Congressman comes to Hermosa Beach to talk Trump and more
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), center, and Mayor Hany Fangary hold a photo of the Hermosa Beach Pier by local lensman Brent Broza, as local political buffs gathered to hear Lieu speak. Photo
As the results started rolling in on Election Night, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) was deeply disappointed to see Donald Trump unexpectedly surge ahead and claim victory in the Electoral College. But while Lieu — who cruised to reelection on Nov. 8, nearly doubling the vote tally of his Republican opponent Kenneth Wright — intends to remain vigilant about overreach by a Trump administration, he’s not all doom and gloom.
Lieu appeared at Hermosa Beach City Hall Saturday, as the special guest at Mayor Hany Fangary’s monthly Community First Meeting. The congressman said that the president elect’s capacity to cause harm would be limited by constitutional features of U.S. government, like separation of powers and federalism, and by Trump’s own volatile personality.
“We’ll see what he does. I don’t know what he’s going to do. I don’t know if he even knows what he’s going to do,” Lieu said of Trump.
Throughout the event, Lieu was by turns knowledgeable and humble, expounding on topics on which he has become a specialist while occasionally showing a willingness, rare in politicians, to admit when he was stumped.
Lieu, a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, spoke optimistically on the progress that had been made in veterans affairs. Three of the four bills Lieu passed in his first term dealt with veterans, and he cited the passage of bill he coauthored with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), which will create 1,200 units of new housing at the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles, as a proud moment.
“I don’t think we can get the kind of folks we need for active duty if they are not perceived to be taken care of when they’re not actually fighting,” he said.
Things are far more grim in the world of cybersecurity. He mentioned the 2015 hack of the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which resulted in the exposure of some 20 million security clearance records. In response, Lieu and other legislators sought changes, including the firing of the head of the OPM and the transfer of security clearance records to another agency.
Despite these changes, Lieu lamented that the United States remained “really far behind” other countries on cybersecurity. Lieu recounted how, earlier this year, he agreed to an interview with “60 Minutes,” in which the newsmagazine worked with a computer science PhD to hack into a phone used by Lieu. Together, they were eventually able to track Lieu’s location, read his text messages and even listen to his voice. As Lieu ticked off some of the many vulnerabilities of smart phones, many members of the audience pulled out their devices and began scrolling through menus.
Some of those present briefly attempted to ground the conversation in local matters. Bill Brand, a city councilmember from Redondo Beach, pleaded for federal involvement in a proposed plan by the West Basin Municipal Water District to consider building an ocean water desalination plant along the coast between Manhattan Beach and El Segundo. The proposal has been widely criticized by local environmentalists, and Lieu said his office would continue to monitor the situation as it wound its way through the regulatory process.
But the clear focus of the afternoon was on national affairs, and the looming reality of a president-elect Trump. Lieu offered a surprisingly candid assessment of the shortcomings of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s push for the presidency (“Her entire campaign was ‘Donald Trump’s a bad person.’ And it almost worked.”), and stressed how important non-governmental organizations like the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union would be in the coming years; Lieu became a monthly donor to the ACLU this month.
But Lieu saw a silver lining in the political process. Given the historical tendency of voters to punish the party in the White House during midterm elections, a Trump administration could be vulnerable if it tried to overreach. Lieu argued that pursuing policies that have long been sought by segments of the Republican party, but were not a focus of Trump’s populist-nationalist campaign pitch, could pave the way for big gains for Democrats.
“If the administration tries to privatize Medicare, we’ll take back the House,” he said.