President Trump went on Twitter late Monday night to say that “numerous people were arrested” in Washington, D.C., as protesters attempted to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square Park and, once again, targeted the nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Their efforts are part of a larger nationwide leftist campaign to strike at traditional American institutions like churches and historical monuments to rewrite American history in keeping with their own authoritarian socialist narrative.

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“Numerous people arrested in D.C. for the disgraceful vandalism, in Lafayette Park, of the magnificent Statue of Andrew Jackson, in addition to the exterior defacing of St. John’s Church across the street,” Trump tweeted. “10 years in prison under the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act. Beware!”

Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt visited Lafayette Square and witnessed the attempted desecration. He said the nation “will not bow to anarchists. Law and order will prevail, and justice will be served.” The full damage is not clear as of yet. The Lincoln Memorial and WWII Memorial had been vandalized in earlier riots, and on Monday night, the Jackson statue was also defaced. Media reported that “killer scum” was written on the pedestal of the Jackson monument. Ropes were tied to the statue in an effort to bring it down, but the statement from Bernhardt said “law enforcement officers ensured that this would not happen.”

A spokesperson from the Secret Service said “four members of the media were directed by the Secret Service to leave the White House grounds. The members of the press were rerouted to exits on the south side of the complex for their own safety.” The media not only gets in the way of law enforcement, but sometimes materially aids the rioters.

When things returned to normal, the president took to Twitter to write that the troops were headed home “but can quickly return, if needed. Far fewer protesters showed up last night than anticipated!” The press has largely portrayed these events as peaceful protests, even though they have been regularly marked by arson, looting, and sustained violence. As the president and DC law enforcement showed last night, Americans are coming to the end of their patience with the mayhem and law-breaking inherent in these events.

As they continue (and continue they will), the rioters and their controllers will start to find a serious backlash to their actions. Not only a public backlash, but a political one as well, as voters of many stripes will instinctively react against civil unrest and the destruction of American history.

So if the Democrats and their Antifa allies want to reelect the president, this is the way to go about it. Of course, with a Democrat president that they put into office, what would be the point or the power of rioting? Thus, the rioters and the Democrats may be ultimately playing at two different games.