Los Angeles Countys transit agency is facing fresh accusations of political bias after a wave of complaints that it quietly sidelined buses carrying advertisements for a new documentary about former First Lady Melania Trump.
According to RedState, the controversy began when Los Angeles County GOP Chair Roxanne Hoge received a tip on Wednesday that as many as 100 LA Metro buses wrapped with ads for the Melania film were being kept out of normal weekend service.
She took the allegation public on X, writing, I wonder what's going on at @metrolosangeles right now. They have a contract for around 100 buses to advertise @MELANIATRUMP's amazing documentary, done in partnership with @MarcBeckman and distributed by @amazon, I think. I'm hearing that those buses are parked til Monday! ?? a post that quickly went viral, drawing more than 100,000 views and sparking questions about whether the nations second-largest transit system was throttling conservative-leaning content.
LA Metro initially tried to tamp down the story, issuing a bland assurance that nothing was amiss. Hi, there are no reports of an outage at this time, the agency responded on social media, even as Hoge continued to press the issue, explaining, Yesterday, people inside @metrolosangeles alerted me to the fact that advertising for the movie about our First Lady @FLOTUS shot during the lead up to @POTUS' second inauguration, MELANIA, was being purposely throttled by the agency. Because my motto is Trust, But Verify I and later adding, Because my motto is Trust, But Verify I did just that.
To its credit, Metro did not go completely silent, but its explanations shifted in ways that only deepened suspicion. To their credit, Metro responded. To their detriment, they went with two different takes, the account of events noted, as the agency moved from denying any problem to quietly acknowledging operational changes that just happened to affect the Melania ads. On Thursday, Metro told the California Post that it had altered the routes of a number of buses due to vandalism, a claim that struck many observers as a little too convenient given the political climate and the subject of the film.
Hoge, for her part, made clear what she believed was really going on. Im hearing its because someone doesnt want Melania, The Movie, to have a good opening weekend, she wrote in an X chain that drew thousands of impressions and amplified the perception that a taxpayer-funded agency was bending to ideological pressure. The core allegation is not that the buses were taken out of service entirely, but that they were strategically removed from high-visibility routes during a critical promotional window.
Pressed by media inquiries, Los Angeles Metro eventually conceded that it had, in fact, pulled the Melania-ad buses off the busiest corridors. Los Angeles Metro admitted to pulling buses with ads promoting First Lady Melania Trumps new documentary off busy roads over vandalism concerns, one account summarized, as the agency tried to frame the move as a neutral safety measure rather than a political decision. The transit authority elaborated that buses featuring the ads for Melania were being rerouted to other geographic areas to minimize potential vandalism, a formulation that raised as many questions as it answered.
Metro insisted that service itself was unaffected. The buses remain in regular service. Our buses have unfortunately been subject to vandalism over the last couple of years, the agency told Fox Los Angeles, suggesting that the Melania campaign was simply caught up in a broader pattern of property damage. Yet critics quickly noted that Metros own language pointed to vandalism at city bus stops, not necessarily on the buses themselves, prompting skepticism about why ad-bearing vehicles had to be shuffled to less-trafficked areas if the real problem was fixed infrastructure.
So, after seeing significant vandalism at city bus stops on advertising for the Melania movie, Metro proactively reassigned some the buses containing that advertising to other geographic areas to minimize potential vandalism, the explanation ran, but that logic only underscored the double standard conservatives have come to expect in deep-blue cities. Now stop and think for a second: does anyone really imagine that if buses were driving around with ads for one of Michelle Obamas self-pitying tomes or bitter podcasts and were vandalized, that LA Metro would take steps to minimize their exposure? If so, Ive got a bridge to sell you.
No one disputes that vandalism is rampant across Los Angeles, particularly under Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, where public infrastructure often looks neglected and overrun. It is true that bus stops are being vandalized but thats always the case here in Mayor Karen Bass Los Angeles and Gov. Gavin Newsoms California. Many look like trash heaps, and the benches are usually completely taken over by homeless people, the report observed, adding, Also, expect a lot of violent vandalism at bus stops from the Tolerant Left like this at Fulton and Riverside.
The Melania documentary, distributed by Amazon MGM Studios, is slated for official release on Friday, with President Trump and the former First Lady scheduled to attend a special premiere Thursday evening at the Trump-Kennedy Center. Were hearing of other shenanigans going on regarding the Melania movie, which is distributed by Amazon MGM Studios and will be officially released Friday, the piece noted, anticipating that progressive activists will attempt to disrupt the event, as they so often do when conservatives step into the cultural arena.
Expect some tolerant liberals to show up and bang on drums and chant, because thats what theyre good at, the writer added, underscoring the broader concern that public institutions and public spaces in Democrat-run cities are increasingly weaponized against right-of-center speech.
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