LA County for Trump: Eight Years Later, What Happened?

From early 2017 until mid-2018, I was active with a large coalition of Angelenos fighting the good fight for President Trump.

We went to protests, we led rallies, and we participated in marches in and around Los Angeles to support the President and advocate for his policies.

Some of the biggest movers and shakers in the movement got together for multiple Independence Day bashes throughout Southern California, including Genevieve Peter's home in the Sherman Oaks area.

Here's the group photo:

From back to front, left to right: Jesse Suave, Charles Beltran, David Hernandez, Joseph Cheng, Rachelle Mand, Megan Dowling, Patricia James, Raphael Hwong, Mama Leonor Ferris, Dawna Schoenberger, Elsa Aldeguer, Arthur Schaper, Harim Uzziel Vargas, Genevieve Peters Scott

A lot of people have followed up with me to ask what happened to the team. Where is everyone now?

Here's a basic rundown, as best as I can remember or relate.

I see Rachelle Mand (the lady with curly hair and glasses) at the Torrance-Lomita-Palos Verdes Republican Assembly meetings all the time. She's still in the fight.

Harim Uzziel Vargas (the guy at the front wearing a black shirt and a black MAGA hat) turned on all of us. He insisted that we could not be friends with people whom he did not like, which betrays a deep lack of maturity. He cut me off as he cut off many others.

Mama Leonor Ferris (the lady with long white hair and the stars and stripes on her shirt) is still kicking butt, but I have not seen her in years. I did connect with her briefly at an event earlier this year, but we didn't talk that much.

Genevieve Peters (on the right, in front of me) lives in Michigan now. She was born there, but moved to California to help with the George W. Bush campaign. She lived in the Golden State for years, and she was such a great help to all of us. After moving back to Michigan, he got married in 2023! Her husband, John Scott, is very supportive of the MAGA cause, too!

Elsa Aldeguer and I connect from time to time. We both supported Bianco for governor. I saw her late March, when I gave a speech to the Hollywood Republican Assembly. She has always been so supportive of me.

Joseph Cheng (the Asian guy with the shaved head) still connects with me from time to time, too. He supports me on social media. Unlike some in the MAGA-verse, he didn't get angry with me when I supported Governor Ron DeSantis for President in 2024. Yes, I voted for Trump in the general election. I am glad that I did, and I am glad that he is keeping promises this time, which he had made last time,

Megan Dowling was a hard-core Trump supporter. She attended lots of Tea Party rallies, was active in the local Republican clubs, and she attended lots of city council meetings to protest the sanctuary state law SB 54 in 2018.

Then she went to the dark side, celebrating all things Palestinian. All of this came out after the October 7th, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel. From that time on, she started blathering about how she opposed Zionism, hated Israel, and supported the "Palestinian" cause. She now spends every Sunday in Redondo Beach protesting Israel along with the local group of left-wing activists.

Patricia James (the lady with long white-blonde hair to the left of Harim's baseball cap) is still active, but I don't really talk to her. She was really helpful when I didn't have a car (or a lot of money!), so she would drive me to events. One source told me that she moved to Florida after getting married, and then her husband recently passed away.

I haven't seen Charles Beltran in a while. We had a falling out. It's a long story that I don't want to get into.

Lots of people don't know the story behind Raphael, but I feel safe sharing some of the details now. Raphael was a good friend, very close to me. He helped me when I had suffered a stroke in 2019, and then when I had another health scare two years later. Unfortunately, he became dark and cynical about everything. He would just complain about all the problems, and it was so draining. The last time I sat down with him, the day before Independence Day 2023, all he would do was perseverate about the end of the conservative movement and how everything was falling apart. I couldn't deal with his constant complaining and negativity anymore. I had to let him go, and I have not spoken to him since. It is very sad what happened to him.

I still see David Hernandez all the time. He is doing great work for the Trump and Republican cause in Los Angeles. He is fighting the good fight and really thinking big for the state of California. In fact, he is a Vice Chair for the California Republican Party, and he recently got re-elected to the position.

Jesse Suave is still active, doing great stuff. He registers voters and shows up to protests from time to time. I had dinner with him and a few others earlier this year.  I have talked with him a few times, and I see him at a lot of Christian events.

Dawna Schoenberger was well-known as an awesome biker chick. I attended her birthday a few years ago in South Orange County. It was great to see her again, along with her kids. She is living somewhere in the Inland Empire now. We haven't talked lately, but she supports my work with MassResistance, which means a lot to me.

So, what happened to LA County for Trump?

Life happened, hard times happened, and new challenges came up.

I was working as a freelance journalist and activist for a year and a half. Time and money were growing tight, and I needed to find stable work. MassResistance, the international pro-family group that makes a difference, hired me in July 2018. I am celebrating my eighth year with the organization! That work has taken me to all sorts of places, and it has also required so much of my time that I no longer had time for Trump events.

During COVID-19, I was focused on the health freedom fight as well as exposing all the corruption in the public school system, which became so evident after kids were forced to stay home and get their education virtually. Parents finally witnessed all the grooming and corruption taking place in the government schools, and they demanded change!

From there, after Trump left office (Stolen Election!), I started doing other health freedom-related activism as well as my full-time work for MassResistance.

I soured on Trump in late 2022, when all of his US Senate picks failed and he chanted about protecting "gay rights." A lot of MAGA backed away from me in those days because I supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. I stepped away from a lot of other activism in those days, too, because I was tired of just doing the rallies. I wanted results, and I witnessed how just attending local government meetings and yelling at politicians wasn't getting the job done.

President Trump 2.0 has been a vast improvement over his first term, and he is setting the stage for great reforms and restoration in this country. I am hoping that more citizens get involved in the political process as well as the culture war. My main focus is MassResistance, but I am also writing more, getting published by American Thinker, American Greatness, Townhall.com, Canada Free Press, 2 Urban Girls, and other sites.

There's the basic rundown for now. Hope everyone is doing well, and let's not stop fighting for MAGA every day we can!

What Happened to LA County For Trump/MAGA Movement?

 

Laurel Ho, one of the most committed conservatives in Southern California, reposted this photo on Facebook today.

It brought back a lot of memories and invited some reflection.

Let's start with the photo itself.

This was taken in early 2018 at Tom and Cindy Greene's home in Culver City, CA.

Robert Herrerra of New York State is standing to the left of me, and Harim Uzziel Vargas, although everyone knew him by Uzziel, is on my other side.

In late 2017, Harim found out about Robert Herrera via social media, and they connected for a few days, then Robert started visiting Los Angeles and getting involved in Trump events.

The story with Harim is a lot longer. I first found him on Facebook in 2016, and I was really surprised to see a guy who was not just Hispanic, but Jewish, a cholo type, and he was a big Trump supporter!

Quite a combination, to put it mildly.

We friended each other on Facebook, although he would share with me later on that he saw the stuff I was doing with We the People Rising, fighting illegal immigration while protesting in city council meetings and other government board meetings throughout Southern California.

The first time we met in person was in late January 2017, when we counter-protested the Soros-funded protests at LAX, raising hell about President Trump's travel ban, in which Trump used the exact same countries that President Obama had targeted in his own travel ban.

We were surrounded, clearly outnumbered by the anti-Trump fanatics crowding the sidewalks and even the streets, all throughout LAX. We persevered, and then we held our own Trump rally at LAX airport the next year.

Harim and I, along with the many members of We the People Rising, started connecting and congregating around more Trump events. We spoke out at the LA County Board of Supervisors when they were taking aggressive steps to counter the first Trump administration's lawful efforts to curtail illegal immigration into our country. Our social media presence group, and lots of people reached out to us, wanting to get involved.

It was a great time, for sure!

More people started coalescing around us in Los Angeles County after our protest at LAX. There were lots of people that I connected with, including Harim's friends, as well as other contacts who were active in the Trump movement, going to the rallies and protests throughout the city of Los Angeles. Lots of Trump supporters gathered together on March 25, 2017, marching all the way to Trump's star near Hollywood and Vine in Hollywood.

But what happened to the movement? What happened to the whole LA County for Trump organization?

The first thing that comes to mind, at least for me, is that I started focusing on specific efforts, like shutting down SB 54, the sanctuary state law. The CA state legislature shoved that awful policy onto the state despite widespread outrage and opposition to the law.

The protests went from confronting bad city councils which were embracing policies to protect illegal aliens, to city councils that were taking a stand against illegal immigration and calling on the state or the federal government to do something about SB 54. Many of those protests started up in early 2018, and then the larger group of us started travelling all over Southern California, calling on city councils to register their opposition to the law or to ignore compliance with the law.

During this time, Robert and Harim started behaving badly.

In early 2018, Harim and I coordinated with other Trump supporters to set up a protest outside of US Senator Dianne Feinstein's office, so that we could pre-empt Islamic militant Linda Sarsour from taking up space in front of the office. We beat her to the location, and we force Sarsour and her hateful leftists to protest across the street. At that meeting, I remember talking with Harim about the growing anti-Semitism from some of the Trump "supporters" who were also going to our events. It was becoming a noticeable problem.

And one of the most notorious examples of this was Robert Herrera himself. He started bashing Jews and talking up all the hollow anti-Jewish talking points, claiming that "The Jews" control the media, academia, etc.

When I showed Harim all the stuff that he had been posting, and I then shared it with other members of our "LA County for Trump" coalition, we distanced ourselves from him, and he ended up disappearing for good.

Things fell apart with Harim when he started getting into arguments and fights with other Trump supporters in Southern California. He had quite a temper, and he also had a drinking problem. A number of times, he went on YouTube or Facebook Live and would have an alcohol-induced meltdown.

The last time we talked, or rather texted, to each other was in mid-2018. He was posting some negative comments on my Instagram account, saying that certain people were not part of "LA County for Trump." Another lady in our larger team commented: "Can we stop with all the drama?"

I texted Harim privately, and I told him to refrain from attacking fellow Trump supporters on my social media. He got really upset, telling me that he had always been there for me, and that I should stand by him when he has a problem with someone. That is a game I choose not to play. He didn't like that, so he cut me off.

He ended up cutting off a lot of people in the LA County for Trump movement.

From that point on, I was more focused on results, even if it meant getting different cities to take a stance against SB 54. I travelled to more cities throughout Southern California. I got really tired of the rallies and the protests just for the sake of sharing my views. I wanted to accomplish policy goals.

Also, during an eighth month period, from late November 2017 to 2018, I was travelling to other places. I went to North State (Siskiyou County) twice, and I went to Arizona twice in 2018. I was doing more stuff, but I also ran into another problem: money. I had left my marketing job in March 2017, and then I was working as an independent journalist and activist. People were donating money to pay for my trips and other Trump-related activities, and I also spent whatever money I saved.

Finally, I got hired by MassResistance to be a full-time activist director in July, 2018 and I have been doing that ever since. My new job had me focusing a lot more on organizing parents and other activists around the country to fight the LGBT agenda. I even started working with legislators in different states to pass pro-family legislation.

As you can imagine, I didn't have much time to do Trump-related stuff anymore. The last time I did any activism connected with We the People Rising was in May, 2019. By then, I felt that the repeated appearances at town halls and local government meetings had really run its course. Many of the activists I had been working with were not committed to growing the team or getting clear goals in place to accomplish, so I put aside all off the volumteer activism and focused on MassResistance.

So, for what it's worth, that's the story of what happened to LA County for Trump, certainly as far as I'm concerned.

November 14, 2020 #StopTheSteal Rally in Beverly Hills (Photos)