NEW YORK – His name has been imprinted on this city’s tabloids, anchored to its buildings and cemented to a special kind of unabashed New York confidence. Now, the city that put Donald Trump on the map and that he loved so much is ready to give him his comeuppance.
Rejected by his voters, ostracized by his protesters and now rebuked by his jurors, the people of New York have one more thing to splash Trump’s name on: Indictment No. 71543-23.
“He wanted to be in Manhattan. He loved Manhattan. He had a connection to Manhattan,” says Barbara Res, vice president of the Trump Organization. “I don’t know if he accepted it and I don’t know if he believes it, but New York turned on him.”
None of Trump’s romances has lasted longer than his courtship with New York. No other place could match its mix of ostentatiousness and flamboyance. His unrequited love for the city is Shakespearean, but Trump went a step further and became president only to become a local antihero.
Trump was born and raised in Queens, the son of a real estate developer whose projects were primarily in Queens and Brooklyn. But the young Trump longed to cross the East River and make a name for himself in Manhattan. By the 1980s, he was a fixture in New York. And in a city that prides itself on being the center of the world, Trump saw himself as king.
Yet the feeling was never really mutual. Trump left a trail of unpaid bills, laid-off workers and ordinary New Yorkers who managed to see through his shameless self-promotion.
He may have been a singular character, but in a city of 8 million stories, his was just one more.
He may never have been an ordinary New Yorker, riding the crowded subway in the mornings or buying a hot dog from a street vendor, but to many he remained a benign, if hulking, presence.
Now, when he returns north, he spends most of his time at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The man who long avoided crossing bridges and tunnels is once again separated from Manhattan by a river.