Start spreading the news,
He’s leaving today.
He’ll no more be a part of it,
New York, New York
His con-artist shoes
Are longing to stray,
Right from the very heart of it
New York, New York
He wants to wake up in a city that always sleeps
To find he’s king of the hill, top of the heap….
Well, it’s official: President Donald J. Trump, who knows a thing or two about divorce, and New York are splitsville. The grounds? Apparently, extreme mental cruelty. New York was mean to him, don’t you know, forcing him to pay huge, huge, city and state taxes, investigating him and his cronies. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Earlier in his presidency I predicted, as did others, that Trump would never return as a resident to the city of his birth, that he would finish his life at Mar-a-Lago. Now it appears that this will be the case for tax and other legal reasons. Florida’s homestead exemption offers broad protection from creditors. And the inheritance laws will prove cushy for the Trump spawn. (Melania, who frequently dips back into Manhattan, is also part of the split with New York, although God knows, she may be busy at the White House shoveling her way to her safe house, aka, the new tennis pavilion.)
Anticipated tax and legal implications, however, do not explain the real reasons for le divorce from New York. At heart is a disenchantment with a place that has failed to stroke his narcissistic ego. Notice that El Presidente high-tailed it out of D.C. last weekend to avoid the victory parade of the World Series champion Nationals — whose fans dissed him in Game Five with boos and chants of “Lock him up.”
Ironically, he escaped to New York for the UFC 244 event at Madison Square Garden, where the wrestling fans, supposedly his people, offered boos mixed with cheers. Trump had more control during the Nationals’ White House visit Monday when catcher Kurt Suzuki donned a MAGA hat while teammates Anthony Rendon and Sean Doolittle opted out.
But what of the other party to the divorce? New York and its officials reacted for the most part with a classic fuhgettabout him and less hatred perhaps than cold indifference. I was there recently on assignment at the Four Seasons New York in midtown — yeah, I know, tough gig — and walked past .Trump Tower on my way to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A man unfurled a “Keep America Great Again” banner — which was grammatically incorrect’ it should’ve said “Keep America Great Still” — as a woman, perhaps his wife, snapped his photo. Others took photos of the lone police officer outside Trump Tower. As I passed the banner, I snorted. A woman turned around, looked at me and smiled. The rest of the passersby, like the delicate ship in W.H. Auden’s poem “Musee des Beaux Arts,” “had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”
That is the essence of New York, a place where who you are is what you do. That is what New York did on 9/11 —carried on with purpose and without self-pity or regret. Trump wouldn’t know. He wasn’t around.
Much has been made of New York’s “loss” even before the Trump announcement. He has punished the blue states by capping the amount of property taxes residents can write off on their federal returns, sending some residents scurrying to red states. (Ah, but as the blue states give more than they get from the federal government and the red states take more than they give, what would happen to the red states if the Trump Administration kills the golden goose?) Trump has also threatened funding for the Big Apple as a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants.
But again I turn back to my weekend in the city, a place that is constantly reinventing itself — new stores, new construction, new artworks. The city’s loss of Trump tax revenue — not a given as the city and state vigorously pursue snowbirds who try to wriggle out of paying — will be offset by the millions saved in not having to protect the president. (I’m sure Tiffany — the store, not the first daughter — is doing a little jig in its heart.)
New York will do what it has always done. It will survive and go on. Hey, if you can make it there….
It’s up to you, New York, New York, but then, it always has been.