Donald Trump’s Star, and the Long Shadow It Casts on Hollywood Boulevard

By the time dawn broke over Hollywood Boulevard this week, Donald J. Trump’s star on the Walk of Fame had once again become the center of a familiar ritual: cordoned off, photographed, scrubbed and debated. The latest act of vandalism was comparatively modest, executed with marker rather than a pickaxe. Yet the reaction it provoked — thousands of comments, memes and recriminations across Reddit, X and Instagram — underscored a larger truth. No other name embedded in the terrazzo sidewalk carries the same symbolic charge, or invites the same recurring acts of defacement.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame is, by design, a place of reverence. Tourists kneel to photograph the names of actors they admire; fans leave flowers for the recently deceased. But Trump’s star, awarded in 2007 for his role as host and producer of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” has long occupied a different category. It is less a monument than a proxy battleground, a slab of pink terrazzo that has come to represent political grievance, celebrity culture and the anger of a divided country.

The most recent vandalism, first shared widely on Reddit and later amplified across other platforms, was quickly removed by city workers. Still, images spread faster than any cleanup could keep pace with. Within hours, the comment threads filled with a familiar mix of gallows humor, moral outrage and calls for stronger protection or permanent removal. Some users joked about more destructive methods; others argued that the repeated defacement itself had become a form of performance art, an evolving commentary on Trump’s public life.

This was hardly the first time. In October 2016, just weeks before the presidential election, a man identified as James Otis attacked the star with a pickaxe, reducing it to rubble in broad daylight. Otis later told reporters that he intended to auction off fragments of the star to raise money for women who had accused Trump of sexual misconduct. He was arrested, charged with felony vandalism and ordered to pay restitution. Two years later, in 2018, another man, Austin Clay, repeated the act, again using a pickaxe. In an irony that delighted social media users, Otis helped post bail for Clay, linking the two episodes in a strange footnote of protest history.

The star has also been the site of physical confrontations between pro-Trump and anti-Trump demonstrators, including a widely circulated 2018 video showing shoving and shouting erupting around the plaque. For city officials and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which administers the Walk of Fame, the question has never been whether Trump’s star is controversial, but whether controversy alone justifies removal. Their answer has consistently been no. The chamber has emphasized that stars are awarded for professional achievements, not moral character, and that removing one would set a precedent difficult to contain.

That rationale has done little to quell public debate. On social media, critics argue that Trump’s political career and legal troubles have retroactively tainted the honor, transforming what was once a celebrity accolade into an emblem of impunity. Supporters counter that vandalism is an attack on free expression and private property, and that Trump’s entertainment career — particularly the cultural impact of “The Apprentice” — remains undeniable.

What gives the story its peculiar resonance is the availability of archival footage from the original 2007 ceremony, which has resurfaced repeatedly online in recent years. The clips, grainy and awkward, show a pre-presidential Trump being praised for his business ventures and television success, while making offhand remarks about loyalty, strength and ambition. To many viewers revisiting the footage now, it reads as a time capsule from a different media ecosystem, one in which Trump was still widely treated as a brash but essentially conventional celebrity.

That contrast has fueled renewed interest in the star itself. In commentaries shared by late-night hosts, YouTube political commentators and TikTok creators, the Walk of Fame ceremony is often juxtaposed with later moments from Trump’s presidency and post-presidency, inviting viewers to trace a line from reality television to political power. The star becomes, in this framing, a physical artifact of a transformation that many Americans still struggle to process.

The Los Angeles Police Department has said that vandalism cases involving the star are handled like any other property crime, and that suspects are identified and charged when possible. Repairs are typically paid for by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, not taxpayers, a fact the chamber frequently cites in defending its decision to restore the plaque each time it is damaged. The cost of those repairs has been reported to run into the tens of thousands of dollars over the years.

Yet the persistence of the vandalism suggests that enforcement alone is unlikely to resolve the issue. As one media scholar noted in a recent interview shared widely online, Trump’s star functions less as an honorific than as a lightning rod. “It’s one of the few places where celebrity culture, political protest and public space collide in a very literal way,” the scholar said. “People project onto it whatever they feel about Trump himself.”

That projection is amplified by the nature of social media, where images of the star circulate stripped of context, inviting instant reaction. On Reddit, threads about the latest incident drew tens of thousands of upvotes within hours. On X, partisan influencers framed the vandalism as either justified resistance or proof of lawlessness. On Instagram and TikTok, the star appeared in montages set to music, treated alternately as satire and spectacle.

For all the noise, the star remains where it has always been, just outside the Dolby Theatre, polished and restored after each episode. Tourists continue to stop, some snapping photos, others stepping carefully around it. A few leave flowers, either sincerely or ironically. The sidewalk absorbs it all.

In that sense, Trump’s star has come to embody the paradox of his public life. It is permanent yet perpetually under attack, mundane yet freighted with meaning. Long before history renders its final verdict on Trump’s political career, his name will remain etched in Hollywood Boulevard, inviting admiration, scorn or something in between from anyone willing to look down.

And if past is prologue, it is unlikely to be the last time city workers are called to clean it once again.