New York City was once Donald J. Trump’s playground, the place where he made a name for himself and then placed it wherever he could. Now, the City he helped make famous has become his battleground. And Trump keeps losing.
His May 30 felony conviction was the third and harshest blow to the former President in his hometown this year. Inflicted by a jury of 12 Manhattan residents, it brought with it the possibility that he could be imprisoned in New York, a far cry from the image he spent decades cultivating as a real estate mogul and man of the world.
In February, Trump suffered another humiliation: a judgment of more than $450 million in a civil fraud case brought by the state attorney general for overstating his net worth. The ruling undermined a central element of his public identity as a brilliant businessman.
And in January, another Manhattan jury sentenced the former President to pay $83.3 million for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll; Trump had already been found responsible for sexually abusing her in a changing room at the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s.
Together, the three cases have eroded the image Trump built over his decades in New York City, even as most polls show him continuing to lead this year’s presidential race.
The 2016 and 2020 election results in Manhattan, where Trump lost resoundingly, suggest he wore out his welcome there some time ago. When the latest blow was dealt, some New Yorkers suggested they were glad he had moved to Florida.
“I think a lot of people share that feeling about him,” said George Arzt, a veteran political and media consultant who has known Trump for decades and worked for Mayor Ed Koch, who died in 2013 and was one of Trump’s enemies. Trump. Many New Yorkers, Arzt said, “would like to get it out of the headlines.”
At a news conference at Trump Tower on May 31, Trump criticized the 34-felony verdict and said he planned to appeal. But he also seemed to recognize that the charges on which he had been convicted — falsifying business records — struck at the heart of his image as a master financial dealmaker.
“It sounds so bad when they say ‘fake,’ that’s bad to me,” he said. “I’ve never had that before.”
The criminal trial, like the civil fraud case, exposed many of Trump’s business practices as prosecutors probed his refusal to pay debts, including his initial delay in paying a porn star $130,000 to the center. of the case.
Such a story — sex with a beautiful woman — might once have fit the image of Trump as a bachelor playboy, which was polished by the City’s tabloids. But Stormy Daniels’ testimony was not flattering to the former President. (Trump denies having sexual relations with Daniels.)
Republicans were furious about the verdict, with conservative leaders urging GOP prosecutors to “indict the left,” while other Trump supporters called for a boycott of New York City.
Much of the outrage was met with absolute joy in many corners of New York City.
“I woke up with a smile on my face,” said Robert Clark, 63, a Brooklyn photographer who had spent the morning searching for a copy of the New York Times to add to his collection of famous covers.
Others were more direct.
“His legacy is little more than trash,” said Mark Samuels, 70, who worked in advertising and grew up on Staten Island. For a time, he said, Trump made some strident sense in the New York of the 1970s and 1980s, but those days are long gone. “We are in one of the most important cities in the world, and he came and fell. It’s the rise of him and the fall of him,” Samuels said.
Trump managed to break into the Manhattan market. But Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group, said he “didn’t join” the business community, even as he took on ostensibly civic projects like his renovation of Central Park’s Wollman Rink skating rink. And that’s why, she said, the City’s business community hadn’t exactly turned against him, “because who supported him?”
Trump has supporters among the City’s more than 8 million residents. There are more conservative neighborhoods in all five boroughs. The day after the verdict, in front of Trump Tower, his supporters filled the sidewalks and clashed shoutingly with anti-Trump protesters.
Inside, Trump, who had been giving remarks in a dingy courtroom hallway during the trial, was apparently looking to recapture some glamor during the news conference in the marble-and-brass atrium. Standing in front of a row of American flags, he delivered a rambling speech, attacking the case, the judge and Democrats, and elaborating on baseless conspiracy theories about President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s orchestration of the case. He rated to the trial as a “scam.” He left without answering questions.
Some New Yorkers seemed to recognize that the City itself—with its “make it there, make it anywhere” ethos and constant capitalist activity—had helped create Trump’s identity.
“I guess New York allowed some of that to flourish,” said Sarah Williams, 72, a semi-retired psychiatrist from the City who has lived in Brooklyn for 36 years. She sighed. “That’s New York. I think that more and more people are only interested in money. Which is really unfortunate because I love New York.”
