CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter said Monday that videos of anti-ICE riots across Los Angeles “can give people a false impression of what’s actually happening” because the videos could be “hours old, or even days old.”
“You gotta be careful at a delicate moment like this to look at the timestamps, look at the dates, look at when things are actually posted and if they’re really from the situation they’re purporting to be,” said Stelter, who was fired in August 2022 amid CNN’s purge of controversial personalities but returned to the left-leaning network in September.
“You might be looking at a video of something, wondering what’s happening in L.A.—it’s actually from two days ago,” Stelter went on. “It only matters because it can give people a false impression of what’s actually happening at a moment of unrest.”
CAN’T MAKE THIS UP: Brian Stelter says you shouldn’t believe the riot videos on social media because they could be “hours old.”
“You might see a video from 2 days ago!” pic.twitter.com/paOtnMZ15F
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) June 9, 2025
Stelter is not the only public figure to suggest that videos of the riots, which show demonstrators shutting down the 101 Freeway, vandalizing cars and businesses, and assaulting police officers in an attempt to protest the Trump administration’s deportation of illegal immigrants, are misleading.
Stelter’s fellow CNN correspondent Julia Vargas Jones offered similar sentiments over the weekend, while former vice president Kamala Harris said the riots have been “overwhelmingly peaceful.” Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.), meanwhile, on Tuesday denied any violence whatsoever at the Los Angeles riots, saying at a press conference, “Don’t think that somehow, because they called out the National Guard, there was violence. There was no violence. I was on the street. I know.”
“Even those who were out of step with what we are advocating, peaceful protest, did not create any violence,” Waters said. “Nobody was shot. Nobody was killed. Get it in your head.” The 86-year-old Democrat urged the public not to “just rely on what you’ve been told or the few incidents that you saw.”
President Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum Saturday ordering 2,000 National Guardsmen “to address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester.” Trump on Monday deployed additional 700 Marines to protect federal buildings and personnel in Los Angeles.
The Trump administration has ramped up deportations of illegal immigrants. Under border czar Tom Homan, ICE has arrested over 158,000 illegal aliens, around 75 percent of whom have criminal convictions or pending charges, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
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