A mile west of Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, a road sign warns: “Use extreme caution. Constant earth movement.”
Just a few blocks away, a sign just off Palos Verdes Drive South touts Estates at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, where prospective residents can “build their custom dream home.”
Those signs sum up the promise and peril of the open-to-the-public golf course that Trump bought from bankrupt developers in 2002 after the 18th hole slipped into the ocean. The club has even played a role in Trump's fraud trial in New York.
On Friday morning, Trump is scheduled to hold a news conference at his club in the beautiful, beleaguered city, which is under a state of emergency issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom this month due to extreme land movement brought on by back-to-back rainy winters.
Hundreds of homes have been left without power and gas in recent weeks. Neighborhoods near the golf course are under an evacuation warning issued by the city as the cracked ground moves 9 to 12 inches a week and homes are cracking and sliding off their foundations.
Last month, a small fire in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood, sparked by a power line that fell due to earth movement, underscored the danger.
It's unclear whether Trump will acknowledge the ongoing disaster during his visit. City officials say the club is about a half-mile from the active landslide zone. In an email, his campaign said it was “monitoring” conditions in the city.
Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor John Cruikshank said he's making a concerted effort to get on Trump's radar.
“My hope is that when I’m in town, I can catch up with his schedule and give him a briefing,” Cruikshank said. “It would be great to get some attention, no matter who it is.”
As of Thursday afternoon, Cruikshank still had nothing planned.
Trump is in California this week for a pair of high-dollar fundraisers, including one Thursday night where tickets were selling for $250,000 each. He is scheduled to attend a fundraiser Friday afternoon in the Bay Area, organized, in particular, by relatives of Newsom’s wife. The cost: up to $500,000 per couple.
This week, there was a dissonance between Trump’s club — where the perfectly paved parking lot was filled with Porsches, Teslas and BMWs — and the disaster unfolding just outside.
On Palos Verdes Drive South, the only way to access the club by car, traffic was slowed by orange cones, lane closures and flashing lights from utility trucks.
The two-lane highway has long been a bumpy, patchy asphalt roller coaster. It is accompanied by an above-ground sewer line equipped with flexible pipes designed to move with the terrain, but ground movement has left the road marred by cracks, undulations and steep dips.
Just off Palos Verdes Drive South, the property sign at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles invites prospective residents to build luxury homes. Two newly constructed cul-de-sacs lead to empty, level lots, where Trump’s company is actively pursuing plans to build as many as 23 homes, said Amy Seeraty, a senior city planner.
The Trump Organization, he said, has been working through an extensive list of requirements, such as working with the city geologist to make sure irrigation would not aggravate earth movement, before it can sell and develop the lots.
“They are meeting them,” he said of the requirements. “I don’t have an exact date, but they are getting close.”
In 2002, Trump paid $27 million for the property, then called Ocean Trails Golf Club and at a heavily discounted price. The original developers had filed for bankruptcy after the 18th hole fell into the Pacific during a landslide in 1999, while the course was still under construction.
In 2015, Trump announced he would drop plans to build housing on 16 additional lots and instead grant an 11.5-acre conservation easement to the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy. At a press conference at the time, Trump told organization officials, “It's a great honor for me and I'll enjoy it forever, I guess.”
Trump still owns the land and golfers still use it as a driving range, but the move was praised by community leaders happy to preserve open space on the coast.
Trump said the donated land was worth “well over $25 million.” While he presented the donation as a charity, it was in his interest to have the land valued as high as possible because that would have affected the size of the tax break he could claim.
In 2022, the New York state attorney general sued Trump, three of his sons and his company, alleging they fraudulently inflated the value of the Rancho Palos Verdes club and conservation easement, along with other Trump properties across the country.
The goal, according to the attorney general, was to receive favorable loans and other financial benefits. In February, a judge ordered Trump to pay more than $450 million in fines in the civil fraud case. Trump has appealed.
In Rancho Palos Verdes, Trump has repeatedly feuded with locals over planting a row of unauthorized ficus trees to block the view of homes he considered ugly, and he has battled the California Coastal Commission and the city for a decade over a 70-foot flagpole he erected without a permit.
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer, his son Eric Trump told hundreds of California delegates and their guests that the club had “the most beautiful views in the world, the most perfect weather in the world.”
“Every time I go there, I think, 'Man, if it wasn't for the taxes, if it wasn't for the taxes and the craziness, I'd probably live here.'”
On Wednesday, the day after Trump’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the formal dining room at the club’s Café Pacific was virtually empty. There, dolphins and seashells are painted on the ceiling, the $25 Trump burger comes with Thousand Island dressing on a Trump-branded brioche bun, and floor-to-ceiling windows offer sparkling views of the Pacific Ocean.
Inside the club’s store, visitors posed for photos next to $50 red MAGA hats. Framed in the club’s lobby was a racy 1990 Playboy magazine cover featuring Trump and his bunny Brandi Brandt, who has her tuxedo jacket wrapped around her otherwise naked body.
It also shows the 2007 resolution, signed by then-Los Angeles City Council Speaker Eric Garcetti, congratulating him on receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Meanwhile, Mayor Cruikshank has turned to a man even richer than Trump for help for his troubled city: tech billionaire Elon Musk.
“While our community is resilient, this situation presents a unique opportunity to turn a setback into a display of sustainable living,” Cruikshank wrote in a letter to Tesla’s founder on Aug. 8 and published on X, which Musk also owns. Could Tesla, he asked, partner with the city to power affected homes with solar panels and batteries?
Musk’s company responded within three days and quickly set up a meeting, Cruikshank said. City officials are now evaluating proposals for solar-powered batteries and other off-grid options to power homes, he said.
As for Palos Verdes Drive South, along with the signs warning of landslides and encouraging people to build their dream homes, there is one more sign:
“Urgent sewer repairs. There will be delays.”
Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.
