With Protesters Waiting, Trump Makes First Presidential Visit to Bay Area as Part of State Fundraising Blitz

President Trump rarely passes up the chance to throw a sharp elbow at left-leaning California, but he showed Tuesday he’s more than happy to cash in here with a two-day fundraising blitz expected to scoop up $15 million from wealthy Republicans.

“There’s not been a president in living history that is as unpopular in the state of California as Trump,” said Mike Madrid, a GOP political consultant who is an outspoken Trump critic. “But our money spends the same as everyone else’s.”

With protesters not far away, Trump kicked off his moneymaking with a $3 million Bay Area luncheon in Portola Valley, a wealthy community in San Mateo County, followed by a $5 million Beverly Hills dinner tonight at the home of real estate developer Geoffrey Palmer. He’s expected to bring in an additional $7 million on Wednesday with a breakfast in Los Angeles and luncheon in San Diego.

Roughly 100 protesters turned out along the motorcade route, about a mile from Trump’s luncheon site, where they stood beneath a giant inflated Baby Trump and Trump Chicken balloons.

“The message is that Trump is not welcome in California. We consider him a big overgrown baby,” said Chris West, a member of the Backbone Campaign, a group of progressive artist activists from Washington State, that is following Trump with their balloons. “He’s dangerous though. I mean, he’s the most powerful person in the world with a five-year-old mentality. That’s not good.”

Toni Norton, with the singing protest group The Raging Grannies, echoed that sentiment.

“Trump is not making America great. He’s destroying our democracy,” she said. “He’s destroying our relationships with our great allies.”

The Backbone Campaign, a group of progressive artist activists from Washington State, brought the balloons and are following Trump around with them.

Trump, for his part, tweeted a cheery message as he departed New Mexico Tuesday morning en route to California: “Just departed New Mexico for California, where we are delivering results!” The tweet included statistics about the state’s unemployment rate and job creation.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump got in some fresh digs about the state’s homelessness crisis, saying, “We can’t let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what’s happening.”

“The people of San Francisco are fed up, and the people of Los Angeles are fed up. And we’re looking at it, and we’ll be doing something about it,” he added.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Tuesday morning said he would welcome Trump’s help to end homelessness if he contributed federal dollars or property that could be converted into shelters. He said he had not been invited to meet with the president.

“I know I’m just supposed to punch the president back but if he is real about it, I’ll believe it when I see it, but I’ll also trust that he wants to save some lives as well,” Garcetti said. “Certainly I do. We could do that together.”

California was an incubator for the modern conservative movement that swept the state’s former governor, Ronald Reagan, into the White House in 1980. But demographic changes and an influx of new residents have helped drastically rework the political contours of the country’s most populated state, with the former GOP stronghold of Orange County now home to more registered Democrats than Republicans.

For Republicans, who have been resigned to political irrelevance at the state level, a donation to Trump can amount to its own form of protest.

“By showing up to a fundraiser deep in the belly of the beast, one is saying: ‘I don’t care what the liberal politicians are saying and I want to show my support for him publicly,'” said California’s Republican National Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon, an ardent Trump supporter.

She added: “I sold $100,000 worth of [tickets], and I could have sold another $100,000 more.”

California has long been a key fundraising hotbed for politicians of both parties, which have relied on the entertainment industry and wealthy industry heads to finance their political ambitions. But under Trump, the run-of-the-mill fundraising trip has taken on a complicating dimension because of his harsh criticism of the state’s immigration laws and its forest management practices, which he blamed for fatal wildfires.

Earlier this month Trump lashed out at “Will and Grace” TV star Debra Messing after she tweeted that attendees of the Trump’s California fundraisers should be outed publicly.

Trump tweeted back: “I have not forgotten that when it was announced that I was going to do The Apprentice, and when it then became a big hit, helping NBC’s failed lineup greatly, @DebraMessing came up to me at an Upfront & profusely thanked me, even calling me “Sir.” How times have changed!”

In August, Trump took aim at the state’s massive film industry, calling Hollywood “very dangerous for our country.”

“Hollywood is really terrible. You talk about racist — Hollywood is racist,” he said.

That divide has contributed to heightened security concerns surrounding the president’s visit.

Overall, Trump continues to rake in gobs of cash more than a year out from the November 2020 contest, with his campaign and the Republican National Committee pulling in more than $210 million since the start of 2019, Federal Election Commission records show. That’s more than all the current Democrats seeking to replace him raised combined during that period.

This visit marks Trump’s fourth visit to the state during his presidency. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is expected to follow Trump to California, one day behind the president, with visits to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. A senior HUD official said Carson would speak on a range of issues, including increasing the supply of affordable housing and promoting investment in distressed communities.

KQED’s Peter Jon Shuler contributed reporting.