New York-style divorce for Donald Trump
For the first time in the history of the United States, a president is hated in his own city. Donald Trump can't stand it. Why so much hatred?
Between the Empire State Building in its most beautiful colors, the Christmas decorations still present and the preparations for the New Year, the atmosphere is festive in Manhattan. But on the side of the famous black tower on 5th Avenue, this spirit is not shared. The drama? Donald Trump, who still lives in his Trump Tower, loves New York, which does not love him. And that is bad: the billionaire hates being hated. So when it's through his own city, the one where he built his empire and raised his children, the narcissistic wound is all the more acute.
This is the first time in US history that an American president has been so unloved at home. You just have to listen in the subways, cocktail parties or small neighborhood grocery stores to realize this. Say "Trump" and often tongues loosen. Viper's tongues. Why such disenchantment? The feeling is diffuse, but tenacious.
Jenny, a lawyer in her fifties, rolls her eyes as she swallows her Frappuccino: “We've been around him for so long. He may be a kid from Queens, but his vulgar and disrespectful behavior, his words against immigrants and minorities just don't fit our city ”. New York, the city that never sleeps. The city of all possibilities, with its Statue of Liberty that millions of immigrants first saw after their long and arduous crossing of the Atlantic.
Hillary Clinton won 79% of the vote
This disenchantment is now quantifiable. On election day, November 8, Donald Trump dreamed of seeing the Empire State Building displayed in red, the color of the Republican Party, but Democratic blue won the day. "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere. It's up to you, New York, New York ”(“ If I can do it there, I will do it everywhere. It depends on you, New York, New York, ”) sang Frank Sinatra. Donald Trump can boast of having succeeded in extending his financial empire there, of having bought and built many buildings there as in a game of Monopoly, but he did not manage to convince New Yorkers to trust him. : her rival, Hillary Clinton, won 79% of the votes in the city. The Democratic candidate was in the majority in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and especially Manhattan, where nine out of ten residents were in her favor. Donald Trump has won only one borough, Staten Island, a haunt of blue collar workers.
The last New Yorker to be elected president was Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945). He had been celebrated with dignity during his first election, in 1932, and during his three re-elections. Donald Trump was booed when he arrived at a Manhattan polling station. The day of his coronation and those that followed, he had to face protesters massed near his tower, who chanted slogans in a loop, including: "New York hates Trump!" Never seen.
An emperor and his court
Anger? We should rather speak of annoyance or exasperation. A feeling even more exacerbated since the president said that despite his official move to the White House, he should still be present in his favorite tower often. Access to the building now poses enormous traffic problems and disrupts all of Midtown due to the extensive security arrangements in place for the president-elect and his team. This security also comes at a cost: nearly $ 500,000 per day.
The chaos wrought in this bustling portion of Manhattan doesn't seem like a problem for the billionaire. This is not the case with the mayor of the city, Bill de Blasio, faced with this logistical hell. The Democrat has never hidden his dislike of Donald Trump: the billionaire is everything he hates. His dream? That the president be in town as little as possible. Bill de Blasio has openly suggested that Trump should consider visiting his "beautiful New Jersey golf club" a little more often ...
New Yorkers don't like this emperor and his court, who behave like an almighty who nothing can resist. Donald Trump does not even symbolize the American dream. The man did not make himself alone. He inherited the real estate empire and fortune from his father, a developer mostly active in Queens and Brooklyn. His lies, the opacity he maintains around his fortune - he refused during the presidential campaign to be transparent about his taxes - or the amount collected for his reality TV show "The Apprentice" as well as the controversy over Trump University has helped make New Yorkers suspicious.
But it is above all his uninhibited anti-immigrant and anti-minority remarks that grip the majority of New Yorkers. There was the idea of a registry to record Muslims, attacks on Mexicans labeled as rapists, and punchy statements about the correlation between blacks and homicide rates. Or the amalgamations between Islam and terrorism. New York, the liberal, the progressive, the cosmopolitan, the multicultural and above all the tolerant, could not follow him in this direction. New York is also the city whose mayor promised that illegal immigrants would not be deported, the city that in 2012 voted Barack Obama 81%. An atypical city, very different from the rest of the United States.
Multicolored post-it notes stuck to a wall in Manhattan subway stations allowed New Yorkers to express their feelings after nights of post-election sleeplessness. A form of resistance that is more poetic and silent than the demonstrations. Another form of protest: residents managed to remove the large letters forming the word "Trump" on the front of their building. Because they didn't want to be constantly brought back to his world.
"I know how to recognize a crook"
Narcissistic, boastful, flashy, disrespectful and "show off": in New York, these words are often used to qualify the new president. “In fact, Donald Trump never did anything for the city. He built ugly structures, his companies accumulated debts and lost jobs. His most important achievement is to have succeeded in his own promotion ", summarizes one Internet user. Never done anything for his city? Unlike other New York billionaires, he is indeed not known for his philanthropy, as is, for example, former mayor Michael Bloomberg. A Michael Bloomberg who actually put it in its place last summer, after heated discussions. “I'm a New Yorker, and I know a con artist when I see one,” he said of him, in the middle of the Democratic convention. Even on the super-rich club side, it's not really the honeymoon.
In the 1980s, Donald Trump was still quite popular in “Gotham City” (one of the city's nicknames). He was the one who saved the famous Wollman Rink ice rink in the heart of Central Park from a fiasco in 1986 by injecting millions into it. It had not worked for six years. But his divorce from his first wife, due to an affair with Marla Maples, then tarnished his image: Donald Trump was mostly in the headlines of celebrity magazines. It was from this point that he began to adopt a vengeful behavior. Does he feel attacked and criticized? He hits back.
Recently, from his tower, the president-elect sent several vitriolic tweets against New Yorkers. He lashed out at the demonstrators who came to protest, attacked actor Alec Baldwin, who recorded sketches parodying him a few meters from his tower, or the "New York Times". He also attacked the crew of "Hamilton", a smash-hit Broadway musical.
Cartoonist for "The New Yorker" and CBS News, Liza Donnelly evokes yet another reason for this disenchantment between New York and "its" president: "New Yorkers have a great sense of humor, and especially about themselves. Mr. Trump apparently doesn't! " Or, it is doubtful. Didn't he say during the presidential campaign that he could "kill somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters"?
Inauguration Day:
Donald Trump will be officially invested 45th President of the United States on January 20. In front of the Capitol, in Washington, he will take the oath, his left hand on the Bible, "solemnly swearing to faithfully fulfill the functions of President of the United States and to do everything to safeguard, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" , thus ending the 73-day transition since his election. LT
