NEW YORK (AP) — His name has been plastered across the city’s tabloids, affixed to buildings and enshrined in New York’s special trust. Now, with Donald Trump due to return to the place he put on the map, his beloved city is ready to send him.
Rejected by voters, ostracized by protesters and now censured by jurors, New Yorkers have one more thing to splash Trump’s name with: Indictment No. 71543-23.
“He wants to be in Manhattan. He loves Manhattan. He has a connection to Manhattan,” said Barbara Res, a longtime employee of the former president who is now a vice president at the Trump Organization. “I don’t know if he’s accepted it and I don’t know if he believes it, but New York blames him.”
No Trump romance lasted longer than his New York girlfriend. No other place can match its mix of ostentatious and outlandish. His love for the city was unrequited Shakespearean enough, but Trump took it a step further, rising to the presidency only to be a hometown antihero.
Trump was born and raised in Queens to a real estate developer whose projects are mostly in Queens and Brooklyn. But the younger Trump was sick of crossing the East River and making his name in Manhattan. He gained a foothold with the transformation of the Commodore Hotel into a glittering Grand Hyatt and made the spotlight on himself by appearing alongside politicians and celebrities, appearing at Studio 54 and other hot spots and near-constant media coverage.
In the raucous 1980s, he was a New York player. And in a city that prides itself on being the center of the world, Trump sees himself as king.
“Trump grew up resenting others who he thought had more fame, wealth, or popularity,” said David Greenberg, a Rutgers University professor who wrote “Republican Spin: The Inside History of the American Presidency.” “Working in Manhattan — building Trump Tower and being a fixture of the Manhattan social scene in the 1980s — meant a lot to him.”
Although the feelings were never mutual. Trump left a trail of unpaid bills, jilted workers and everyday New Yorkers who saw his shameless self-promotion.
He may be a singular character, but in a city of 8 million stories, he’s the only one.
And so, for years, Trump’s life here continued as the city continued to thrive. Marriage comes and goes. Skyscraper rose. Bankruptcy was filed. Trump flashes in and out of the upper echelons of fame.
He may never have been a typical New Yorker, packed onto the subway in the morning or grabbing a hot dog from a street vendor, but for many, he remains a light, if not huge, figure.
That began to change with years of strange and racial lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace, and when he descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, to announce his presidential bid, many people in his hometown were impatient. the vitriol he spewed.
Rockefeller Center was host to “Saturday Night Live” every week which made him a mockery, and at the Waldorf-Astoria gala, he complained. In swaths of the city, distaste for Trump turned to hatred.
Even among Republicans, many see him as trusted as a Gucci bag on Canal Street. Trump won the state’s Republican primary, but failed to convince GOP voters in Manhattan.
“He’s not just this TV show wizard. People see that this guy is really going to lead the country and the world in the wrong direction,” said Christina Greer, a political scientist at Fordham University.
On Election Night 2016, tears flowed at the Javits Center, where Hillary Clinton’s victory party never happened, while stunned Trump supporters cheered the city’s surprise win at the Hilton ballroom. The New Yorker’s rebuke of his native son was useless. His face was projected onto the face of the Empire State Building as locals speculated that he would become president.
In the days that followed, a parade of curious politicians and celebrities made their way to Trump Tower to meet the president-elect and, for weeks afterward, predictions about the presidency mounted.
Among the musings of observers is speculation the president’s commuter stops between New York and Washington. When news broke that his wife and son wouldn’t be moving into the White House right away, it was hard to believe that Trump couldn’t part with the city that made him.
But Trump continued to be Trump, his presidency gave way to controversy and broken norms, and New York became the capital of resistance, giving birth to constant mass protests.
The city of his dreams is no longer a place he can call home.
“New York has gone to hell,” he said as Election Day 2020 neared.
When the ballots were counted, Manhattan had seven times more supporters of Joe Biden than Trump, and this time the Electoral College caught up. When Trump’s presidency ends and he leaves Washington after the violent uprising he instigated, it’s clear that New York will be rude.
Like the droves from New York before him, he retired to Florida.
When he’s back up north now, he spends most of his time at a club in Bedminster, New Jersey. People who had long tried to avoid the bridge and tunnel were again separated from Manhattan by the river.
On his first trip back to Manhattan after leaving the office, the New York Post reported that one person was waiting outside Trump Tower to catch a glimpse. Even the protesters could no longer be bothered.
The rebuke comes from New Yorkers involved in the rights of city residents, jury duty, and if it fits the mold of previous grand juries, it makes for a quintessential Manhattan cross section, from different neighborhoods, incomes and backgrounds. enough to ensure the cast of characters fit for TV.
With word of the Trump impeachment now out, the story of New York’s deteriorating love affair takes on a final flavor. Even the Post, part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire that helped Trump win the White House to begin with, has abandoned people. The newspaper, which once documented his relationship with the headline “The Best Kind I Ever Had” next to Trump’s smirking face, last week called him “crazy” in a front page emblazoned with “Bat Hit Crazy” in capital letters.
Trump once boasted that he could take someone down the middle of Fifth Avenue and remain popular. Today, he can give his fifties in New York and still not get the support of most of the locals.
He has dismissed the jury’s actions as “fraud” and “persecution” and denied he did anything wrong. Democrats, he said, lied and lied to damage their campaign to return to the White House.
Outside the court that awaited him, the spectacle was largely confined to the hordes of media. Among the few regular New Yorkers for the trip was Marni Halasa, a figure skater who appeared in a leopard print leotard, cat ears and wads of fake bills strung to a “hush money” boa. He stood alone outside Friday to celebrate the indictment of one of the city’s most famous sons.
“New Yorkers are here in spirit,” he said, “and I think I’m representative of them in general.”
Associated Press writer Bobby Caina Calvan contributed to this report.
Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://twitter.com/sedensky