They were always Trump's games

As Donald Trump will be the first to tell you, the U.S. was awarded both the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games during his first term as president. He even takes credit for bringing them here: "As President-elect," he Truth Socialed in August, "I worked with the Olympic Organizing Committee of Los Angeles in getting the 2028 Olympics to come to the United States. There was tremendous competition from other countries." (Which is, as Torched readers know, a lie.) Trump was bragging about securing the games right up until the election. "The World Cup and the Olympics, I was responsible for getting both of them, actually," he told Bill Belichick on his Let's Go! podcast earlier this month. "I was very honored to do so. And I'm sure they'll work out really good."

In case anyone forgot this fact, LA28 representatives repeatedly reminded everyone about their close working relationship with the president-elect at a press conference yesterday. Calling them "America's games taking place in Los Angeles," LA28 chair Casey Wasserman said the Olympics "aren't about politics. They're not about red and blue, they're about red, white and blue." When asked directly if he was concerned about Trump's policies, Wasserman said, flatly, no. "In his previous administration and in his comments leading up to the election, President-elect Trump has been incredibly clear about the responsibility we have hosting world events, starting with the World Cup in 2026 and subsequently with the Olympics, and the requirements that places on the federal government." But those "incredibly clear" policies were exactly what everyone was so concerned about in 2017 as LA bid for the games while Trump's previous administration passed travel restrictions like a "Muslim ban." The comments Trump made on the campaign trail this year have only heightened such concerns, from fears of dissolving diplomacy to the looming threat of deportations.

But we don't need to guess what Trump might have planned for 2026 or 2028. We can hear the man himself clearly state his goals for such megaevents — sitting right next to LA28 officials.

In February 2020, Trump signed the official documents pledging the federal government's support for the games. The ceremony took place at the Montage hotel in the city of Beverly Hills, the obvious place to commemorate a megaevent that's being hosted by the city of Los Angeles. On the same trip, Trump made a re-election campaign stop in Bakersfield where he spewed what Politico called his "anti-California greatest hits": threatening to revoke the federal emissions waiver that allows California to sell cleaner cars and denigrating the Central Valley's bullet train construction.

At first, Trump seems disinterested in the signing formalities, reading off a script without looking up. He casually asks if Wasserman might save him a seat at the games, because back then none of us thought he would ever, by any stretch of the imagination, still be president in 2028. Wasserman replies warmly: "I promise you we'll remember you in 2028, to say the least, because it wouldn’t have happened without you." (Now you see where Trump got the idea.)

But during the Q&A, Trump gets energized when he starts to sketch out his vision:

I see what’s happening to LA. I see what’s happening to San Francisco. I see what’s happening to some great cities. And I’ve said to my people: Whether they like it not, we’re going to have to do something.

So we’re, right now, working in LA.  They’re also contacting San Francisco. They have to clean it up. You have needles. You have things that we don’t want to discuss all over the streets, flowing into the oceans. And you have beaches, and it shouldn’t happen. And if they can’t do it themselves, we’re going to do it. The federal government is going to take it over and we’re going to do it.

In Trump's brain, what might saying "the federal government is going to take it over" possibly mean in LA? Again, there is no need to speculate here; he has spelled out his strategy in a campaign video entitled "Ending the Nightmare of the Homeless, Drug Addicts, and Dangerously Deranged" published in April of last year. "Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares," Trump says. "Under my strategy, working with states, we will ban urban camping wherever possible. Violators of these bans will be arrested, but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services if they are willing to be rehabilitated. Many of them don’t want that, but we will give them the option."

Yes, Trump said all of this last time he was president, too. But what's different now, of course, is the Supreme Court's Grants Pass ruling which even Democratic leaders are taking as their cue to criminalize homelessness ahead of 2028. Trump's babbling rhetoric about an urban camping ban might as well have been a speech by Gavin Newsom. Newsom rallied an emergency trip to D.C. to meet with the Biden administration this week, pledging to secure "disaster funding, programs to expand health care access, and initiatives to improve clean air." But when it comes to moving people out of sight, Newsom may have found a kindred spirit in the White House. IOC officials spent this week touring LA, Long Beach, Inglewood, and Pasadena (which, after a long delay, has finally authorized the city to sign a games agreement for soccer at the Rose Bowl). And some of those mayors — as well as many LA councilmembers — are definitely more on the Trump end of the spectrum when it comes to homelessness.

As Wasserman touted an "above politics" approach to the games, LA Mayor Karen Bass's deputy mayor for infrastructure, Randall Winston, presented a sightly different vision for working with the new administration at the closing session of the CoMotion conference across town. "We'll draw lines where lines need to be drawn," he said firmly, specifically noting the mayor's over-the-weekend efforts to fast-track sanctuary city legislation which was first introduced over a year ago by Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman, and Hugo Soto-Martínez. "Work will continue to happen where it needs to happen to uphold and protect Los Angeles's values and what we stand for as a city," Winston said. "At the same time, partnership is a throughline, and we'll have to find those opportunities to partner in order to get the resources that we can to continue the good fight."

But on the same panel, Stephen Cheung, CEO of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, worried there wasn't a more comprehensive strategy to protect all the vulnerable people in LA County still at risk. "I love how right now the mayor's so optimistic and reaching across the aisle; that's always been her approach," he said. "However, looking at the previous Trump administration, especially with the nominees for some of these cabinet positions, it's very clear what the direction will be."

During the last Trump administration, Cheung said, cities worked together without the federal government's cooperation. "It's our turn to come together," he said, "so that our 88 cities, our whole region, are all coming together as a united front."

Maybe they won't end up being "America's games." They'll be ours. 🔥