The Los Angeles Times points out an odd bit of presidential trivia as 2017 comes to a close: President Donald Trump could become the first president since Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower not to visit the State of California in his first full year in office.
The Times reports:
Trump is about to become the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower 64 years ago to skip a visit to California during his first calendar year in office. And he doesn’t appear to have any plans to take Air Force One to the country’s most populous and economically powerful state before he marks his first full year in office Jan. 20.
Even past presidents who, like Trump, didn’t win the state’s electoral votes made it a destination, if only for California’s allure as the Golden State of campaign cash.
The Times notes that California might be a problematic destination for Trump in particular because the state has declared itself to be “ground zero” for the so-called “Resistance” to his presidency. State politicians have sued the administration over almost all of its major policies, and thousands of activists have organized regular protests against Trump in the Golden State, even taking over Hollywood’s vaunted Gay Pride festival for the purpose.
Trump has also accused California of allowing voter fraud, which he alleged earlier this year had cost him a popular vote victory over Hillary Clinton because of the large margin she ran up in the state. (Without California, Trump would have won the popular vote nationwide as well as the Electoral College vote.)
The president did provide rapid disaster aid for California to aid with flooding as well as wildfires in 2017.
There are still three weeks left before the first anniversary of Trump taking office, but he seems to have no plans to visit before then.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.