Welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Gabe Gutierrez as we continue to follow the breaking news surrounding the federal government's deployment of military forces into Los Angeles in response to localized protests and pockets of

unrest and vandalism. We're keeping our eye on Fort Bragg in North Carolina as well,

where the president is expected to address members of the armed forces in just a few moments,

along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegsteth. It all comes after the president doubled down on mobilizing 700

Marines and roughly 4,000 members of the National Guard in response to the demonstrations and

unrest, despite fierce resistance from state and local officials. The president today claiming

that Los Angeles would be on fire if he had not intervened.

Look, if we didn't get involved, right now, Los Angeles would be burning, just like it was burning a number of months ago with all the houses that were lost. Los Angeles right now

would be on fire, and we have it in great shape and not playing around. Well, you'll take a look

at what's happening. I mean, I could tell you, there were certain areas of that, of Los Angeles

as that you could have called it an insurrection. It was terrible. But these are paid insurrectionists.

These are paid troublemakers. They get money. The anti-ey protests and the incidents of looting and car fires have so far largely been

contained to small sections of downtown L.A.

The president also putting other cities where there have been reports of anti-ice demonstrations

on notice, warning of the potential for additional military deployments.

We didn't attack this one very strongly.

You'd have them all over the country.

But I can inform the rest of the country that when they do it, if they do it,

they're going to be met with equal or greater force than we met right here.

Now this morning, it was Secretary Hegseth defending the administration's use of military

forces when he testified before Congress for the first time on the job.

If you've got millions of illegals and you don't know where they're coming from,

...