Huntington Beach mayor pro tem apologizes for profane remark to protesters
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Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tem Butch Twining publicly apologized at Tuesday night’s meeting of the City Council for a profane comment he made to protesters gathered on Sunday.
Video circulated on social media over the weekend of Twining, driving his sport-utility vehicle, pulling up to protesters near the corner of Main Street and Yorktown Avenue next to City Hall. Twining told them that signs placed on construction fencing on the northeast corner of the intersection were on private property and should be taken down.
Resident Andrew Einhorn, who is routinely critical of the conservative council during his public comments at meetings, walked up to the car and said, “Why don’t you go vape?”
Twining was shown on another video using a vape in the council chambers in 2024.
On Sunday afternoon, Twining said, “Huh?” to Einhorn’s comment then is shown saying, “Why don’t you go f— yourself?”
“In retrospect, I wish I had used another pejorative,” Twining said during his statement at the start of Tuesday night’s meeting. “It seemed so natural, being that I was being accosted by people who were carrying signs with the ‘F’ word on it. To everybody here and everybody that’s watching on TV, I apologize for using such a crude word to someone I didn’t even know.”
He said during his remarks that he found Einhorn’s comment funny, but that he also heard someone else at the protest tell him that he wished he had died, a possible reference to Twining’s quadruple bypass surgery three months ago. Those comments are not immediately audible on the video, and neither Einhorn nor Mandy Rosen, who shot the video of the incident, said they heard those remarks made to Twining in separate interviews with the Daily Pilot.
“I appreciate that he had the guts to apologize,” Einhorn said. “What he really should have done is parked his car, walked over and said, ‘I’d like to speak to whoever has organized this rally,’ and then had some dialogue with them instead of trying to yell things out his car window.”
Rosen, who lives in Huntington Beach, said she did not know she was having an interaction with a council member until after the incident.
“I thought it was outrageous,” she said. “I didn’t even know he said the ‘F’ word until I was watching the video. It happened so quickly … I saw what he said, and my first reaction was, ‘Holy s—.’ I knew he kind of pointed at us super-angrily, but I didn’t know he said the ‘F’ word. Honestly, as a professional who is serving the city in the way that he is, I just think it’s really bad.”
Twining said in an interview with the Daily Pilot that he resented signs that the protesters, who gather at the intersection each Sunday afternoon, were carrying that had profane messages themselves.
He added that he was concerned that swastikas were on at least one sign that was posted on the street corner. Pictures provided by Einhorn shown a crossed out swastika on one sign, while another resembles a swastika but is the number “47” in the same color pattern, which is credited to the late East Coast rapper Capital Steez.
“This is a very busy intersection on a beautiful Sunday, and they’re carrying around signs that say ‘F— Trump’ and ‘F— ICE,’” Twining said. “Parents are taking their kids to the beach, they’re stopped at red lights and they’re holding these signs ... To have those signs out there, that’s pathetic.”
“All I did was drive up to them and say, ‘Hey, that’s private property, you’ve got to take those signs down,’” he added, referring to the signs attached to the fencing. “And they just went berserk, started screaming and whistling.”
But Rosen noted that Twining approached the group, not the other way around.
“He could have easily taken pictures of the fence and left, but he didn’t do that,” she said. “He felt the need to approach us out of anger … He said in his speech, ‘They were yelling at me. I was offended by their signs with the ‘F’ word,’ but he was the one that used the ‘F’ word on us directly. I thought that was an interesting remark.”
