President Trump Leaves Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — President Donald Trump has ended his first California visit as president and left Los Angeles right in the throes of the morning rush hour.
Barricades remained in place Wednesday morning in downtown Los Angeles around the Wilshire Grand, where the president spent the night at Intercontinental Hotel.
He left downtown at about 8:30 a.m. and his motorcade headed for Dodger Stadium, where Marine One was waiting to whisk him off to Los Angeles International Airport. Trump took off from LAX at about 9 a.m. for the St. Louis, Missouri area.
The president headlined a Republican National Committee fundraiser at the home of Ed Glazer, whose family owns the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in the exclusive Beverly Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, just outside Beverly Hills. Tickets ranged from $35,000 for just the dinner, up to $250,000 for the chance to meet Trump, attend a roundtable discussion and have a photo taken with him.
Anti-Trump protesters gathered Tuesday afternoon at Beverly Gardens Park at 9439 Santa Monica Blvd. Organizers said they wanted to express "Southern California's opposition to the attacks on civil liberties launched by the Trump Administration."
Trump supporters, meanwhile, gathered just a few blocks away at the corner of Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards. There were some confrontations in the park between critics and supporters of Trump, but most of this activity happened about 4 miles away from the fundraiser's location.
Not many details were released in advance of Trump's visit to Los Angeles, other than a schedule. The LAPD said it didn't have advance information to release the typical street closure advisory that accompanies most presidential visits to the Los Angeles area. That led to gridlock in the West Los Angeles area when the presidential motorcade forced rolling closures on the EB 10 Freeway and the 405 Freeway.
It was also a surprise to many living in downtown when barricades went up on Figueroa, Wilshire and Seventh Street, around the Wilshire Grand and Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)
