A Biker for Trump

By Dave Nichols

The following is a very American story. It is about living the American way of life, embracing freedom, and standing behind our President. Revered as the “Godfather of Choppers” by many of his peers, Mondo Porras can look back at an illustrious career in the custom motorcycle world as few can. From judging and putting on custom bike shows worldwide, to television appearances on shows such as The Discovery Channel’s Great Biker Build-Off, his story is as unique as the man himself and his name is forever linked to the long, low and lean bikes Denver’s Choppers is most known for. Mondo is also a proud supporter of our President Donald Trump. In fact, he believes that Trump may very well save our way of life in America. Barely out of high school, Mondo began working with Denver Mullins, the original owner of Denver’s Choppers out of San Bernardino, California. Back in the 1960’s, the shop was known for building custom cars and hot rods. For Mondo, the wish to become a biker led him to buying a used HarleyDavidson Panhead. Throwing a leg over your first big twin Harley can be a bit scary. “I remember Denver saying, ‘You bought it, you ride it!’ I kicked that Panhead over and I haven’t looked back since.”

“We decided to get some motorcycles and fix ‘em up,” Mondo recalls, “and that’s how we got into playing with bikes. We all bought Harleys and decided we didn’t like the way they g

looked, so we started building front ends and changing frames and customizing them, and pretty soon people came in and wanted us to do that to their bikes.”

That was shortly after 1967, the year Denver’s Choppers opened its doors, which made it one of the very first businesses in the slowly emerging custom motorcycle industry to manufacture and sell custom parts. “Back then, there were no catalogs to order parts from, so within a short time, we were known worldwide as the guys to go to for custom parts for choppers,” Mondo explains.

Soon Denver’s began building complete custom bikes and shipping them all over the world. It got to the point, according to Mondo, where “you couldn’t pick up a custom bike magazine without seeing a Denver bike in it.” The Denver’s Chopper style is uniquely its own, according to Mondo, who describes it as long and low. “I’d call it Southern California style.”

It all came to a tragic end in October of 1992, when Denver, who also dabbled in drag boats, drowned during a test run with a safety capsule he and Mondo had designed. For the following year-and-a-half, Mondo stayed at the shop to settle outstanding accounts and take care of legal matters. “What I did was focus more on the drag boats but was still building bikes in the shop as well,” he says.

On June 30, 1997, Mondo re-opened Denver’s Choppers, having moved to Henderson, Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas. “During that time some of the things I am most-proud of happened to me,” he says. “First off, my association with the legendary Easyriders Magazine. I could not have done it without the magazine’s support and help over the years. In 2001 I was awarded the trophy for Best Custom Bike Fabricator from Easyriders. I also had the very extreme pleasure of being in David Mann’s last painting for the 30th anniversary of Easyriders. This was a huge deal to me.”

Mondo was also honored to be awarded the first ever David Mann Kind Award from the David Mann Chopper Fest, and was installed into the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2018, along with being voted Cycle Source Magazine’s Man of the Year.

In 2012 he moved to Reno to be near his daughter and her family and try to slow down a bit, running his one-man-shop in a strip mall near the city’s airport. “But slowing down has not really happened. I still work seven days a week because I love it so much,” Mondo says.

After more than 50 years in the business, Mondo still adheres to the old Denver philosophy, and his front end, rolling chassis, and complete bikes are as innovative, old-school, and mind-blowing as they were during the early days. “Most of my customers g

are hard-working Americans young and old who love choppers,” Mondo tells us. “I still build a lot of Springer front ends that go all over the world.”

As far as retirement goes, Mondo says although he’s in his 70s now, he’s loving it more every day as the bikes get better with every build. “That makes it all worthwhile and exciting to come to work every day,” he says. “I don't want to ever retire. I’m having too much fun building bikes and hot rods. My running joke is that if you ever find me in my shop bent over my welding table with my hood on and the part finished, I was working on, I died a happy man.”

When asked about his loyalty to Donald Trump, Mondo lights up. He says he has a shrine to the President at his shop. “I believe he really is going to drain the swamp in Washington,” Mondo says. “We need a businessman who can come into this mess from the outside and make changes as no career politician can. He has done so many amazing things that you never hear about in the fake news media.”

Bikers are a very loyal and patriotic bunch and there are millions of them all across America who share Mondo’s sentiments. One such patriot is Chris Cox, who started Bikers for Trump back in 2014. Bikers for Trump originally stated that its goal was “to bring together like-minded patriots for the sole purpose of electing Donald Trump for President of the United States.”

That message definitely served its purpose and achieved its avowed goal, Donald J. Trump now standing as the President after leaving the pollsters and pundits with their jaws dropped down to their knees. And if you listened closely, you could have heard a deep rumbling as a background soundtrack, the music of masses of motorcycles rallying to the campaign. And the man who orchestrated that symphony of nationwide biker support was indeed Chris Cox. It took clocking 50,000 miles across the country in a raggedy trailer and sleeping in Walmart parking lots, all on his own nickel.

“First, I drove all around Virginia and North Carolina sort of checking the political temperature, stopping at biker bars with a few bumper stickers I had printed, then started a dialogue over a cold beer, and always within minutes, people were talking about Trump,” Chris recalls. “Then I went to social media and it took off from there.”

That’s a bit of an understatement of the time, sheer grit and determination Chris put into his plan, to not only elect a President he believed in but also to champion and empower bikers and veterans all across the country.

Chris threw his first rally in Virginia Beach at a bar called Bone Shakers, and it turned out bone-shaking cold and rainy plus the local team was playing a Super Bowl playoff. Several hundred bikers still showed up and it was spotlighted with TV coverage that reached several hundred thousand people. The ball was rolling. Chris got back on the road, setting up rallies wherever he could.

That first rally would eventually grow into a cavalcade of several thousand Bikers for Trump who rumbled into Cleveland for the Republican National Convention. “We were there to make sure that the delegates were allowed to exercise their right to peacefully assemble. We had bikers coming in groups from all over the country, anywhere from a thousand to 10,000. What we had in common was that we were all citizen crusaders from all walks of life. We came there to stand with law enforcement, with veterans, with the working man to collectively get behind Donald Trump elected as President.”

Chris had an amazing turnout at Daytona Bike Week in Florida after several weeks on the road when he secured a spot at the No Name Saloon, a biker bar with serious history. “I knew this would be my coming-out party so to speak because of the big collection of bikers.”

While Chris was initially handling the speaker’s role, later he was able to bring in heavy hitters such as New Hampshire State House Representative and Veterans for Trump spokesman Al Baldasaro as well as Governor Henry McMaster who spoke at the last South Carolina rally and also ex-New York Mayor Giuliani who would speak to the 3,000 bikers that attended the last rally staged in Homosassa.

After the rally successes in Florida, and Fox News giving Bikers for Trump major national coverage, Chris set his sights on the national primaries, starting up in New York. “It’s one of the most liberal areas in the world, and we were going to show them what we got,” Chris said. “I was going there because all the other candidates were there, but I was also going there because Trump was not. In fact, I deliberately put on the rallies when he wasn’t around, because anybody could build a rally if Trump was there. I wanted to build a crowd without Trump to highlight how popular he really was and also how enthusiastic bikers were about the election.” g

In the process of raising the Bikers for Trump banner, Chris brought together like-minded Trump supporters including the Patriot Guard Riders and the Defenders of Liberty. The grass roots group teamed up to offer security for Trump rallies in general, and in the case of the Cleveland National Republican Convention wanted to add their support to local law enforcement in case of attempted disruptions of the activities.

During the campaign, Mr. Trump was definitely aware of the Bikers for Trump support. In his own unique style, he has Tweeted his appreciation to Chris and Bikers for Trump. While attending the annual Memorial Weekend Rolling Thunder motorcycle run in Washington, DC, where he was given the event’s official endorsement, Mr. Trump said, “When I saw the thousands of bikes, I asked what are they doing here? My people said, they’re here to protect you. It’s an amazing thing.” When he added he would “knock the hell out of ISIS” and back up the military on the home front as well, he received a resounding thumbs up from the riders, the majority of whom were veterans and police officers. Chris Cox has said that seven out of ten Bikers for Trump members have served their country, many in combat, and form “the backbone of the community.” One of the many reasons that Donald Trump gained the trust and support of so many bikers has to do with the fact that he made sure to appear at events around the country where blue collar Americans gather to make sure they were onboard with his message of a new America. One such gathering was Rolling Thunder in Washington DC in which bikers come from all over the country to honor Prisoners of War (POWs), those missing in action, and our service men and women who have given their lives to keep us free.

“Do we love the bikers? Yes!” Trump said on the National Mall in Washington DC, “Some of these people are tough. And some of these guys, they’re rough. And I get out and I shake their hands and I’ll tell you, there is love. There is love, and it’s an incredible feeling. And that’s why I wanted to be here today.”

For all these reasons and more, many of America’s tried-and-true bikers support President Trump. After all, bikers are rebels. They are wolves in a land of sheep, and in Trump, they see a fellow rebel. It is no wonder that patriots like Mondo of Denver’s Choppers stands behind the President and looks forward to his re-election. “I believe Trump will save us,” Mondo says. “I believe in him.”

ALL PHOTOS BY DENVER’S CHOPPERS ARCHIVES