N.Y. political class gives Trump the cold shoulder

Donald Trump, a son of Queens, will be greeted Thursday in the city that didn't vote for him with little fanfare and official cold shoulders.

Trump's visit was never intended to be a political victory lap — he's meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid, a floating museum, and commemorating a World War II battle. And because of the tone of the event, local Republicans say, they aren’t planning much of a formal welcome for the first native son of New York City to reach the White House since Teddy Roosevelt.

The visit is nonetheless revealing as a first test of how the state’s mostly Democratic elected class reacts when the Republican commander-in-chief returns to town. Early indications are that they aren’t glad to see him.

“We hope this is the mother of all snubs,” State Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Democrat who represents the West Midtown area where Trump will appear, told POLITICO. “Nothing he has done thus far should give any New Yorker confidence that he’s looking out for the Big Apple — even when it comes to counterterrorism or funding for security around his penthouse — New Yorkers are getting screwed. We prefer he stay out of the city and spend his time elsewhere.”

The activist group Rise and Resist, which has held a mock funeral for the American presidency and staged a “cough in” at Trump Tower to protest The Donald, is rallying people to a subway stop a few blocks south of the USS Intrepid. The left-leaning Working Families Party expects thousands will gather at a park a few blocks to the north.

There may be other events designed to highlight the resistance: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is pondering one to provide a policy counterpoint to Trump, according to an adviser, and has made political hay from bashing the president during his re-election campaign.

The state’s top elected officials largely will be absent. Congress is in session on Thursday, so both Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand will be in Washington. An aide to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the Democratic AG and Trump foil was unlikely to participate in any anti-Trump demonstrations, and has “been focusing on fight back against his policy agenda.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who typically treads lightly when it comes to Trump, has not mentioned the visit. A spokesman did not comment on the governor’s Thursday plans.

The cool reception is a reflection of the president’s standing in his hometown. By any measure, Trump does not live among his base. He lost New York badly to Hillary Clinton: In Manhattan, he won about 10 percent of the vote compared to her 87 percent. During the Empire State’s Republican presidential primary, Trump carried the state over remaining rivals John Kasich and Ted Cruz but lost his home county to Kasich. A Siena Research Institute poll released last week found 61 percent of New York State voters surveyed — and 70 percent of city voters — view Trump unfavorably.

Still, top officials will likely restrain themselves from outright hostility, said George Arzt, a political consultant and one-time press secretary to former Mayor Ed Koch.

“No one wants to get outrageous. He is the sitting president and we desperately need financial support for a variety of programs,” Arzt said. “The governor and the mayor will be generally low-key, unless the president says something outrageous — and then they’ll respond.”

Organizers in New York’s institutional left, though, said they see Trump’s return as an opportunity to express their anger at his agenda. Protests were rare during the Obama administration — though the president visited the city frequently for events and to raise campaign cash — but already thousands have gathered for rallies against Trump’s proposed travel bans and other policies.

On Friday, 100 people waved signs outside a Long Island courthouse where Attorney General Jeff Sessions was speaking.

“Even more so than an election, people are going to start to pay attention and it could snowball. Right now we’re on track for 3,000, but I think it will be significantly more,” said Working Families Party executive director Bill Lipton. “As he returns for the first time since the inauguration, New Yorkers are going to show up by the thousands to show our opposition to his pro-one percent, authoritarian agenda and let the world know Trump’s values are not New York values or American values.”

The plan is to meet in DeWitt Clinton Park, six blocks north of the Intrepid. Lipton and WFP organizer Amanda Johnson said a list of speakers was still being formulated. It’s unclear whether the group will march closer to the event, or whether security will permit it.

An NYPD official familiar with the preparations said there would be “demonstration areas” to let protesters be seen and heard, and that there would also be “increased attention paid to Trump Tower.” The official, who spoke on background given the sensitivity of securing the president, noted the Intrepid “by its very nature is a very secure place” because it is across the West Side Highway from the rest of the city.

Security for Trump, both as president and president-elect, has blossomed into a local political issue in the Big Apple. The NYPD spent more than $25 million on what de Blasio called the “unprecedented security challenge” of protecting Trump in the weeks after the election — when he held court in his penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, and where his wife and youngest son still live —and had been seeking federal reimbursement.

Schumer this weekend suggested that city officials should not provide protection if they weren’t paid, but an agreement for an omnibus spending bill to fund the federal government through fall should make the city whole.

The White House has not released details about where the president will stay during the visit, and Republican officials and operatives in New York said the president’s itinerary remains unsettled.

As late as Tuesday, there were no plans for a formal welcome: Jessica Proud, a spokeswoman for the Republican State Committee, said it was “working closely with the White House office of political affairs on logistics” and might plan a counter-demonstration.

Top elected Republicans in the state, though, said they had no plans to see the president, and hoped he would spend his time in New York at home. New York State Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, the state’s top elected Republican, told reporters in Albany on Monday that he wasn’t sure if he would see Trump. New York City Councilman Joe Borelli of Staten Island, a rare elected Trump supporter, said the president would return as a “triumphant hero … just like Teddy Roosevelt” but was uncertain if he would see him.

“I think Donald Trump has come to terms with the fact that there’s a small subset of America who he can never please, and the fact that they’re on the street in front of his residence on Fifth Avenue is nothing new to him,” said Michael Caputo, an Erie County-based operative who advised Trump’s campaign. “This trip is restorative, but also, it’s always amazed me that he gets up in the morning, puts on his suit after getting beaten down, and would come down the stairs with a level of confidence that candidates don’t have.”



[POLITICO]