Trump uses LA protests to redirect dissent from policy failures to the ‘enemy within’

Critics see deployment of national guard as an authoritarian flex by a strongman who has relentlessly trampled norms

Donald Trump walked out to a thunderous standing ovation as Kid Rock's American Bad Ass" boomed from the sound system. He watched martial artists slug it out behind a chain-link fence. A female champion let the US president try on her gold belt. It was a night of machismo, spectacle and violence.

Shortly before he joined an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday night, Trump had signed an order deploying 2,000 national guard troops to Los Angeles, where protests sparked by sweeping immigration raids led to clashes between authorities and demonstrators.