Trump’s Hollywood star on verge of burning out
LOS ANGELES — Hollywood Hills resident Andrew Rudick is on a mission.
Over the last three years, he’s submitted public records requests, retrieved case documents from the Los Angeles County Superior Court, spoken at City Council meetings and corresponded with government officials.
He’s determined to get Donald Trump’s star removed from the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It’s not an easy task.
“The reasonably conveyed message to the millions who have walked past that plaque since 2021 is the city’s endorsement of a man who attempted a coup against the United States,” Rudick said at a Los Angeles City Council meeting earlier this month.
Although multiple City Council members said they do not support the former president and would like to see his star removed, nobody knows exactly how to make that happen. Several groups with varying levels of jurisdiction have a hand in operating the Walk of Fame, including the City Council, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Hollywood Historic Trust.
The removal of a star is unprecedented, and a process for doing so has never been established. Rudick’s activism, however, is forcing city officials to confront the unknown.
The star itself draws all kinds of attention.
Elodie Toutain, a 21-yearold originally from France, said she stomped on Trump’s star while visiting the Walk of Fame this month. “There are so many people who have better intentions than him,” she said.
The star has been vandalized and smashed several times, costing more than $20,000 in repairs since 2016, according to the Hollywood Historic
Trust. One street artist placed prison bars on the star in 2021 and brought a toilet, bathtub and stacks of fake documents to the site of the star in 2023 in a reference to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
Stuart G, who declined to share his last name for privacy reasons, has been selling Trump merchandise beside the star since August.
“Trump offends people, and those people want to have his star removed,” Stuart said. “But I don’t think he’s half as bad as some of the other people on here.”
Spade Cooley, a swing musician who earned his star in 1960, was convicted of murdering his wife one year later.
In 2015, Leron Gubler, then president and chief executive of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, told The Times that stars could not be removed. There were calls that year to remove the star belonging to Bill Cosby, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 45 women and was found guilty of aggravated indecent assault in 2018. His conviction was later overturned.
“Once a star has been added to the Walk, it is considered a part of the historic fabric of the Hollywood Walk of Fame,” Gubler told The Times in 2015 in an emailed statement. “Because of this, we have never removed a star from the Walk.”
But the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has since changed its tune. According to Ana Martinez, the chamber’s vice president of media and talent relations, the chamber doesn’t have the power to remove a star.
“The Chamber is authorized by the City to administer Walk of Fame ceremonies, select and honor the recipient, order the fabrication of the star and place the star in the sidewalk,” Martinez said in an email, “but