{"id":2989,"date":"2024-10-17T20:17:34","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T20:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/trumps-threats-are-dismissed-as-bluster-but-theres-cause-for-concern-los-angeles-times\/"},"modified":"2024-10-17T20:17:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T20:17:34","slug":"trumps-threats-are-dismissed-as-bluster-but-theres-cause-for-concern-los-angeles-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/trumps-threats-are-dismissed-as-bluster-but-theres-cause-for-concern-los-angeles-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s threats are dismissed as bluster but there’s cause for concern – Los Angeles Times"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Life may be full of uncertainties but there\u2019s one thing you can count on come election day, as surely as the sun rises over the Sierra <\/a>and sets over the Pacific.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump will lose California. And it won\u2019t be remotely close<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Trump was buried in a 25-point Hillary Clinton landslide. In 2020, he lost to Joe Biden by 29 percentage points.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no love lost between Trump and California<\/a>. If you ranked the 50 states in terms of his personal regard, it\u2019s a good bet California would finish dead last<\/a>. The GOP nominee loathes Gov. Gavin Newsom \u2014 a feeling that\u2019s mutual<\/a> \u2014 and his depiction of life in the Golden State makes the seventh circle of Hell sound like a resort vacation.<\/p>\n

But Trump didn\u2019t just trash California on his ego trip<\/a> last weekend to Coachella. If elected, he vowed to punish the state \u2014 which is to say its more than 39 million residents \u2014 by withholding federal disaster aid should California\u2019s leaders refuse to give more water to farmers<\/a> and cities. (That would come at the expense of the environment <\/a>and others denied their share.) <\/p>\n

The remarks echoed a threat Trump made last summer, holding forth at his Rancho Palos Verdes golf course<\/a>, where the former president explicitly singled out Newsom. \u201cIf he doesn\u2019t sign those papers,\u201d Trump told reporters, \u201cwe won\u2019t give him money<\/a> to put out all his fires.\u201d It was unclear what papers Trump referred to, but there was no mistaking his strong-arm sentiment.<\/p>\n

And yet …<\/p>\n

Trump may have been clobbered twice in California, but he did receive more than 6 million votes in 2020 \u2014 the most of any state. On Nov. 5, millions of Californians will again cast their ballots for Trump<\/a>, notwithstanding his obvious antipathy toward the state and its Democratic-leaning voters. <\/p>\n

To Ken Khachigian, that makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cKamala Harris is monumentally unqualified to be president of the United States and I just couldn\u2019t imagine putting in her hands being the leader of the free world,\u201d said the longtime GOP strategist. \u201cI don\u2019t think she\u2019s capable of being much more than a county supervisor in California.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khachigian has served in two Republican administrations and spent a lifetime in and around politics<\/a>, which he recounts in his recently published autobiography<\/a>, \u201cBehind Closed Doors: In the Room With Reagan & Nixon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think she\u2019s on the far left<\/a>,\u201d Khachigian said of the vice president. \u201cDonald Trump believes in basic Republican principles of fewer taxes, less government, tougher on crime, stronger national defense, strong foreign policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo based on those issues,\u201d he said, \u201cthat\u2019s the case for California voting for Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

He dismissed Trump\u2019s threats \u2014 or intimations of blackmail, if you will \u2014 saying California\u2019s Republican lawmakers wouldn\u2019t stand for disaster relief being cut off if Trump, indeed, tried to do so. \u201cI think that\u2019s just posturing,\u201d Khachigian said. \u201cA lot of that is just Donald Trump being Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor does he worry, Khachigian said, about Trump using the National Guard or military to punish political nemeses like California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff<\/a>, as Trump suggested he might in a Fox News interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have safeguards in our system against lunatic things,\u201d Khachigian said. He paused. \u201cLook, I\u2019m not going to defend every single thing [Trump has] ever said in his lifetime. … There\u2019s a lot of things people say in overstatement. … Overstatement is the mother\u2019s milk of politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Madrid sees things differently. A former political director of the California Republican Party, he went on to co-found the anti-Trump Lincoln Project<\/a>. (He also has a new book out<\/a>, \u201cThe Latino Century,\u201d on the rising influence of the nation\u2019s largest ethnic voting group.)<\/p>\n

Madrid says California voters should take Trump at his word. \u201cWe have to learn from history, from what he\u2019s done in the past,\u201d Madrid said, noting Trump has already shown his willingness to play politics with federal disaster assistance.<\/p>\n

Politico\u2019s E&E News recently reported<\/a> the ex-president \u201cwas flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one instance, Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after a devastating series of 2018 wildfires<\/a>. Mark Harvey, who was Trump\u2019s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, said Trump changed his mind after being shown 2016 election returns that showed the strong support he received in Orange County, among the areas that burned.<\/a> <\/p>\n

While Trump eventually relented after \u201csome of the adults in the room pushed him,\u201d Madrid wondered whether \u201cthose adults [will] be in the room\u201d if Trump returns to the White House a second time. \u201cOr is the second administration going to be just purely about vengeance and pettiness?\u201d<\/p>\n

More fundamentally, Madrid said, \u201cThere\u2019s something extremely irresponsible as a citizen to dismiss what a public official is saying by divining your own intent as to what that means or does not mean. All we can do is take people at their word. That\u2019s what this whole system is based off of.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an expression that gained wide currency <\/a>the first time Trump ran for president, suggesting the media took him literally but not seriously, while his supporters took him seriously but not literally.<\/p>\n

Voters should do both.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

More to Read <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life may be full of uncertainties but there\u2019s one thing you can count on come election day, as surely as the sun rises over the Sierra and sets over the Pacific. Donald Trump will lose California. And it won\u2019t be remotely close. In 2016, Trump was buried in a 25-point Hillary Clinton landslide. In 2020<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump-election-news"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/2d191db\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/4662x2448+0+254\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F78%2Fc6%2F9eac7d1d4310863cf2da86305ef8%2F1478516-pol-1012-trump-coachella-wjs0024.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}