LOS ANGELES _ President Donald Trump's tour of California took him to San Diego on Wednesday, with an afternoon visit to the border and a review of a prototype of his much-debated wall.
Trump is set to tour the border area of Otay Mesa, a San Diego neighborhood along the Mexican border, after a fundraiser in San Diego before leaving the state. He visited the border wall prototypes last year as well, where supporters and protesters turned out to greet him. Ahead of the president's visit, protesters have inflated the "baby Trump" balloon in downtown San Diego. A similar balloon made an appearance in the Bay Area on Tuesday.
While in the state, Trump announced the administration's plans to revoke a longtime rule allowing California to set tougher auto emissions standards than those required by the federal government, igniting another battle between state officials and the White House.
The president has been met with protests during his visit as he continues his criticism of California over its homelessness problem. On Tuesday, at least one protester with the Revolution Club _ a group that has routinely led political demonstrations that include burning the American flag _ was arrested in Beverly Hills.
While aboard Air Force One en route to San Francisco, Trump said he was considering the creation of an "individual task force" as a possible solution to homelessness, without providing more details.
"We can't let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what's happening," he said, adding that the homelessness crisis is prompting residents of those cities to leave the country. "They can't believe what's happening.
"We have people living in our ... best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings ... where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige," the president said. "In many cases, they came from other countries and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have tents _ hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And they want to leave. And the people of San Francisco are fed up, and the people of Los Angeles are fed up."
The president said that he planned to discuss the topic further with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who joined him Tuesday in the Bay Area and then in Los Angeles.
In L.A., Trump stayed at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown inside the Wilshire Grand skyscraper, one of the tallest buildings west of the Mississippi. The hotel is roughly a mile from skid row, where the city's largest concentration of homeless people live. Trump did not have any scheduled tours of the area.
According to LAPD Chief Michel Moore, he and Carson planned to meet Wednesday to discuss housing issues, including homelessness, at the request of Carson. The HUD secretary toured the skid row area Wednesday morning, stopping into the Union Rescue Mission and the large tent-like facility behind it. Rev. Andy Bales, the CEO of the mission, has touted the facility as a cheaper alternative to getting people off the street.
Carson, who implied that he was Trump's surrogate at skid row, did not provide concrete details about how the Trump administration could help California's homelessness problem, but said that the federal government and the state should work together with local organizations.
"The things that I have seen that work extremely well around this country and I've traveled extensively, are the things where federal, state and local governments are able to work together along with for-profits, nonprofits, philanthropic organizations, faith based organizations," he said.
California officials have largely been wary of the Trump administration's intentions, concerned that the president wants to use homelessness and urban ills as a wedge for the 2020 campaign. But they have said they are willing to work with him.
Trump headlined a Beverly Hills fundraiser Tuesday night at the mansion of Los Angeles developer Geoffrey Palmer, according to sources familiar with the event. The dinner was the second stop of a two-day swing through California that is expected to raise more than $15 million for the president's reelection campaign.
"It was absolutely awesome. People are ready and committed to working very hard for his reelection," said Celeste Greig, a veteran GOP activist who attended the dinner, where filet mignon and sea bass were served.
Greig, the former president of the California Republican Assembly, said Trump spoke about his efforts to end child trafficking, stop illegal immigration, create stronger trade relations and take on the crop of Democratic candidates competing to replace him.
"We will never be a socialist country," Trump said, according to Greig.
The president was joined at the event by Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and son Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle (who is also California Gov. Gavin Newsom's ex-wife). Donors, who were not told the exact location of the fundraiser, checked in at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where they showed their credentials before being whisked to Palmer's mansion in shuttles. Actor and Trump critic Tom Arnold was at the hotel trolling Trump supporters as they arrived, Greig said.
Earlier in the day, Trump spoke at a Bay Area luncheon at the 32,000-square-foot home of Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy.
Harmeet Dhillon, one of California's two representatives on the Republican National Committee, rode with the president in his car from Moffett Federal Airfield to McNealy's Portola Valley home.
"We spoke about California and legal issues. He asked about various things going on in California, (notably) the homelessness issue and how concerned he is about the health crisis, in Southern California in particular," said Dhillon, a San Francisco attorney whom Trump has recognized at the White House for her work on behalf of conservatives on college campuses and in Silicon Valley.
