[ad_1]
New York has a special place in his heart, Trump said when he gave up his place of residence in the city. But the relationship between the president and the metropolis is complex and tense.
Officially, Donald Trump is no longer a New Yorker, although he was born in 1946 in the New York borough of Queens and has spent most of his life in the metropolis. But last September, the president of the United States, who was born in 1946, requested to move his residence to the southern state of Florida. Since then, he and First Lady Melania have officially lived, apart from the White House in Washington, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Golf Club in Palm Beach.
“I was very reluctant to make this decision,” Trump wrote on Twitter at the time. “I will always be there when New York and its great people need my help. It will always have a special place in my heart.” The political leadership of the city and the state of the same name treated him very badly and left him no other option. A few months later, Trump stepped in and confronted New York politics with failure: “New York is going to hell right now.”
The relationship between the Republican president of the United States and his liberal hometown is complicated. On the one hand, the metropolis has made Trump what he is. On the other hand, the affection was probably never really reciprocal: Since his election as president, a large section of the population has shown Trump a mixture of open rejection and hatred. Even so, the president of the United States still has an ardent following in New York.
Trump’s father got rich off real estate
Trump’s grandparents were German emigrants. Her grandmother founded the Elizabeth Trump & Son real estate company in 1925, the forerunner of today’s Trump Organization. Trump’s father got rich in the metropolis with huge apartment buildings and old people’s homes. Donald grew up in the fairly humble and international borough of Queens. His childhood home has been offered for sale multiple times since he took office, and in between it could also be booked through Airbnb, a platform for vacation apartments.
Trump was drawn to the glittering real estate world of Manhattan early on, where he built a tower smack in the middle of posh Fifth Avenue in the early 1980s. Inclusion in New York’s high society elite, who He always smiled a little at him, he’s long been a driving motivation for Trump, my observer. Until he moved into the White House, he lived in Trump Tower in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park.
“New York hates you!”
After the election victory in 2016, which the newly elected president celebrated at a luxury hotel in Midtown Manhattan, crowds of people gathered in front of the Trump building for weeks and shouted, “New York hates you!” (“New York hates you”). Many New Yorkers booed Trump when he cast his ballot at a Midtown school. Others had encouraged it.
The vast majority of New Yorkers voted for Hilary Clinton in the 2016 election, but of course Trump also won votes. The Democratic nominee in New York State won 59 percent of the electorate, Trump won 36.5. Clinton conquered four of New York City’s five boroughs by a large margin: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Only on more suburban Staten Island did Trump win.
Trump tramples on what’s important to New Yorkers
Four years later, for the next presidential election, the posters and stickers of the Democratic candidate, this time former Vice President Joe Biden, predominate in most of the streets of the metropolis. The views of many New Yorkers appear to be diametrically opposed to Trump’s: climate protection and immigrant rights are close to their hearts, issues the president is speaking out against.
The relationship between New York and Trump has worsened in the last four years, says a New York bank employee who is out with her dog in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. “At first we were all surprised that he was actually cast, but we thought maybe things weren’t so bad. Deep down, he might be a New Yorker after all. But then he turned out to be a real monster. We have to deselect him.”
Trump supporters don’t have it easy in the metropolis
Biden supporters are often offensive on the streets of New York, for example, with a corresponding label on the mask. For Gavin Wax, on the other hand, it often seems like he has to keep a secret, because the 26-year-old New York native is a conservative Trump supporter.
“There is a monopoly on political discourse here, and if you have other opinions that are from the center, they basically call you a fascist,” says the president of the New York Young Republican Club, which has something like the republican youth organization of the metropolis of the East Coast.
“I’ve definitely lost a lot of friends.”
In New York, it’s not always easy to go against the grain politically, Wax says. “When Trump came along and I started supporting him, I definitely lost a lot of friends and connections, away from a lot of people I had known for a long time.
Are you interested in the American elections? Washington correspondent Fabian Reinbold writes a newsletter about the election campaign, his work in the White House, and his impressions of the United States under Donald Trump. Here you can subscribe for free to the “Post from Washington”which then lands directly in your mailbox once a week.
It is a shame on the political landscape that the country is so divided, Wax says. In the past, people might have different opinions, but that didn’t mean they had to end friendships or watch families break up. This is different today.
As a Trump supporter, Wax doesn’t feel completely outcast, but: “I definitely have to be quiet and I can’t be as public as I want. You don’t want to talk too loud about it when you’re in a cafe, restaurant or bar.”
Anti-Trump voices, on the other hand, tend to be much louder in the metropolis, and even come from the top. “Donald Trump must be stopped,” demands the city’s Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio, “because he doesn’t understand New York City, and if his presidency ends soon, he won’t be welcome in New York City either.” Trump is unlikely to be impressed by this: he likes to refer to de Blasio as the “worst mayor in America.”
