NEW YORK (AP) — His name has been plastered on this city’s tabloids, bolted to the buildings, and attached to a special kind of brash New York confidence. With Donald Trump returning to the place that put him on the map, the city he loved is poised to get his comeuppance.
Rejected by his voters, ostracized by his protesters, and now reprimanded by his jurors, the people of New York have one thing left to splash Trump’s name: Indictment No. 71543-23.
“He wanted to be in Manhattan. He loved Manhattan. He had a connection to Manhattan,” said Barbara Res, a longtime associate of the former president who was a vice president at the Trump Organization. “I don’t know if he accepted it and I don’t know if he believes it, but New York turned against him.”
None of Trump’s romances lasted longer than his New York courtship. No other place could match its mix of flashy and eccentric. His love for the unrequited city is Shakespearean enough, but Trump took it a step further, rising to the presidency and then becoming a hometown anti-hero.
Trump was born and raised in Queens to a real estate developer father whose projects were largely in Queens and Brooklyn. But the younger Trump was dying to cross the East River and make a name for himself in Manhattan. He gained a foothold with his transformation from the derelict Commodore Hotel to a glittering Grand Hyatt and made sure he was in the limelight by appearing alongside politicians and celebrities, popping up at Studio 54 and other hot spots and nearly constant media attention.
By the greedy 1980s, he was a New York fixture. And in a city that prides itself on being the center of the world, Trump saw himself as king.
“Trump grew up with a lot of resentment toward others he thought had more fame, wealth, or popularity,” said David Greenberg, a professor at Rutgers University who wrote “Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency.” “Making it in Manhattan — building Trump Tower and becoming a fixture of the 1980s Manhattan social scene — meant a lot to him.”
However, the feeling was never really mutual. Trump left behind a trail of unpaid bills, rejected workers and everyday New Yorkers who saw through his blatant self-promotion.
He may have been a unique character, but in a city of 8 million stories, he was just another.
So for years Trump’s life went on here as the city raged around him. Marriages came and went. Skyscrapers rose. Bankruptcies were filed. Trump flickered in and out of the upper echelons of fame.
He may never have been a regular New Yorker, crammed into the subway on his commute or grabbing a hot dog from a street vendor, but for many he remained a good-natured, if outsized, presence.
That began to change with years of bizarre, racist lies about Barack Obama’s hometown, and by the time he descended Trump Tower’s gold escalator on June 16, 2015 to announce his presidential bid, many in his hometown had little patience for the vitriol he spat.
Rockefeller Center hosted a weekly “Saturday Night Live” that made a mockery of him, and at a Waldorf-Astoria gala he elicited moans. In large parts of the city, dislike of Trump turned into hatred.
Even among Republicans, many saw him as credible as a Gucci bag on Canal Street. Trump won the state’s Republican primary, but failed to win over GOP voters in Manhattan.
“He’s no longer just a TV show charlatan. People see this man is 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 celebration never happened, as giddy Trump supporters reveled in his surprise win across town in a Hilton ballroom. The New Yorkers’ rebuke of their native son meant nothing. His face was projected onto the face of the Empire State Building as the locals processed the fact that he was going to be president.
In the days that followed, a curious parade of politicians and celebrities traveled to Trump Tower to meet the president-elect, and for weeks afterwards predictions were made about his presidency.
Among the musings of observers was speculation about a commuter president commuting between New York and Washington. When it became known that his wife and young son would not be moving to the White House immediately, it seemed that Trump would never be able to fully part with the city that made him.
But Trump remained Trump, his presidency gave way to one controversy and broken norm after another, and New York became a capital of the resistance, sparking continued mass protests.
The city of his dreams was no longer a place he could call home.
“New York has gone to hell,” he said as Election Day 2020 approached.
When the votes were counted, Manhattan had seven times more supporters of Joe Biden than Trump’s, and this time the Electoral College followed suit. When Trump’s presidency ended and he left Washington after the violent uprising he had provoked, it was clear that New York would be inhospitable.
Like throngs of New Yorkers before him, he retreated to Florida.
Now when he returns north, he spends most of his time at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The man who long tried to avoid his bridge-and-tunnel past finds himself once again separated from Manhattan by a river.
On his first return to Manhattan after leaving office, the New York Post reported that a single person waited outside Trump Tower for a glimpse. Even demonstrators had lost interest in him.
His rebuke came from New Yorkers participating in a right-of-way for urban dwellers, jury duty, and if it fit the mold of previous grand juries, it brought together a typical cross-section of Manhattan, from neighborhoods, incomes and diverse backgrounds. enough to ensure a cast of characters is fit for TV.
Now that Trump’s charges are out, the story of his deteriorating romance with New York takes on a sense of finality. Even The Post, part of the Rupert Murdoch media empire that helped Trump win the White House, has failed him. The paper that once documented his affair with a screaming “Best sex I ever had” headline next to Trump’s grinning face, last week called him “insane” on a front page branding him “Bat Hit Crazy” in large letters.
Trump once boasted that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and remain popular. Today he could hand out 50s in New York and still not get the support of most of the locals.
He has dismissed the grand jury’s actions as “swindle” and “prosecution” and denied any wrongdoing. Democrats, he says, are lying and cheating to hurt his campaign to return to the White House.
Outside the courthouse awaiting him, the spectacle was largely confined to the hordes of the media. Among the few regular New Yorkers to make the trip there was Marni Halasa, a figure skater who showed up in a leopard print leotard, cat ears, and wads of fake bills threaded into a “silent money” boa. She was alone outside on Friday to celebrate the indictment of one of her city’s most famous sons.
“New Yorkers are here in spirit,” she says, “and I feel like I represent most of them.”
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Associated Press writer Bobby Caina Calvan contributed to this report.
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Matt Sedensky can be reached at [email protected] and https://twitter.com/sedensky
