Trump’s Bay Area event shrouded in secrecy
Protests planned, though site, host of fundraiser a mystery
When President Donald Trump arrives in the Bay Area on Tuesday morning for a fundraiser that’s been cloaked in secrecy, it might seem as if he’s landing in enemy territory.
The Bay Area voted against Trump by the highest margin of any large metro area in 2016. It’s the home of Nancy Pelosi, his chief political antagonist, and part of a state that has sued his administration more than 50 times.
The last few times he’s been here, Trump was met with aggressive and even violent protests. And demonstrations are already being planned for his first visit to the region since moving into the White House. But the Bay Area still has plenty of big Republican donors: In the first
six months of the year, Trump’s campaign and joint fundraising committee received more than $6.5 million in large-dollar donations from Californians, more than many Democratic presidential candidates.
In the few hours Trump will spend here Tuesday, he’ll work to raise that total. He will headline a luncheon, with tickets ranging from $1,000 to $100,000, before leaving later that afternoon for fundraising events in Los Angeles and San Diego.
It’s typical for the White House to avoid publicizing details of presidential fundraisers in advance for security concerns. But even the city that Trump’s Bay Area event is taking place in and the host of the event have been kept tightly under wraps.
Politico reported this month that the fundraiser would be held in Atherton, the tony town that’s home to the second-wealthiest zip code in the country.
But that appears to have changed. “We originally got word he was coming (to Atherton), and the last update I got was that he was not coming,” Dan Larsen, a sergeant with the Atherton Police Department, said Friday.
He wasn’t sure if that notice came from the Secret Service or from Trump’s campaign.
The city had been planning an all-hands-on-deck response to help with traffic control or any protests, with the entire police force on duty Tuesday and additional officers called in from nearby cities. Now those plans have been scrapped, Larsen said.
“It’s been very cloakand-dagger,” said Anthony Suber, the Atherton deputy city manager.
The invitation for the fundraiser lists Republican National Committee chair Ronna Mcdaniel, RNC co-chair Tommy Hicks Jr., Trump campaign national finance chair Todd Ricketts and campaign manager Brad Parscale as hosts — an unusual move, as most political fundraisers highlight local supporters as their hosts.
“It raises the question, are they really ashamed to say they gave money to their preferred presidential candidate?” asked Bob Shrum, a former Democratic strategist and the director of the University of Southern California’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.
Wealthy Trump donors — especially those in Democratic areas — have faced a growing backlash in recent months. After the executive chairman of Equinox and Soulcycle’s parent company hosted Trump for a fundraiser at his Hamptons home last month, the fitness companies faced a flood of membership cancellations.
And some Democratic officials have publicly shamed Trump’s top donors, with Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro tweeting out a list of people from his hometown of San Antonio who gave the president the maximum of $2,800.
Harmeet Dhillon, an RNC committeewoman from San Francisco who organized more than 40 people to attend the fundraiser, said Trump’s donors deserved privacy.
“This is an event for the president’s supporters to spend time with him, not a public rally or a press conference,” she said.
The trip will mark Trump’s fourth visit to California as president. He visited the border in San Diego to review prototypes for a wall in March 2018, observed wildfire damage in November and was in Southern California for another border visit and fundraiser in April.
The last time he came to the Bay Area, for a rally in San Jose in June 2016, protesters attacked and scuffled with Trump supporters, leaving some bloody. Several Trump fans have sued the city for not providing adequate police protection, and the case is working its way through the courts.
Before that, protesters surrounding a Trump event in Burlingame in April 2016 forced him to jump over a highway median to get into the hotel where he was speaking.
Trump supporters say history shows why the secrecy is needed.
“We’ve got to protect the man who’s representing us and keep him safe so he will keep us safe,” said Bonnie Uytengsu, an Atherton businesswoman and philanthropist who gave Trump’s PAC $25,000 in 2016 and plans to attend Tuesday’s fundraiser.
So far, the protests that have been announced seem animated rather than aggressive — although activists also have been hampered by not knowing where the president will be.
The Backbone Campaign, an anti-trump protest group, has raised more than $3,000 on Facebook to fly a massive balloon depicting a baby Trump in a diaper near his events in the Bay Area and Southern California.
“I’m going to pick up the helium now!” one of the organizers, William Johnson, posted Friday.
A group called Vigil for Democracy is planning a separate protest that will include a blow-up balloon of Trump as a chicken — noting, “Time & address TBA.”
“We’re playing it by ear,” said Lam Nguyen, a San Jose resident and one of the co-chairs of the anti-trump group Orchard City Indivisible. “We’re very fast-moving as a group, so we’re ready to organize with just a few hours’ notice.”
Trump’s visit comes as he has increased his use of California as a foil for his reelection campaign, blasting Democratic leaders for allowing homelessness to grow in the state’s biggest cities and suggesting he could take federal action to “clean it up.”
“What they are doing to our beautiful California is a disgrace to our country,” he said at a campaign rally last month.
“It’s a shame the world is looking at it. Look at Los Angeles with the tents and the horrible, horrible disgusting conditions. Look at San Francisco.”
Despite the protests, the donor backlash and the homelessness, Trump knows there’s plenty of cash to be raised in the state’s biggest cities.
“You see a lot less obvious support and bumper stickers in California because Republicans know that their cars will get keyed,” said Hugh Bussell, chair of the Alameda County GOP.
“But a lot of people here are excited to give him money … and I think you’ll see more visits by the president here this election cycle.”