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Mayor Eric Garcetti and the team from LA 2024 have been in Rio de Janeiro this week, meeting with members of the International Olympic Committee in an effort to pitch Los Angeles as the host city for the 2024 Olympics. It seems like we've got a pretty good shot—these new renderings of a tricked-out Coliseum and swim stadium should certainly help.
But there's just one teensy, tiny-handed problem: a potential Trump presidency might discourage the 98 IOC delegates, who hail from around the world, from selecting the U.S. city when they vote in 2017.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Garcetti said that if Trump were to be president, it would raise some serious concerns about the...tone in America, and how hospitable it would be to people from, say, Mexico or various Muslim countries:
I think for some of the IOC members they would say, 'Wait a second, can we go to a country like that, where we've heard things that we take offense to?' But I think that gives us even more urgency globally, where we can say, 'This is something that is a different strength maybe than the things that you've heard or the things you believe.'
He continued:
They wonder, 'Is America going to take this strange turn?' Were there to be an election result that is less international, more inward focused, maybe there's even greater urgency to a bid like this. But even if that doesn't happen, even the threat of that, the talk of that, the idea that we exclude people based on who they are at our borders, gives us urgency to having things like the Olympics underscore who we are and what we're about.
We're sure Garcetti and the LA 2024 gang are busy hobnobbing with officials, but we hope they're finding some time to enjoy the festivities in the Marvelous City. Judging from his Instagram, it looks like he at least got a decent spot at the Opening Ceremony, and met with the Refugee Team. Nice.