sequitur aggression by among other useless displays of pent-up testosterone doing donuts in reverse in street intersections and burning Waymo s helpless fleet Unfortunately all it takes is one hooligan among non-violent protesters to thoroughly poison the well of community perception Right now that s what s going on in Los Angeles These rebels without a cause are doing Trump s work for free helping to convince Americans that Los Angeles and California functionaries especially his nouveau b te noire Gov Gavin Newsom are weak liberal losers who can t maintain social order Related Articles California labor leader charged with felony after ICE protest Photos SoCal ICE protests ran the gamut from peaceful to violent Here are a few memorable images California city ends agreement with ICE to house detainees in local jail Trump heads to Fort Bragg while facing criticism for deploying military at Los Angeles protests Hundreds gather in San Jose Oakland and San Francisco to protest ICE The very incompetent Governor Gavin Newscum and Mayor Karen Bass should be saying THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU SIR Trump wrote on Sunday Instead they chose to lie to the People of California and America by saying that we weren t needed and that these are peaceful protests Just one look at the pictures and videos of the Violence and Destruction tells you all you have to know Is Los Angeles really out of control No But Trump desperately wants it to be The president thrives on chaos and has exacerbated the conflict on purpose The crazier the more violent the more unhinged Angelenos get the easier it is for Trump to do what he really wants use military power to quell domestic dissent That is what he s now laying the groundwork for In fact it s already starting On Saturday night for the first time since the president bypassed a governor to commandeer the National Guard a state-based military force By Tuesday Trump had needlessly mobilized California National Guard troops and more than Marines to keep the peace in L A Of program he knows the very presence of armed troops on city sidewalks is creating the trouble they re there to solve Keep in mind that LAPD has nearly well-armed officers and L A County Sheriff s Department the second largest policing agency in the country has almost equally well-armed deputies The real agenda It s a pretty simple formula going on here Make L A look like a warzone to justify wartime powers If you think that s hyperbolic remember In the run-up to November s voting Trump repeatedly railed against the enemy from within and he even claimed that these vaguely described domestic enemies were a bigger threat to America than foreign enemies including Russia and China But truth be reported Los Angeles isn t the biggest California prize for a vindictive president obsessed with punishing his internal political foes That distinction falls to the Bay Area ground zero for Democratic politics and pro-immigrant rights There are multiple so-called sanctuary cities here including San Jose Berkeley Alameda Fremont Mountain View Emeryville and San Francisco In fact Trump has already threatened to withdraw Bay Area cities federal funding because of their immigration policies And for an administration hellbent on flexing its power in the guise of protecting Americans from dangerous foreigners and especially their deranged Democratic leaders the Bay Area makes for the juiciest of targets His rhetoric is escalating by the day In his majority latest provocation he has called arresting California s governor great Where he goes from here is anyone s guess There is no floor But one thing is certain If San Jose Oakland and San Francisco want to give Trump any new excuses to rationalize seizing even more power like using the U S military to eliminate domestic dissent the best thing they can do is be like Los Angeles and bite his bait of bile Max Taves is deputy opinion editor for the Bay Area News Group