Evening Edition: Long-Term Economic Impact Of Social Unrest
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I'm Mark Thiessen. I'm Dana Perino. I'm Brett Baer, and this is the Fox News Rundown. Tuesday, June 10th, 2025. I'm John Saucier. It was another night of demonstrations and rioting in Los Angeles with protesters upset about immigration raids by ICE agents in the last few days. These protests have gotten pretty wild with looting, violence, and lots of property damage done. President Trump has sent in the National Guard, something California Governor Gavin Newsom believes...

was a step too far. But can recent riots teach us a lesson on how to avoid bigger problems with this one? We have to learn our lessons from all the riots and protests that took place five years ago. And every major city that suffered significant damage and violent activity suffered economically tremendously, many which have not fully recuperated today. And Minneapolis is one of those cities. This is the Fox News Rundown, Evening Edition.

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Los Angeles is bracing for a potential fifth day of riots after ICE operations began around the area. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tells Fox that ICE LA office made over 300 arrests of illegal immigrants in the LA area since the operation and subsequent protests began on Friday.

Earlier today, the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, spoke out in support of protesters, but drew a clear line about the message being sent. I do not believe that individuals that commit vandalism and violence in our city really are in support of immigrants. They have another agenda. If you support immigrants and the rights of immigrants to be in our city, you would not be tearing the city apart.

President Trump has been watching all this unfold and has acted quickly. He mobilized National Guard troops and even Marines to help protect federal property. Today, he spoke at Fort Bragg about what he sees happening there in L.A.

They're hurling bricks and cinder blocks at law enforcement. Did you see they're breaking up the sidewalks and the curbs, breaking it up with big, strong hammers. These guys are professionals. These are not amateurs. When an otherwise peaceful protest gets violent, the repercussions go far just beyond those directly involved. The destruction of public and private property has been extremely unfortunate. I mean...

Our guest today is Pierre Debas, an attorney and real estate expert and managing partner of Romer Debas LLP. You're having people, you know, cut up concrete off of the sidewalks and buildings and throwing them from bridges down into, you know, police cars on the highway and lighting cars up on fire. And, you know, you have some news outlets claiming just people having fun watching cars burn and

insane statements of that category. And it's really a shame because it is a lawful right, a constitutional right through freedom of speech to be able to protest. But there's a distinct line between peaceful protesting and protesting with some level of production, productivity behind you. And there's

violence and chaos. I don't see where destroying public and private property should be condoned in any manner. I mean, I don't even know how this is not being spoken of more. And we really have to be able to establish a line between protesting in a normal manner and what could be

viewed as riots. And right now I feel like that line has been completely crossed. Yeah, it really does bring negative attention to what otherwise would be the cause that people are trying to get out there. It speak out about the community here has says that ice is making them uncomfortable. They don't like some of the migrant arrests that have been going on, nor the manner that they've been conducted. Either one of the main topics of conversations is,

During all this is the ICE agents wearing masks. ICE says that's just to protect our agents because people have been finding out their names and then doxing them at their own personal homes. The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, she did just say in a press conference this afternoon that she doesn't believe people who would destroy property are actually victims.

trying to help immigrants in this situation. So at least there was that. But really, this has become a political issue as well between the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and President Donald Trump, who I think, Pierre, was watching some of that same footage that you and I were watching with those Waymo cars being destroyed and people cutting up the concrete, people throwing rocks at the ice and police cars.

A lot of struggles as far as arrests have been going. A lot of people not listening to police when he's saying you can't come down here. And the big point of contention is with the president calling in the National Guard to try and put down some of these riots. And the governor is saying, well, you can't do that. I never requested it. Let's flash back to 2020 in Minneapolis after the terrible murder of George Floyd. That city saw a

ton of riots as well. Police station was burned down there and the National Guard was an issue there too. Do you think the idea for Trump this time around was he didn't want to see another Minneapolis? Yeah, I think we have to learn our lessons from all the riots and protests that took place five years ago and

Every major city that suffered significant damage in violent activity suffered economically tremendously, many which have not fully recuperated today. And Minneapolis is one of those cities. I mean, foot traffic in a city like that is

is probably close to half of what it used to be pre-pandemic levels. You travel throughout the country, any city that went through this. And it's a shame because I think that what President Trump is trying to do is to get ahead of this problem before it really exasperates and causes economic turmoil in Los Angeles. You and I were speaking previously. We saw it in New York City. I mean, whenever you have a level of violence and you have activities such as this, this can escalate rapidly.

And I don't think that, again, you know, I prefaced in the beginning, this should never be condoned, period. I'm all for stopping it at this stage for whatever legal measures required in order just to preserve the safety of the people who live in these cities, Los Angeles in particular, and the economic future of cities.

All right, let's go back to Minneapolis because I think it's a pretty good example for what we're talking about here, where a police station was burned. Obviously, there was a ton of looting, lots of businesses and innocent business owners having their places destroyed. We can now, though, take kind of a clearer picture and look back at that five years ago and say, OK, here's exactly what happened. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit more on just how much damage was done in Minneapolis and how the recovery has been from that city in the five years since? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I want to say 12 months after the riots took place, maybe 5% of businesses came back and reopened. And, you know, my office, you know, I'm a real estate attorney and I work in midtown Manhattan. I represent a lot of small businesses. And I even saw it in New York City during the pandemic. When you have rioters and looters going in and bashing windows of storefronts, going into stores and stealing people's goods and merchandise online,

and going through the streets and graffitiing everything and destroying God knows what. I don't know what, like you said in the beginning, that actually takes away from the message that you're trying to deliver. You can be against what ICE is doing. You can be against the current administration's view on immigration. There's a way of voicing that dismay and a way of getting that message out there that doesn't require this violence. Because at the end of the day, who wins by acting in this manner? All you're doing is causing harm for small businesses. A lot of these retail tenants are

are small businesses, mom and pop stores, individually owned where people spent their whole life saving money to start this business. The ripple effect that I get mostly concerned with is that first of all,

They have loss of income, right? There's no way you're operational for a prolonged period of time when your store has been completely destroyed. That's loss of income. Where are you making up that income from? With the state of the current insurance market, good luck trying to get insurance claim through and get paid on that, right? So that's number one. So you have property damage, you have loss of income. And then the minute these businesses go under or struggle to pay their bills, then they go to the rent payments.

The rent payments go, then all of a sudden commercial property owners lose cash flow, jeopardizes their ability to pay their bills, including their mortgage and property taxes, devalues real estate, devaluation of real estate results in loss of real estate tax revenue for the local city or state government.

So it is just it is a no win situation to even fathomably think that this is OK. And it's amazing that we have to say you should have learned this from the lessons from five years ago. This is pure common sense. You know, and it's really sad that this topic has become a partisan topic because it is basic common sense. You're not allowed to destroy property of others and destroy people's livelihood and businesses.

businesses. Today, we are comparing and contrasting riots that are happening right now in Los Angeles to a similar scene we saw play out just over five years ago in Minneapolis. Although the issues may be different, the damage is still being done and the message of the protesters is being diluted. We're talking about it today with a real estate expert, Pierre Debas, a New York-based attorney and managing partner of Romer Debas LLP. We've got much more of his take on the situation coming your way next.

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Yeah, when you were making some of those points earlier, I was just thinking to myself, it doesn't seem like some of these protesters, or at least the ones who would cause property damage, are taking the time to think any of that through whatsoever. Because you're making some pretty fair and simple points that I think common sense would dictate, but obviously that's out the window when someone decides to start smashing windows.

Let's talk about the specific situation Los Angeles is in because they've already had a tough go of it this year with those horrific wildfires and the insurance catastrophe that that caused. Maybe one of the worst in U.S. history and the real estate problems. A lot of these people have had some slow process and red tape to try and rebuild, nevertheless losing their homes. Now all of a sudden, downtown L.A. is under attack by these protesters and you have businesses being smashed. I want to kind of take a broader perspective

picture it land value and business value and just the what you're thinking about Los Angeles after this double whammy of the fires and now these protests you

You know, I think that what you're going to inevitably see is that if this continues, it's going to just be an exodus of people from these areas. You know, right now... And there already has been, if we're being fair, too. I mean, California has been the number one state in the last few years that people are leaving. Yeah, when you take these high cost of living states and cities that also have the highest level of taxation, you know, you're seeing people being pushed out and go to more desirable places.

you know areas where there's maybe no state income tax whatsoever and also a better quality of life in a safer environment when you're allowing you know where the police department and the governor is allowing you know what you want to wait it could be called riots easily it's from taking place and then you know add that to all the natural disasters that have occurred in the area and the inability of probably half of those homeowners to get insurance proceeds to rebuild their homes you know it's just really a a compounding impact on

residents of those states. And I could definitely see a continuation of exodus of people from California because of this. The fires, the riots, and then who knows what's going to happen until then. We really hope this situation calms down. And again, if people want to protest, they're well within their rights. But the property damage, this is obviously a major concern. And I really think you made some good points about the ripple effects here. It is just so difficult to start a business on Main Street these days. I mean, it

But then suddenly you get it going and it's smashed for possibly something you had nothing to do with. It doesn't seem very fair to me. It doesn't really seem like the American dream. Pierre DeBos, an attorney and real estate expert, managing partner of Romer DeBos LLP. Pierre, thank you for your insight and your time for being with us on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition podcast. Thanks for having me. Great talking to you.

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