The LA Times Sends A Love Letter To Trump. NOT!!

Our Dishonest President

• PART IOur Dishonest President
 
• PART IIMonday
 
• PART IIITuesday
 
• PART IVWednesday

By THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

APRIL 2, 2017

It was no secret during the
 campaign that Donald
Trump was a narcissist
and a demagogue who used
 fear and dishonesty to appeal
to the worst in American voters.
 The Times called him
unprepared and unsuited for
the job he was seeking, and
 said his election would be a
“catastrophe.”

Still, nothing prepared us for the
 magnitude of this train wreck. Like
millions of other Americans, we clung
 to a slim hope that the new president
 would turn out to be all noise and bluster,
 or that the people around him in the
White House would act as a check on his
worst instincts, or that he would be
sobered and transformed by the awesome
 responsibilities of office.

Instead, seventy-some days in — and with
 about 1,400 to go before his term is
completed — it is increasingly clear that
those hopes were misplaced.

In a matter of weeks, President Trump has
 taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they
 are not reversed, will rip families apart,
foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the
calamitous effects of climate change and
profoundly weaken the system of American
 public education for all.

His attempt to de-insure millions of people
 who had finally received healthcare
 coverage and, along the way, enact a
massive transfer of wealth from the poor
to the rich has been put on hold for the
moment. But he is proceeding with his
 efforts to defang the government’s
regulatory agencies and bloat the
Pentagon’s budget even as he supposedly
 retreats from the global stage.

“It is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation.”SHARE THIS QUOTE

These are immensely dangerous
developments which threaten to weaken
 this country’s moral standing in the world,
imperil the planet and reverse years of slow
 but steady gains by marginalized or
impoverished Americans. But, chilling
as they are, these radically wrongheaded
policy choices are not, in fact, the most
frightening aspect of the Trump presidency.

What is most worrisome about Trump is
Trump himself. He is a man so
unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant,
 so full of blind self-regard, so untethered
to reality that it is impossible to know
where his presidency will lead or how
much damage he will do to our nation.
His obsession with his own fame, wealth
 and success, his determination to
vanquish enemies real and imagined,
his craving for adulation — these traits
were, of course, at the very heart of his
scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed,
some of them helped get him elected. But
 in a real presidency in which he wields
 unimaginable power, they are nothing
 short of disastrous.

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Although his policies are, for the most
 part, variations on classic Republican
 positions (many of which would have
been undertaken by a President Ted
 Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they
become far more dangerous in the hands
of this imprudent and erratic man. Many
 Republicans, for instance, support tighter
 border security and a tougher response to
illegal immigration, but Trump’s
cockamamie border wall, his impracticable
 campaign promise to deport all 11 million
 people living in the country illegally and his
 blithe disregard for the effect of such
proposals on the U.S. relationship with
Mexico turn a very bad policy into an
appalling one.

---

In the days ahead, The Times editorial
board will look more closely at the new
 president, with a special attention to
 three troubling traits:

1Trump’s shocking lack
 of respect for those
 fundamental rules and
 institutions on which our
 government is based. Since Jan. 20, he
 has repeatedly disparaged and challenged
 those entities that have threatened his
agenda, stoking public distrust of essential
 institutions in a way that undermines faith
 in American democracy. He has questioned

 the qualifications of judges and the integrity
 of their decisions, rather than
acknowledging that even the president
must submit to the rule of law. He has
clashed with his own intelligence agencies,
 demeaned government workers and
questioned the credibility of the electoral
system and the Federal Reserve. He has
lashed out at journalists, declaring them
 “enemies of the people,” rather than
defending the importance of a critical,
 independent free press. His contempt
 for the rule of law and the norms of
government are palpable.

2His utter lack of regard
 for truth. Whether it is
 the easily disprovable
 boasts about the size of
 his inauguration crowd or his
unsubstantiated assertion that Barack
 Obama bugged Trump Tower, the new
 president regularly muddies the waters
of fact and fiction. It’s difficult to know
whether he actually can’t distinguish the
 real from the unreal — or whether he
 intentionally conflates the two to befuddle
voters, deflect criticism and undermine the
very idea of objective truth. Whatever the
explanation, he is encouraging Americans
 to reject facts, to disrespect science,
 documents, nonpartisanship and the
mainstream media — and instead to
 simply take positions on the basis of
 ideology and preconceived notions. This
 is a recipe for a divided country in which
 differences grow deeper and rational
compromise becomes impossible.

3His scary willingness
 to repeat alt-right 
conspiracy theories,
racist memes and crackpot,
 out-of-the-mainstream
ideas. Again, it is not clear whether he
believes them or merely uses them. But
 to cling to disproven “alternative” facts;
 to retweet racists; to make unverifiable
 or false statements about rigged elections
 and fraudulent voters; to buy into
discredited conspiracy theories first floated
on fringe websites and in supermarket
 tabloids — these are all of a piece with the
 Barack Obama birther claptrap that Trump
 was peddling years ago and which brought
 him to political prominence. It is deeply
 alarming that a president would lend the
 credibility of his office to ideas that have
been rightly rejected by politicians from
 both major political parties.

---

Where will this end? Will Trump moderate
his crazier campaign positions as time
 passes? Or will he provoke confrontation
 with Iran, North Korea or China, or
 disobey a judge’s order or order a soldier
 to violate the Constitution? Or, alternately,
 will the system itself — the Constitution,
 the courts, the permanent bureaucracy,
the Congress, the Democrats, the marchers
 in the streets — protect us from him as he
 alienates more and more allies at home
and abroad, steps on his own message
 and creates chaos at the expense of his
 ability to accomplish his goals? Already,
Trump’s job approval rating has been
hovering in the mid-30s, according to
Gallup, a shockingly low level of support
 for a new president. And that was before
 his former national security advisor,
Michael Flynn, offered to cooperate last
 week with congressional investigators
 looking into the connection between the
 Russian government and the Trump
 campaign.

“Those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard.”SHARE THIS QUOTE

On Inauguration Day, we wrote on this
 page that it was not yet time to declare
 a state of “wholesale panic” or to call for
 blanket “non-cooperation” with the
Trump administration. Despite plenty
 of dispiriting signals, that is still our
 view. The role of the rational opposition
 is to stand up for the rule of law, the
electoral process, the peaceful transfer of
power and the role of institutions; we
 should not underestimate the resiliency
of a system in which laws are greater than
 individuals and voters are as powerful as
 presidents. This nation survived Andrew
 Jackson and Richard Nixon. It survived
slavery. It survived devastating wars. Most
 likely, it will survive again.

But if it is to do so, those who oppose the
 new president’s reckless and heartless
 agenda must make their voices heard.
Protesters must raise their banners. Voters
must turn out for elections. Members of
Congress — including and especially
Republicans — must find the political
courage to stand up to Trump. Courts
 must safeguard the Constitution. State
 legislators must pass laws to protect their
citizens and their policies from federal
meddling. All of us who are in the business
 of holding leaders accountable must
 redouble our efforts to defend the truth
 from his cynical assaults.

The United States is not a perfect country,
and it has a great distance to go before it
fully achieves its goals of liberty and
 equality. But preserving what works and
 defending the rules and values on which
 democracy depends are a shared
responsibility. Everybody has a role to
play in this drama.

This is the first in a series.

The Pain Of Delphi's Move To Mexico

Chris Wade reached into the darkness to silence his blaring alarm clock. It was 4:30 on a frigid winter morning in Warren, Ohio, and outside a fresh layer of snow blanketed the yard.

Thank God, Wade thought to himself. He would be able to get out his plow and make some quick cash.

Money never used to be a problem for Wade, 47, who owned a house with a pool back when he worked at Delphi Automotive, a parts manufacturer that for years was one of the biggest employers in this wooded stretch of northeastern Ohio. But 10 years after taking a buyout as part of Delphi’s ongoing shift of production out of the United States and into Mexico and China, the house and the pool were gone. 

Berta Alicia Lopez, 54, is the new face of Delphi. On a recent chilly morning, she woke before sunrise on the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico, and caught an unheated bus that dropped her an hour away at the Delphi plant.

Lopez earns $1 an hour assembling cables and electronics that will eventually be installed into vehicles — the same work that Wade once did for $30 an hour. A farmer’s daughter who grew up in an impoverished stretch of rural Mexico, Lopez is proud to own a used Toyota sedan and a concrete block house.

She frequently thanks God for the work, even if it is in a town troubled by drug violence, even if she doesn’t see many possibilities for earning more or advancing.

The two workers live 1,800 miles and a border apart and have never met. But their stories embody the massive economic shift that has accompanied the rise of free trade.

In the United States, that shift has contributed to the loss of jobs that once helped workers buy homes, pay for health insurance and send children to college. In Mexico, it brought jobs — though they didn’t create the kind of broad, middle-class prosperity they once had in America.

President Trump has pledged to bring factory work back. But it may be too late to turn back the clock on the powerful forces shaping the lives of Wade and Lopez and two cities, one American and one Mexican, that remain inextricably linked by the geography of global economics.

---

Top: An empty Delphi Automotive plant known as Plant 8 in Warren, Ohio. Bottom left: After a day of work plowing snow, Chris Wade talks on the phone about the rest of the week's work. Wade worked at Delphi Automotive Systems for 13 and a half years. Bottom right: A binder full of Wade's business papers and receipts. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

To hear Trump tell it, free trade deals and globalization have produced clear winners and clear losers.

Delphi had been reducing its U.S. workforce for years before it moved most of its operations overseas in 2006.

“Every time I see a Delphi and I see companies leaving, that wall gets a little bit higher, and keeps going up,” Trump promised at a campaign rally in Ohio a few days before the election. “We are going to fight Delphi and other companies and say, ‘Don't leave us, because there are going to be consequences.’”

He has pledged to tax imports from Mexico and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated most tariffs on the continent and, in Trump’s view, enriched Mexico at the expense of middle America.

But the real legacy of NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, is more complicated.

Nobody disputes that the loss of manufacturing has left a bruising mark in parts of the U.S., especially in places like the Rust Belt, where lower paying service industry jobs are increasingly replacing middle class factory positions. But many economists say changes in technology, along with competition with China, are more to blame than NAFTA.

The period of steepest decline in manufacturing jobs, which fell from 17 million to 11 million between 2000 and 2010, is substantially attributable to the free import of goods manufactured more cheaply in China and increasing reliance on machines to do the jobs humans once did, according to Gordon Hanson, an economist and trade expert at UC San Diego.

U.S. jobs with Delphi Automotive once paid $30 an hour, but after a move to Mexico, the same jobs pay $1 an hour. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

South of the border, free trade has indeed helped modernize Mexico by creating millions of jobs since the passage of NAFTA, boosting investment flow and helping to diversify the country’s manufacturing sector. Mexican workers now help build everything from Whirlpool washing machines to Bombardier jets.

But wages have remained low, so that Mexico remains attractive to manufacturers who might otherwise be tempted to locate in China or elsewhere in Asia. Since NAFTA went into effect, there has been no change in the number of Mexicans living below the poverty line — more than half.

Now, as Trump pushes companies to cancel plans for new factories in Mexico and vows to renegotiate trade deals, it appears more dramatic change is on the horizon.

His administration has proposed a 20% tax on imports from Mexico and other countries with which the U.S. has a trade deficit. Economists say the plan poses a serious threat to Mexico, which sends roughly 80% of its exports to the U.S., and whose peso has plummeted amid fears of what the Trump administration may do.

“It’s a new era,” Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, said in a recent speech, warning that if trade deals are opened up, everything — including Mexico’s cooperation with the U.S. on matters of immigration and security — will be up for negotiation.

Lopez is only vaguely aware of Trump — she’s too busy for politics.

Wade said he just wants things to go back to the way they were.

But even he sometimes wonders: “Is it too late?”

---

After shoveling a client's driveway, Chris Wade shovels the walkway. Wade worked at Delphi Automotive Systems for 13 1/2 years before taking a buyout in 2006 as part of the company's ongoing shift of production out of the U.S. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

The snow kept falling, so Wade called up some buddies he works with and fired up his plow.

He sipped coffee from a thermos as he wove along a country lane through a landscape that looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting, with cornfields and churches and quaint clapboard houses all cloaked in white.

His first job was to clear the driveway of an industrial park that once belonged to Delphi.

“That’s when times was good,” Wade said in his raspy drawl. “That’s when I liked this place.”

Delphi began as Packard Electric, which started out in Warren in 1890 making light bulbs, but later branched out to auto parts. It became a division of General Motors in 1932, eventually expanding to include factories across the U.S.

The company’s factories in Warren paid middle class wages and helped build a prosperous city, with bustling streets lined with handsome brick buildings. 

Both of Wade’s parents worked for Packard, earning enough to take the family on summer vacations and build a swimming pool in the backyard. Growing up, Wade heard stories at the dinner table each night about what had happened that day on the factory floor.

By then, Packard had started reducing its U.S. workforce by moving some of its operations to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs in cities such as Juarez, which was inviting foreign companies to build factories there while paying minimal taxes. The threat that more jobs could be shifted overseas forced union representatives in Ohio to make concessions in salaries and benefits.

Still, Wade’s brother and sister-in-law went to work at the Warren factory after high school and Wade figured he’d land there too.

By the time he did — in 1993, after a stint in the Navy that ended with a knee injury — the union workforce in Warren had dropped to less than 9,000, compared with 13,000 a decade earlier.

Still, Wade was happy with his life. He worked nights on the assembly line and cashed his paychecks every Thursday at the bar across the street. On days off, he went duck shooting with his chocolate Labrador, Hunter.

By the early 2000s, after Packard had been renamed Delphi Automotive Systems and spun off as a company independent of GM, Wade had the house and pool. His wife drove a brand new Trailblazer, and he drove a new Chevrolet pickup.

He had no idea what was coming.

---

Top left: Berta Lopez, left, talks with a fellow worker on the bus that takes them to and from their jobs at a Delphi factory. Top right: Workers leave the Delphi factory after a shift is over in Juarez, Mexico. Bottom left: A poor neighborhood in Juarez where many factory workers live. Bottom right: Lopez at home. She earns $1 per hour working at the Delphi factory in the city, and says she frequently thanks God for the work, even if it is in a dangerous city. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Lopez grew up in Bermejillo, a dusty town in the state of Durango, where her stepfather spent his days in the sun, irrigating cotton and melon fields. Her mom had pulled her out of school when she was in fifth grade.

“Why study if you’re just going to work and have babies?” her mother told her.

Sure enough, by the time she was 17 she had a son, the first of her five children. 

For centuries, people in Bermejillo made their living in the fields, and Lopez had little reason to think she would be any different.

But NAFTA made things hard on small Mexican farmers, who found themselves competing with imports from giant U.S. agribusinesses, many of which received healthy subsidies from the U.S. government. In places like Bermejillo, a generation of young people were suddenly out of work, and many headed north to the U.S. 

Others went to frontier towns such as Juarez.

As NAFTA took effect, Juarez was transformed overnight from a desert oasis best known for its nightclubs and casinos into a sprawling grid of concrete industrial buildings intersected by dirt roads. The population grew faster than officials could build highways, schools and other infrastructure.

Migration to cities like Juarez also marked a cultural shift. Parents worked all day, and without extended family to look after them, children often found themselves alone. Drug cartels, whose power was growing, found easy recruits. As the city erupted into gang warfare, murders spiked, along with suicides and violence against women.

Lopez had been working in a cafe for $5 a week when a truck driver passing through town told her about new factory jobs up north. She arrived in Juarez in 1996 with her husband and five children. Her eldest son, then 16, who had not been able to find work in Durango, immediately found a job at a maquiladora, as they call the U.S. factories that had begun to proliferate along the Mexican side of the border.

So did Lopez, at Delphi, where on her first day she was so nervous she offered to clean the bathrooms instead of working on the floor.

“God helped me,” she recalled. “However good or bad, at least we had work.”

She took to factory life — gossiping with the other workers on breaks, earning the equivalent of a GED in classes offered after her shifts, making peace with living in a big city far from home. Then in 2001, her second eldest son committed suicide.

She was so despondent after his death that for the first time she stayed home from work. One of her managers at Delphi traveled to her neighborhood and gently persuaded her to return to the factory floor.

Lopez thought about returning to Durango, but she knew there would be no good jobs there. She resigned herself to the fact that the Delphi factory was probably the best place she’d ever work, and that Juarez was now her home. 

“If I didn't have the job, I wouldn't eat,” she said.

---

The sun sets over Juarez, Mexico, where many maquiladoras are located. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Delphi had its own listing on the New York Stock Exchange, but its fortunes still rode on General Motors, its biggest customer. When the car company slumped in 2004, the transnational auto parts maker went into a tailspin.

The next year — amid an accounting fraud scandal in which the SEC fined several top executives — Delphi filed for bankruptcy.

Its board hired a new chief executive, Robert Miller, who complained that the company’s U.S. workers were overpaid, with labor costs triple that of other unionized auto suppliers.

In March 2006, Delphi announced it was closing or selling 21 of its 29 American plants, a move that eliminated more than 20,000 jobs, or about two-thirds of its total workforce. Operations were shipped to factories in China or Mexico, where Delphi now has about 70,000 employees working at factories in 20 cities.

Most of the plants in Warren remained open, but with a much smaller workforce. While Miller got a sendoff package that by one account was worth $35 million, workers were urged to take a buyout and warned that if they stayed, their wages would drop from an average of $29 an hour to $16.50.

On the day he walked away from Delphi with a buyout package worth $140,000, Wade was, as he put it, “fired up.” “The CEOs and the guys at the top make millions while everybody else can barely survive,” he said. “It’s not right.”

In Trumbull County, the former manufacturing and steel stronghold where Warren is located, the Delphi cuts felt like kicking a guy who was already down.

Wade’s post-Delphi years were not easy. Shortly after leaving the factory, he went through a divorce and narrowly avoided prison after being pulled over while drunk and with unlicensed guns in his car.

He had received his truck driver's license, but the DUI eliminated that career plan. He earned a certification to sell insurance, but that didn’t pan out either.

He works in roofing now during the summer and plows snow in the winter. After a decade, he’s making about what he was when he worked at Delphi. But he doesn’t have the security of a pension, paid vacation or health insurance. If he had kept his job at Delphi, he would be just seven years from retirement.

Wade doesn’t want to hear about the Mexican workers who replaced him. He boils when he hears what low wages they get paid, and is equally angry about immigrants who work illegally in the U.S.

He liked that Trump called out Mexico on the issue. It was the kind of talk that helped persuade Wade, a lifelong Democrat and union member, to give Trump his vote. He was joined by many others in Trumbull County, which voted Republican for president for the first time since 1972.

Brian Lutz, shop steward with the union that once represented Wade, said he understands the anti-establishment anger.

“I hear all the time people who say why would I continue to vote for a Democrat when all the people I worked with are gone and the Democrats haven’t done what we sent them to do?” he said. 

His union recently negotiated a contract that starts workers at $13 an hour. That’s about 10 times as much as Lopez takes home from the Delphi plant in Juarez today, two decades into her career there.

Left: Lopez's home sits in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Juarez. Right: Lopez cleans her home on her day off. For the last couple of years, every spare peso has gone to pay the college tuition for her youngest son. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

At the end of the shift in Juarez one recent afternoon, hundreds of workers streamed out of the Delphi factory toward the long line of white buses that take them home. Lopez climbed onto No. 6621, which headed east along the U.S. border, past dozens of other factories and a slew of big box stores. 

It dropped Lopez in New Lands, a grid-like housing development that rises from the sand on the outskirts of the city. Overweight and suffering from diabetes, she shuffled past the Toyota in her driveway.

Trump’s warnings to companies to keep their business in America are already having an effect on the Mexican economy. Last month, after being criticized by Trump on Twitter, Ford announced it is canceling plans to build a new $1.6-billion factory in Mexico, opting instead to hire workers in Michigan.

Trump claimed credit, though the company said market demand was a bigger factor. The Mexico factory was designed to build small cars, but as gas prices have fallen, demand has shifted toward bigger models made in Michigan.

But some companies that produce goods in Mexico say there’s no going back to the U.S. That includes Delphi.

The company just announced a plan for more layoffs in Warren, where only 1,500 employees remain.

Speaking at Barclay's Global Automotive Conference in New York in December, Delphi’s chief financial officer Joe Massaro explained what he thought would happen to Delphi under several Trump trade scenarios.

If Trump were to close the border with Mexico outright, “in less than a week, all the people who voted for him in Michigan and Ohio would be out of work,” Massaro argued, underscoring the fact that many factories in the U.S., including car makers in Detroit, depend on parts made in Mexico. 

If the United States were to withdraw from NAFTA and start taxing imports from Mexico again, Delphi would continue doing business in Mexico, he said. The company would pass on the extra cost to its suppliers or to consumers, or would find a way to reduce its production costs — which could mean layoffs or salary cuts in Mexico.

What it all means for Lopez and her family, she is not sure.

Of her four children, three work in factories.

For the last couple of years, every spare peso has gone to pay the college tuition for her youngest son, Sergio, who is studying computer engineering. He dreams of starting a software company that can compete with U.S. firms.

He has watched his mom’s life, and wants to earn more than factory wages.

“It's a lot of work for little money,” he said.

This story was reported in part with a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Is This A View Of The Future? Will Election Of 2016 Be Known For Violence? Is This What Obama Wants?

TRUMP SUPPORTERS BEATEN, BLOODIED BY 'MEXICAN-FLAG WAVERS'

20 arrested as crowd turns violent outside rally in California

Published: 4 hours ago

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Donald Trump’s rally in Costa Mesa, California, was marked by violent protests from “almost entirely Latino” individuals, many waving Mexican flags, that led police to arrest at least 20 – though eyewitnesses said supporters of the billionaire businessman were all peaceful and the swell of aggression stemmed solely from the opposition camps.

“The Trump supporters were the peaceful people singing patriotic songs, festive and happy, while the protesters were very angry and high aggression,” one rally attendee, Terry Krokosz, told Breitbart.

He described the scene as chaotic due to a crowd of 70 or so protesters that quickly grew into the hundreds.

The agitators swarmed the intersection outside the Pacific Amphitheatre and blocked traffic, the Los Angeles Times reported.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/04/trumpwindow-300x188.jpg

“They were very aggressive,” Krokosz said. “When we were leaving, there were a lot of people in cars, Mexican flags hanging out the windows. A guy was doing donuts and the intersection was shut down. We saw people marching through the intersection.”

A police car was seen with smashed windows and a person was jumping up and down on top of the vehicle. Another person wrote “F–k Trump” on a police cruiser, and others slashed a police SUV’s tires and tried to overturn another law-enforcement vehicle.

A Los Angeles Times reporter posted a photograph of a man with a bloodied face wearing a Trump shirt on Twitter. Journalist Matt Pearce tweeted, with the photo: “Trump supporter got hurt.”

Pearce also put out on Twitter several other messages describing the scene.

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In one tweet, Pearce wrote: “Trump supporter Colby Nicholson, watching the action in a Trump hat: ‘These are all underage Mexican high schoolers who have nothing to do.”

In another, he wrote, quoting a protester at the scene: “Juan Carlos, 16: ‘Donald Trump is worthless! There won’t be no United States without Mexicans.'”

And another: “Couple hundred people here blocking the streets outside Trump rally. Mostly younger. Almost entirely Latino/Latina.”

And in yet one more, Pearce citing another protester at the scene: “Arianna Perez, 19, with the sign: ‘We could be peaceful & do things different, but we wouldn’t get our voice heard.'”

Officers arrested 20, as hundreds blocked traffic on the Costa Mesa streets, located just south of Los Angeles, and smashed a police car, NBC News reported.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/04/TrumpRallyCalifornia.png

The Donald Trump rally in California descended into violent protests.

Fights broke out all over, with protesters chanting the likes of “racists go home” at the Trump supporters, and “Whose streets? Our streets,” while at least one driver began spinning donuts in the middle of the street action, NBC said.

Jose Cruz, 21, told the Los Angeles Times that the protests reflected “the anger people have against Trump.”

One eyewitness took to Twitter to post a video of the wrecked police vehicle, which protesters then jumped upon, and wrote: “Protesters just wrecked this cop car. Bashed in windows, jumping on top of it.”

Orange County Sheriff’s officials reported nobody was injured.

In a tweet, the sheriff’s office wrote: “Post Trump Rally Protest over. Approx 20 arrests by Costa Mesa PD. No major injuries. Crowd dispersed by 11pm. No further updates.”

In March, a protest at a Trump rally that was planned but canceled in Chicago wrapped in physical violence and chaos, with several fights breaking out between candidate supporters and opponents.

The violence Thursday night in Orange County took place as Trump addressed a crowd of thousands during his first rally in California, where he honored the families of those killed by illegal aliens.

Trump was joined on stage by Jamiel Shaw, whose son was murdered by an illegal alien in 2008, as well as with other members of the Remembrance Project.

“They’re unbelievable, they’ve suffered,” Trump said before bringing them up on the stage. “These are great people.”

Trump also said, various media reported: “They all have a very similar story to tell. People that shouldn’t have been here, people that should have never been allowed to come over the border and they come here like its nothing, they walk through it like its nothing.”

Taking the microphone, Shaw reiterated Trump’s “make America great” mantra.

“We demand Americans first,” he said. “We don’t care about illegal aliens.”

Attendees, meanwhile, cheered.

“Build the wall,” they chanted.

And Trump’s response?

“We’re going to stop it and we’re going to build a wall,” he said, speaking of illegal immigration.

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