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Posted on 07/28/2025 6:32:29 AM PDT by Red Badger
This show must not go on.
It’s time, right now, for greater Los Angeles to halt all preparations to host the 2028 Summer Olympics. Let’s turn over these Games to a world city better positioned to host them.
Not because Angelenos don’t love the Olympics. We are a proud Olympic city, shaped by the 1932 and 1984 Games. In normal times, the city’s incomparable international connections, entertainment assets and sports facilities would make us the perfect host for what LA 28 chair Casey Wasserman calls “the largest peacetime gathering in the history of the world.”
But it’s no longer peacetime in Los Angeles.
This event is now too dangerous for California. Hosting an Olympic Games requires us to work together with a lawless U.S. regime — and its rights-violating security apparatus — as it openly wages war against our city and state.
National Special Security Events, like the Olympics, require host cities to let federal agencies take the lead during the Games. For the 2028 Olympics, an agreement, which took effect last year, puts the U.S. Secret Service in charge of security, with support from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
All those agencies work for President Donald Trump, who has launched a war against California that includes deploying troops and secret federal police in our neighborhoods. California leaders have righteously demanded that immigration raids end and the troops leave. But those demands are incompatible with the Olympics agreement, which gives these agencies the power to surge security personnel into Los Angeles.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explicitly linked the current federal occupation of Los Angeles with the 2028 Olympics. He recently declared that Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, by defending protesters instead of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, forced the feds to take over the city — and suggested they would do so again.
“If this was a preview of their leadership ahead of next year’s World Cup games and the L.A. 2028 Olympics, we have bigger problems,” Duffy said.
It all may sound like Trumpian nonsense, but California leaders are actually citing the need to hold a safe Olympics to justify partnerships with the very federal agencies now attacking California.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell, in his eagerness to go forward with the Games, has come to resemble the British prisoner-of-war Colonel Nicholson in the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” who proudly builds a railroad bridge even though it aids his Japanese captors.
McDonnell frequently refers to ICE agents as “law enforcement partners,” despite their attacks on the city that he is sworn to protect. Pressed by the City Council on why he was still working with ICE, McDonnell replied: “Without that partnership, we wouldn’t be able to go into the World Cup, the Olympics.”
Such weakness demonstrates how Trump can use the Olympics against California.
That’s why it’s urgent that California take away the president’s leverage by immediately hitting pause and following up with a deadline and clear demands: We will abandon these Olympics by Friday unless the Trump administration stops all immigration raids, removes all federal troops in L.A., releases all immigration detainees, supports an independent prosecutor to investigate the raids and restores all frozen federal funding for California.
Anything less, and we’re out.
Sports officials worldwide would be furious. But if we drop the Games, we might refocus on our city. Longtime Los Angeles city government official Rick Cole asked: “If we can’t pave our streets, repair our sidewalks, trim our trees, house our homeless, light our bridges and fix our fire trucks, how can we host an Olympics in just three years?”
Unexpected expenses from the Games could hurt public budgets that are already in deficit. And Trump, famous for stiffing partners, could try to stick L.A. with billions in federal security costs.
Trump also is destroying the Games’ potential upside. The Olympics can make money if people all over the world come to see them. But Trump’s travel ban — and his regime’s willingness to detain and jail tourists — will discourage attendance. Some countries may even boycott.
But the biggest threat posed by a Trump Olympics is to our democracy.
Trump has indicated that he intends to use the Games to celebrate himself and consolidate his authoritarian regime. Expect to see Trump lighting the torch while sitting in the stands with his fellow autocrats — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and maybe even Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Indeed, the 2028 Games could take place while Trump is campaigning for an unconstitutional third term as president. Tyrants have used the Olympics in this way before — Google “Adolf Hitler” and “1936 Berlin Olympics.”
Why on Earth should Californians spend our precious time and money on a fascist pageant for our oppressor?
If the 2028 Olympics go forward, they’ll be little more than a weapon for Trump to use against us.
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Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.
Joe Mathews Syndicated columnist Joe Mathews is Connecting California columnist and California editor at Zócalo Public Square, an Ideas Exchange that is a project of New America and Arizona State University.
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Go ahead, who cares? You want to further degrade your image, have at it.
The last time I watched any Olympics was the sole event of the US vs Russia hockey game. Incredible!
Him: "I'm calling from Publisher's Clearing House about your winnings."Me: "I see. When did PCH exit bankruptcy?"
*click*
I suspect the original article, slanted as it is against Trump, exposes the real issue: is California solvent enough and safe enough to hold the Olympics? Is California in general and LA in particular "clean" enough to host? (By "clean" I mean free of feces and hypodermic needles on the ground.)
Okay, then. To these leftists, Trump is Hitler. Hitler used the Olympics for propaganda purposes. Thus, Trump will use the Olympics for propaganda purposes.
Interesting logic......
Just move them to Mexico City, nobody will know the difference anyway.
Funny article. It must have been preceded by lots of angst and fear and loathing, and I laugh thinking about this loser tormented by such thoughts. HAHAHA.
I agree, cancel them. Who cares………..
Los Angeles is only the barest of shadows, a lost memory, when compared to the city it was in’32 and ‘84. Please President Trump, don’t shame America. Close it down. Dump the Games.
I want to live in Los Angeles
Not the one in Los Angeles
No, not the one in South California
They got one in South Patagonia
And back in 1936, JFK’s dad and many Hollywood luminaries very admired Hitler.
“Hosting an Olympic Games requires us to work together with a lawless U.S. regime — and its rights-violating security apparatus — as it openly wages war against our city and state.”
Projecting, as usual
“This event is now too dangerous for California. Hosting an Olympic Games requires us to work together with a lawless U.S. regime — and its rights-violating security apparatus — as it openly wages war against our city and state”
I think you have this completely backwards.
Los Angeles has turned an inexpensive Olympics into an expensive Olympics.
Almost all of the sports facilities are pre-existing and re-purposed facilities, starting with the L.A. Coliseum that was used during the 1932 Olympics and was first re-used during the 1988 Olympics.
What has made the Los Angeles Olympics into a potential financial disaster are the many “infrastructure” projects tacked onto the event. Among these infrastructure projects is an expansion of the Los Angeles Airport. This project is currently projected to cost $30 billion (more than the entire cost of new or renovated sports facilities).
In view of the financial disasters of several recent Olympics, few cities were interested in hosting future Olympics. Then, the idea of relying mostly on existing sport facilities, greatly reduced the cost, and Paris and Los Angeles were approved for future Olympics.
But, leave it to the spendaholics in California to turn a fine idea of keeping the cost low of an Olympics into a sink hole of losses.
Just another attempt to kill the Olympics just like having a tranny last supper in France during the opening ceremony
The President was at the Super Bowl this year in New Orleans. He might go to the next one in the bay area where the 49ers play. The one after that will be at SoFi stadium in LA. World Cup soccer will have a number of games in California next year as well. Shutting those down would be far easier than the Olympics.
Hitler was the one who inspired reviving the ancient tradition of the Olympic Torch for the 1936 Olympics. All the smart people thought it was very cool of him.
They’ll hold them because of the opportunity to steal large amounts of taxpayer money.
Karen Bass was handing out checks to illegal aliens a couple of weeks ago and this fool of a writer is whining LA can’t afford the Olympics. Wake up Joe. You know the real reason why LA is broke. Stop projecting all of your city and state’s problems on Trump. You and your fellow liberals created the economic disaster in LA and throughout the state of California!
can’t they have this event in America instead?
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