On Wednesday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) stated that “there were many complaints by guardsmen and by those of us that live in Washington that they were simply standing on street corners, picking up trash from time to time. The bottom line of this is, the right way to provide security in Washington is to provide additional support to the various police departments that are there. The National Guard, unfortunately, in this case, is paying a very steep price.”
Garamendi said, “Well, first of all, my prayers, and the prayers [of] all of us should go out to the two guardsmen that were shot. It’s tragic, never should have happened. And the issue of whether the guardsmen should or should not be there really is secondary at this moment. We’ll see what happens with the court case, whether they will be ordered to leave, I believe it’s December 11, and how that conflicts with Hegseth sending another 500 remains to be seen.”
He continued, “But the reality is that the guardsmen really had very, very little to do in Washington. In fact, there were many complaints by guardsmen and by those of us that live in Washington that they were simply standing on street corners, picking up trash from time to time. The bottom line of this is, the right way to provide security in Washington is to provide additional support to the various police departments that are there. The National Guard, unfortunately, in this case, is paying a very steep price. And I hope that these two guardsmen are going to pull through…and return to health.”
Later, Garamendi said that federal funds to support law enforcement have been cut.
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