Political leaders in Los Angeles don’t mince their words about Donald Trump – they have called the former president a madman, a fascist, and “a clear and present danger to the stability of the country”.
Yet when it comes to taking the small, symbolic step of erasing Trump’s most visible presence in the City of Angels, his star on the celebrity-studded Hollywood Walk of Fame, they have been strangely reluctant to turn their words into concrete action.
All indications are that the city leadership would like to see Trump’s star gone – ideally before next year’s presidential election. Political aides and others in and around city government say as much in background briefings and off-the-record conversations.
But they find it remarkably difficult to talk about it openly, a reflection of the dysfunction of LA city politics. On the few occasions they do, it’s usually to attempt to explain their inaction.
“I would vote to remove any city-owned public display of support for Mr Trump in a heartbeat,” city council member Bob Blumenfield wrote to an activist in March 2022 in response to a years-long campaign against the Trump star. “However, I have too many other critical issues on which I am currently focused.”
Asked about the star this summer, the California state assemblymember whose district includes the Walk of Fame, Rick Chavez Zbur, told a meeting of Democratic party activists to “stay tuned”.
When the Guardian asked what he meant, however, Zbur’s office responded first that he was too busy to comment, then said that his job was to work on state-level policy and he “generally defer[red] to local leaders on issues at the local level”.
Other elected officials have been similarly circumspect, tiptoeing around the wishes of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which has administered the Walk of Fame since its inception more than 60 years ago, and emphasizing the bureaucratic complications of removing a star where no star, no matter how controversial, has been removed before.
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