Fox News Host Spins Trump's L.A. Crisis as ‘the Biden Riots'

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld blamed former President Joe Biden for the ongoing unrest in Los Angeles—despite Donald Trump being five months into his second term.
Speaking on Tuesday's The Five, Gutfeld railed against 'Biden's riots,' claiming without detailing any evidence that immigrants who entered the country under the Biden administration are now behind orchestrated clashes in California.
'These are the Biden riots, when you think about it,' he said. 'Remember the tens of thousands of men that flowed across the border, almost all entirely men—where did they go? I guess some were deported, but most of them are not deported yet.'
The clashes began with a series of federal immigration raids on workplaces in the city that sparked protests. Those demonstrations prompted President Trump to send in the National Guard and then additional Marines.
Officers have suppressed crowds with rubber bullets, pepper balls, tear gas, and flash-bangs. Several journalists have also been hit by projectiles, including Australian correspondent Lauren Tomasi, who was shot in the leg by a rubber bullet.
Despite all of this, some in the MAGAverse insist it's all Biden's fault.
Gutfeld even suggested that the protesters are 'professional freelancers' and argued that the disorder proves 'why Trump is necessary.'
He also said June is now like 'Pride Month for Trumpers.'
'Walk outside openly in your red hats, let your Trump flag fly because you are not alone,' he quipped.
He went on to suggest that so-called organizers of these protests are now instructing demonstrators to swap Mexican flags for American ones, calling the move 'another Trojan horse' and likening it to Biden's 2020 re-election campaign, which he claimed used patriotism as a 'trick' to hide radical intentions.
'The flag, like Joe, is meant to trick us into letting our guard down so there can be radical upheaval, which we are now seeing,' he explained.
The Fox News host said the rallies are 'as orchestrated as the Boston Philharmonic.'
Save for suggesting that migrants may have crossed the border during the former administration, Gutfeld did not explain how the protests are the responsibility of Biden, who left office in January 2025.
But his blame-Biden logic appears to be part of a wider pattern among Fox hosts, who happily scapegoat the former president for today's crises.
Sean Hannity, for example, has continued to refer to 'Biden's open borders.'
'We're still cleaning up Biden's mess,' Hannity said in a May 22 broadcast, while showing footage of migrant encounters that had occurred in 2023.
In another instance, Laura Ingraham cited the 'legacy of Biden's weakness abroad' when discussing a flare-up between Russia and NATO forces in the Baltic Sea in late April.
She was conspicuously silent, however, on Trump's failure to deliver on a promise to negotiate a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia on day one of his presidency.
Last month, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt suggested that 'the Biden economy' was still weighing down American families—ignoring the stock market havoc wreaked by Trump's import levies, and the extra costs for consumers.
The finger-pointing is a trickle-down ploy from the commander-in-chief himself. 'This is Biden's Stock Market, not Trump's,' the president wrote on Truth Social back on April 30.
'I didn't take over until January 20th,' he continued, passing the buck for the tumbling stock market. 'Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden 'Overhang.'
'This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!'
Wall Street traders reportedly laugh at Trump's economic excuses, but his lieutenants have got the memo. 'This is Joe Biden's economy,' Vice President JD Vance said in response to anchor Bret Baier highlighting the first quarterly GDP fall in three years.

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Yet without viable alternatives, institutions across the region have turned to U.S. digital services. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other U.S. firms control more than 70% of the cloud computing market in Europe, which is the essential way for storing files, retrieving data and running other programs, according to Synergy Research Group. The ICC has been a longtime customer of Microsoft, which provides the court with services including the Office software suite and software for evidence analysis and file storage, according to an ICC lawyer who declined to be identified discussing internal procedures. Microsoft has also provided cybersecurity software to help the court withstand digital attacks from adversaries like Russia, which is being investigated for war crimes in Ukraine. In February, after Trump issued penalties against Khan, Microsoft met with ICC officials to decide how to respond. They concluded that Microsoft's broader work for the court could continue but that Khan's email should be suspended. He switched his correspondence to another email account, said a person who has communicated with him. Sara Elizabeth Dill, a lawyer who specializes in sanctions compliance, said the Trump administration was increasingly using sanctions and executive orders to target international institutions, universities and other organizations, forcing companies to make hard choices about how to comply. 'This is a quagmire and places these corporations in a very difficult position,' she said. How tech companies with global services respond is especially important, she added, 'as the broad repercussions are what people and organizations are primarily worried about.' Microsoft and other U.S. companies have sought to reassure European customers. On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella visited the Netherlands and announced new 'sovereign solutions' for European institutions, including legal and data security protections for 'a time of geopolitical volatility.' Amazon and Google have also announced policies aimed at European customers. Still, many institutions are exploring alternatives. In the Netherlands, the 'subject of digital autonomy and sovereignty has the full attention of the central government,' Eddie van Marum, the state secretary of digitalization in the Ministry of Interior Affairs, said in a statement. The country is working with European providers on new solutions, he said. In Denmark, the digital ministry is testing alternatives to Microsoft Office. In Germany, the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein is also taking steps to cut its use of Microsoft. In the European Union, officials have announced plans to spend billions of euros on new artificial intelligence data centers and cloud computing infrastructure that rely less on U.S. companies. Groothuis, the Dutch member of the European Parliament, said lawmakers in Brussels were discussing policy changes that would encourage governments to favor buying tech services from EU-based companies. 'The situation is not tenable, and we see a big push from European governments to become more independent and more resilient,' said Andy Yen, CEO of Proton. European tech companies see an opportunity to win customers from their U.S. rivals. Cloud service providers like Intermax Group, based in the Netherlands, and Exoscale, based in Switzerland, said they had seen a jump in new business. 'A few years ago, everyone was saying, 'They're our trusted partners,'' Ludo Baauw, Intermax's CEO, said of U.S. tech companies. 'There's been a radical change.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025