President Trump Could Be Biggest Hurdle in L.A.'s Olympic Bid

President Trump hadn’t said anything about the 2024 Olympics until Super Bowl Sunday.

“The United States committee members have asked me to speak up about it, and I have, and let’s see what happens,” said the president during a pregame interview with Westwood 1 Radio. “I’d be very happy and honored if they would choose Los Angeles, and we’d stand behind it.”

The president also said he aimed to stand behind his recent executive order restricting travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, even if it put L.A.’s Olympic bid at risk. The 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to reinstate the travel ban after a challenge brought by the state of Washington. The order’s fate will likely be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, city attorney Mike Feuer and a host of other city and county leaders vehemently oppose the president’s action, which many see as specifically targeting Muslims.

L.A. has also pledged money and other aid to help defend nonviolent undocumented immigrants, who may be at increased risk of deportation under the Trump administration.

“The Olympics and the Olympic spirit go hand in hand with Los Angeles and our own tradition of multiculturalism, tolerance and equality for all,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, a member of the city’s Olympic committee.

L.A. has submitted its final bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The city spent months on a pitch that officials say limits taxpayer liability and takes advantage of sports venues across the region.

“My message to the international community is that the person occupying the White House sometimes is not representative of who we are,” says O’Farrell.

“And remember, our bid is for 2024.”

But International Olympic Committee members will decide this September if the 2024 Summer Games will be in L.A. or Paris. One IOC member from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia called Trump’s travel ban “totally contrary to Olympic ideals.”

“Well, typically I don't think these sorts of internal politics would affect the voting procedure over at the International Olympic Committee, but these are just not normal times,” says Pacific University professor Jules Boykoff, author of "Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics."

“There is also an alternative theory,” says Boykoff. “And that is that the IOC has no problem with authoritarian governments. After all, they just gave the 2022 Winter Olympics to Beijing. And so one could argue that Trump and his sort of authoritarian way of going about politics could be appealing to some members of the International Olympic Committee.”

Many Los Angeles leaders hope International Olympic Committee members will heed the words of IOC President Thomas Bach.

"In this Olympic world,” said Bach, at the start of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, “we see that the values of our shared humanity are stronger than the forces which want to divide us."