Unrepentant man smashes Trump’s Hollywood star with pickax
We citizens of these United States of America are barreling into the final days of what might be the weirdest presidential election season on record. We’ve clenched our thighs around this torpedo for almost a year now, many of us for longer, and now our muscles are sore, strained. It needs to be over: this seems to be the consensus among most Americans across the board, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, Libertarians or Independents, butter-side-ups or butter-side-downs. “End it,” we all say.
The tension is palpable. Look at the news (of which this blog post is a part). It’s loud and ugly out there in the brutal dome of national conversation, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the recent reactions to Trump’s… what’s the word… existence.
The media hates the Donald and so do countless Americans. Remember those naked Trump statues that appear a couple of months ago? Not flattering. And now with all these allegations of sexual assault, womanizing, dangerous rhetoric, etc. etc., Donald Trump is not exactly feeling the love these days. I mean, just look at his Hollywood Walk of Fame star — it was just busted with a pickax.
Kablammo!
Early Wednesday morning, just before 6 a.m., a man dressed in construction worker garb brought a bunch of traffic cones and various construction blockades to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He placed these props around the Donald’s special star and got to work laying down mean pickax strokes in an effort to release the star from its fixture within the sidewalk.
Taking credit for the star-bursting is Jamie Otis. Deadline Hollywood first broke the story and asked Otis about his rationale for vandalizing Donald Trump’s star. Apparently, his plan was to cleanly remove the star from the sidewalk, after which he’d auction it off in an effort to raise money for the eleven women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual abuse (claims which he has, for the record, denied).
This isn’t the first time Trump’s star has been vandalized during his campaign.
In April, vandals painted a backwards swastika on the star.
In July, a clever artist inspired by Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the United States/Mexico border built a tiny wall of his own, complete with razor wire to discourage tiny immigrants. The wall was placed around Trump’s star.
This axe-busting, however, is certainly the most destructive of all the efforts to vandalizing the Donald’s special star. A good clean-up job took care of the other incidents, but now the star will have to be completely replaced — something the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has confirmed will happen over the next week or so. They’re surely not happy about this, considering the fact that each pink terrazzo and brass plaque costs $30,000 (although damage to Trump’s star is expected to amount to only $2,500). In the words of the chamber’s president, Leron Gubler:
“When people are unhappy with one of our honorees, we would hope that they would project their anger in more positive ways than to vandalize a California state landmark. Our democracy is based on respect for the law. People can make a difference by voting and not destroying public property.”
Crimes of Vandalization:
When the story first broke, it was reported that a full investigation was launched, although charges have yet to be confirmed. Jamie Otis is taking full credit for the vandalization, which he seems to consider a success even though he was unable to remove the entire star from the concrete. He at least managed to chip off some letters in Trump’s name and other pieces of the star, which he still plans to auction off to raise money for Trump’s alleged sexual assault victims.
The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, for their part, is indeed looking to take legal action against Otis. According to sources, they’re working alongside law enforcement to ensure an efficient felony investigation and “intend[s] to prosecute to the full extent of the law.”
Does Jamie Otis fear the inevitable charges? Nah:
“I did the action and I fully will comply with the law once I set a time up with my attorney to [turn] myself in. I will gladly pay the damages to the site.”
Since he’s admitting his guilt, we don’t even have to worry about whether he has a solid defense. There’s no need to prove whether Otis committed an act of vandalism. We just need to check out legislation related to vandalism, which in California can be either a misdemeanor or a felony depending on the damage. As previously mentioned, this particular incident is being investigated as a felony.
As far as consequences go, Otis will be looking at either jail time, fines, or some combination of the two. At a maximum, he’ll be behind bars for a year and pay $10,000 in damages — which, depending on your perspective, may or may not be enough for him to retrospectively say, “Worth it.” And who knows! In the age of crowdsourced money, it’s possible that the Trump haters on the internet could help him out a bit.
