Tensions erupted on Capitol Hill during a House hearing Tuesday when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forcefully pushed back against Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) and her revisionist account of the 2020 George Floyd riots.
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McCollum attempted to downplay the severity of the 2020 riots that engulfed Minneapolis for nearly a week. “Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets for days,” McCollum said, refusing to call them rioters. “At no point did we need, uh, the citizens in Minnesota request that the Marines be deployed.”
“Our state and local law enforcement, along with our National Guard, who have worked on crowd control, they were more than enough, they were more than capable of handling this situation,” she claimed. “History has proven that law enforcement and the National Guard are more than capable of handling situations more volatile than what happened this weekend. We all see the continuous loops on TV, but this looks nothing like the George Floyd protests or the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992.”
She then pivoted to complaining about the cost of military deployments to cities like Los Angeles, asking how such actions would be funded within the Department of Defense’s current budget.
But Hegseth wasn’t about to let her revisionist history slide.
“Congresswoman, thank you for the question,” Hegseth began, before immediately going on offense. “You are right. We are both originally from Minnesota, which is why I recall 2020 quite well — when Gov. Walz abandoned a police precinct and allowed it to be burned to the ground.”
McCollum interrupted and tried to shut down the response. “Sir, you’re out of order,” she snapped.
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Hegseth kept going. “And also allowed five days of chaos to occur inside the streets of Minneapolis,” he said. “The police precinct, ma’am, was abandoned and burned to the ground.”
McCollum tried again to stop him, objecting, “You do not cover the events.”
But Hegseth didn’t flinch. “Because of that, the National Guard was eventually, far too late, mobilized,” he said, pointing squarely at Democratic mismanagement. “And President Trump recognizes, a situation like that — improperly handled by a governor — if it gets out of control, it’s a bad situation for the citizens of any location.”
Related: WATCH: Karen Bass Accidentally Exposed the Left’s Riot Strategy
As McCollum demanded budget answers, Hegseth connected the George Floyd riots to the current riots in Los Angeles, linking them directly to a lack of federal cooperation and a refusal to enforce immigration law.
“In Los Angeles, we believe that ICE, which is a federal law enforcement agency, has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country,” Hegseth said. “Especially after 21 million illegals have crossed our border under the previous administration.”
McCollum, flustered, interjected again: “I asked about the budget.”
But Hegseth was undeterred: “We have deployed National Guard and the Marines to protect [ICE agents] in the execution of their duties, because we ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country, unlike what Gov. Walz did in 2020.”
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Hegseth then addressed the broader failures of Democratic leadership, taking aim at California officials. “There are 17,000 LAPD, you mentioned that. There would be 18,000, if not for the defund movement that folks like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass have implemented,” he said. “The police chief said she was overwhelmed, so we helped.”
McCollum tried to bring the conversation back to the budget, but by that point, the damage was done. Hegseth had already exposed what most Americans watching had known for years: Democrat leaders like McCollum want to rewrite the history of 2020, ignore the failures that let cities burn, and vilify any effort to restore order today.
FULL VIDEO: She was so flustered that she literally ended her questioning! pic.twitter.com/bi1FcMXCNf
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 10, 2025
If anyone who watched this exchange wasn’t clear on what really happened in Minneapolis five years ago, they are now — because Pete Hegseth just gave them the unfiltered truth.
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