The Man Determined to Remove Trump’s Star from Hollywood Blvd.

Andrew Rudick’s unprecedented quest of getting a Walk of Fame star exhumed

Andrew Rudick arrived at the Hear in LA HQ bearing gifts: a delicious homemade treat from the back yard of his Hollywood Hills home.

He’s well-dressed, polite, organized, and has a sharp memory. Some may want to dismiss him as a common gadfly with Trump Derangement Syndrome, but this man is persistent.

Plus, bro has done the research. Yes he is obsessed and completely committed, but because of that he has also compiled the receipts and has pinpointed precisely how doing the unthinkable — removing a star from Hollywood Blvd. — can go down legally and swiftly.

According to Andrew’s extensive research and years maneuvering around red tape, all that is needed is the action of one LA City councilperson to put the motion up for a vote in City Council.

Although a petition with thousands of signatures is not necessary to have a star removed, Andrew has one up if you’d like to join the 3,789 names.

And that councilman is Hugo Soto-Martinez, whose district Donald Trump’s star has sat in since 2007.

Technically any councilmember could put it up to a vote, but rarely do members stick their noses in other district’s bee’s wax. Thus this ball is in Hugo’s court.

To hear our entire hour-long conversation where Andrew lays out why The Former Guy’s honor should be dug up, and why it’s a city matter specifically in the hands of Soto-Martinez, click the play button below. Otherwise keep scrolling for highlights which have been edited for clarity.

Tony Pierce: Andrew is here trying to rid the Hollywood Walk of Fame of Donald Trump’s star.

Andrew Rudnick: It’s something that would be unprecedented. The jurisdiction is there for the city to act, and they haven’t acted yet, I think, in part, because of a lot of misinformation that has been consistently espoused by both media outlets and city officials who were just propagating what they heard. And I don’t blame them for doing so.

So the city council doesn’t know the rules? I mean one of our first guests was William Gude, who basically convinced me that cops don’t know the laws a lot of times.

There’s so many of them.

How can any one person know them all?

What I took from William was a lot of cops just have GEDs. Reading and keeping up with ever-changing laws probably ain’t their thing, which surprised me.

Trump’s star has been vandalized countless times. But twice it was attacked by a pick axe.

But City Council, I would think, is different.

I would imagine that they’re almost all college grads. And if they’re not, they love the law and want to learn more about it, which is why they become law makers.

And yet, we think they don’t know how to do this?

Andrew has been asking City Council, through all of their official channels, to remove the star.

Cut me off whenever it gets a little too boring with the nitty gritty of this particular council file, CF 78-3949.

After all that had happened under the Trump presidency, I thought why the hell is this thing still here after West Hollywood’s unanimous resolution in 2018?

Eric Garcetti, then-mayor of LA, said that year it can’t be removed because it’s a historic cultural monument.

Well, we have a Cultural Heritage ordinance that allows us to alter monuments and to demolish monuments after review.

So why is this one so special?

Every single star you see on the Walk of Fame since 1958, since the first eight original names were then put there… the city council has accepted and approved all of those names.

Just like they’ve done since the beginning, the LA City Council voted on including names on stars, just like TFG.

There’s never been a point in time where they haven’t.

I did not know the City Council was involved in approving stars. I was under the impression it was the Walk of Fame board who decides. But you’re saying City Council also has a vote?

City Council has always had sole jurisdiction over the public right-of-way that they’ve allowed, under an original assessment district that was created that paid for the stars.

Council Files 71376 and 71377, I believe, are the two original files.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice whispering to Andrew on how to use hocus pocus to remove the star, but for now he wants to do it the legal and proper way.

The city’s role has always been a collaborative one with the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

But the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce — they don’t have any legal jurisdiction over our sidewalks other than a ceremonial administrative authority that they hold over this monument. There is no legal authority that they hold over it other than their actual owning of the terrazo blocks themselves.

Do you know of any names that have been declined by the city?

It took 16 years for Charlie Chaplin to get his star. Credit: Chaplin Archive.

The chairman of the Public Works, Councilman Louis R. Nowell, back in 1972 declined to vote for Charlie Chaplin.

He said, “the conservative people in my district, and there are many of them, would object to my voting for a star for him.”

Originally Nowell suggested Chaplin’s star be segregated away from the others.

I don’t think a lot of people know of the only instance of a city council person objecting to a name on the Walk of Fame.

According to Andrew, every time the star is defaced, a private organization pays to have it repaired.

I don’t even know if the city council knows that they can vote no on these things. They vote yes in every single one of them.

So if they wanted to, when Dr. Oz came up, they could have decided to vote no, but everyone voted yes. So now we have this guy who peddled quack beans and colloidal silver who is now being honored on Vine Street.

Have you talked to Mayor Bass?

I have attempted to reach out to the mayor multiple times. I received a quasi statement from the office a couple months back that said, “Mayor Bass does not support Donald Trump,” which did not answer my question.

I understand she doesn’t support Donald Trump, but I want to know if she supports the removal of Donald Trump’s name from the sidewalk that 10 million plus tourists visit annually.

Let’s go to Hugo Soto-Martinez. Is he your councilman?

He’s not.

Do you have Nithya over there?

The Office of Historic Preservation agrees with Andrew that the City of LA has the right to remove the star no matter what former Mayor Garcetti seemed to have thought.

Nithya Raman is my councilwoman. Yes.

Have you tried to talk to her?

Yes, I have had many communications with her on this issue. But the tradition in the city council is of everyone wanting to defer to the councilperson who represents the district.

No one wants to intervene in anyone else’s perceived turf.

City Council Has Stood Up To Trump Before

Six days after the Insurrection of the United States, every single member (with the exception of Marquise Harris-Dawson because he wasn’t present that day — but he was one of the four to introduce it) voted to pass a resolution calling for Congress to remove Trump from office via the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

It’s like, if you can do that, if you literally will pass this unprecedented move six days after January 6, and now we’re at what, 1,030+ days since that action took place, and now you’re all like, “uh...”

So they’re cool with removing him from office, but not from the sidewalk?

Mike Feuer was not a good City Attorney, and he seemed to be afraid to tell the LAPD they were absolutely wrong to harass Lexis Olivier-Ray, but he wasn’t afraid to take a stand on this issue.

I give my council member Nithya Raman much credit, her office is the only one who took my direct submission as a proposed [replacement] name to honor, The Entertainment Workers of LA.

I had John D’Amico, former Mayor of West Hollywood look at it and say, “yeah, this is great.”

I sent it off to Hugo Soto-Martinez and his office didn’t respond to the submission. They still haven’t.

Candidate Hugo seemed to pledge, through liking Andrew’s tweet, that he would remove Trump’s star. It’s been over a year and Hugo has not lived up to that pledge.

I think they wanted to do their due diligence to look at it.

But at the same time, I had spoken with his office repeatedly since April of this past year, when one of his staffers came up to me in chambers at the City Council and said,

“Hey, we agree with you. We agree on the merits of this. Everyone wants it removed, we just don’t understand the process of how that would look like.” — a staffer of Hugo Soto-Martinez’s office

Awesome!

Great. Exactly.

So I asked, “do you want to set up a meeting?” Sure. Met with them in June. I sent them a whole email compiling all I had.

I said, “please, obviously, cross check this.”

Not many have put in writing where they stand on Trump’s star, but Councilmember Bob Blumenfield says he’d vote to have it removed, as well as a few others.

I updated them when I had gotten a couple things wrong, and said, “hey FYI, I just heard from the Department of the Interior. This is incorrect.” And “just heard from State Office of Historic preservation. This is correct. This is incorrect.”

They said thank you. I said, great.

And still, they’re unsure about the process. “We’re not quite sure if this is possible.”

I’m like, well, City Planning just said it is. So why isn’t the City Attorney — why isn’t anyone saying, “we need a report within 30 or 60 days telling us what this path would look like”?

If you really are going to say, “we want it removed,” then there’s a path there.

You’re the City of Los Angeles.

You have jurisdiction over this public monument. And it’s one piece out of 2,765 pieces of this monument.

And it’s in bro’s district.

Just two months ago The Guardian wrote about this. Hugo said he would take it on. He has not.

And I take him at his word. In the latest article from The Guardian, he says, I am going to tackle this. I’m going to figure out how to do it.

Who should Hugo be talking to, if he’s unsure ? He’s new to this job.

By the way, did you talk to Mitch before he lost to Hugo?

Yeah. Mitch’s communications director, Daniel Halden, at the time said, “our position aligns with the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, that every star is part of the historic fabric, and we will not touch it.”

And I said, “well, I’m asking for your position as an office. You know, do you believe it?”

And he said, “Mitchell O’Farrell has always hated Trump. He stands for the worst among us.”

You’re gonna wanna hear the entire conversation

Follow Andrew on Twitter + sign his petition + tell Hugo how you feel

When you stoke us, you’re saying — “Tony these people are fascinating. If I wasn’t married I’d give you my body. If I had a Hollywood Hills ADU with a hot tub, I’d rent it to you for peanuts. If I had a mansion for you to housesit, I’d toss you the keys and the combo to the grow room. But all I have is this wheelbarrow of cash. Take it. All of it. And go in peace.”

So shout out to our Patreons: Nancy Rommelmann, Shawn Atlow, Matt Mills, Sean Wallace, Greg n Molli, Jamie Taylor, Mark Johnson, Keira Anne, Barney Greinke, Ben Welch, Jen Adams, Trevor Wilson, Bree Wilde, Dougie Gyro, Kristina up North , Rob n Carrie, Adam Tschorn, Ben from Down Unda, Chris from ATX, Gregor and Philip!

Wanna support this fine podcast that brings you into every LA neighborhood? Go to patreon.com/hearinLA and give till it hurts.

Hear in LA is creating Podcasts | Patreon

Shout out to our Angel-enos!

Angelenos: #1 Ali Miller, #2 George Wright #3 Rita Joanne #4 Jason Sutter #5 Grant Haughton #6 Rob Baker #7 KevCheng #8 Brenda Garcia #9 John Griffiths #10 Lisa J. #11 The Plum Dahlia, #12 Shawn Atlow #13 Steve!

Want to support us but it’s Christmas is days away?!?

You can still help. Post your favorite episode on your facebook. OMG POST TWO. Tweet something nice about this. Any time you see me tweet about an episode, retweet it. And for god sake tell yr friends.

Tell them how Hear in LA is spelled and it’s on Apple Podcasts and Google and now every episode is on the YouTubes.

Music and music supervision by Jordan Katz.

Songs by Orgone and Jordan Katz.

Special thanks to Cindy for creating the logo
and Jen for inspiring this,

And idealistic people, like Andrew, who are willing to take on City Hall even when City Hall claims they want to do it too!

Never stop. Lead the way. Show them what courage is.