Southern California Republicans are furious with the Orange County Fair, which not only denied the GOP a booth this year but is featuring in its art room display a framed photo that essentially calls for the death of President Donald Trump.
On Monday, Orange County Republican Party chairman Will O’Neill sent the fair’s governing board a blistering letter protesting the displayed photograph.
The letter is particularly salient, as not only is the president in Southern California this week, but on Sunday authorities arrested a 38-year-old man who was allegedly doing suspicious surveillance on a coastal Trump-owned golf course where the president is expected to visit, about 40 miles from the fairgrounds.
The anti-Trump photograph shows a child holding a sign that reads “Happy Last Birthday” next to another sign with a caricature of Donald Trump as well as other anti-Trump images. The work is attributed to Alexander Nguken and titled “The Young Fight,” the American Thinker reported.
The display of the photo at the fair is especially striking in that Orange County is often thought of as conservative-leaning because Republican and Democrat party registration is almost equal.
Photos are on display in the Visual Arts Gallery at the Orange County Fair in Costa Mesa, California, on Thursday, August 7, 2025. (Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty)
In his letter to fair chairwoman Barbara Bagneris and others on the board O’Neill wrote in part:
Highlighting a photo using the phrase “Happy Last Birthday” next to our President’s image in today’s political climate, following multiple assassination attempts against President Donald Trump, increasing threats against elected officials, and a disturbing rise in politically motivated violence is unacceptable.
Public institutions should exercise extraordinary caution before displaying imagery that can reasonably be interpreted as normalizing or trivializing rhetoric surrounding the death or elimination of political figures. Given that you have multiple elected officials on your Board – including a Trustee of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District – you clearly know better.
He went on to write that “at best” the display demonstrates “astonishingly poor judgment” and “at worst” it contributed to the “toxic political environment that leaders across the political spectrum claim they want to reduce.”
O’Neill also took the board to task refusing to allow the county’s Republican party to have a booth at the fair, which they had had for “more than a decade.”
The GOP chairman also demanded the board reveal who approved the display of the Trump death wish photo and what “criteria” were used to determine the display was consistent with a policy the fair touted, claiming it wanted to avoid politics at the event.
The gunman arrested at the Trump National Golf Court in Rancho Palos Verdes was identified as Jeanine John Taele. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies discovered when Taele was detained that he had ammunition on him and said they found “a loaded pistol with a round chambered and a loaded magazine” in his vehicle.
He pleaded not guilty Tuesday to four weapons charges, according to the Department of Justice, “including possession of an unregistered short-barreled rifle,” according to prosecutors.
There has yet to be a response from fair leaders on the photo controversy.
The fair started on July 17 and runs through August 16.
Breitbart News contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more
