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Garcetti Backpedals, Says Trump Would Not Affect LA2024 Bid
Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles speaks during a LA2024 press conference at the Rio games.(Photo by Sarah Crabill/Getty Images)
Days after Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti told a reporter that (god help us all) a Donald Trump presidency would hurt L.A.'s chances of getting the 2024 Olympics, he's stepped back a bit from the comments.
Scroll ahead to the 23:20 mark to hear the question and Garcetti's response.
At a press conference with the LA2024 delegation in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, Garcetti was asked again about how much Trump would hurt L.A.'s bid, and couched his response first by saying that he was merely expressing the feelings of other people on the Olympic committee.
"I would say this bid does not depend on any election," Garcetti said. "This bid is about a city that is connected to the Olympics, and the way that sports transforms and transcends politics." Los Angeles last hosted the Olympic Games in 1984.
Garcetti did, however, use the opportunity to still take an obvious shot at Trump and his isolationist rhetoric:
An America that turns inward isn't good for world peace, isn't good for progress, isn't good for all of us. An America that I saw in 1984, where the face of the world was on the sidewalks of my city, is something that can inspire a nation, not just a city. I do think that the Olympics, philosophically, has a role to play without being explicitly political, in inspiring us to transcend the politics... of anybody's thinking that they're better than anyone else. That's the power of sport and the power of Olympics and that's what we want to harness, and we believe we embody, in Los Angeles.
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