By DEREK NORMAN, LOGAN WILBER & RAYCHELLE BALENTIEN
Thursday evening marked President Trump’s first visit to his home town since his inauguration, which resulted in the disruption of traffic, a heavy police presence and scattered protests across midtown Manhattan.
All for practically naught.
President Trump, scheduled at first to arrive at 3 p.m. and to meet the Australian Prime Minister at his hotel, drop by Trump Tower to pick up his wife Melania and join Malcom Turnbull and World War II vets aboard the aircraft carrier-turned museum the Intrepid, was delayed several hours after passage of his long awaited “repeal and replace” healthcare bill through the House of Representatives. . While the president celebrated at the White House Rose Garden, Turnbull cooled his heels in black tie awaiting Trump’s arrival, along with thousands of police officers and protestors on Manhattan’s west side.
The protests, organized by the Working Families Party, kicked off around midday along the heavily barricaded Twelfth Avenue sidewalks stretching from Dewitt Clinton Park down to the Intrepid, which is docked at Pier 86 on 46 Street. Among those attending was New York Public Advocate Letitia James, Paola Mendoza, director of the Women’s March, and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
“Together we shoulder the responsibility of defending our democracy,” James told the protestors. “We are indivisible and we are inextricably tied together by the fabric of humanity. We are one and quite simply, we are the resistance. It is time that we rise, raise our hands, our fists, our voices and more importantly, it’s time that we defeat this administration.”
Trump, having cut cut short the original schedule, arrived at JFK airport as the sun was westering, choppered to the Wall Street heliport and motorcaded up the West Side Highway to the Intrepid, all of which slowed traffic on the west side, along with the waterways. Police boats intercepted a couple of Greenpeace vessels protesting on the Hudson.
Following his gala, Trump took a helicopter to his Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey where he was expected to spend the weekend.
The dinner commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, where the two countries fought alongside each other against Japan during WWII. Eight veterans who fought in the naval battle, now in their 90’s, attended, five of whom traveled 28 hours from Australia.
The dinner was the first time the two leaders met face-to-face since a phone call in February, where the two discussed an Obama-era dealt accept Syrian refugees, which Trump noted as “dumb” and raised questions as the smoothness of the future relationship between the two countries. Both in jovial spirits at the celebration branded the press accounts “exaggerated” and called the phone call “great,” according to Trump.
New York City’s highest officials did not attend the dinner. Mayor de Blasio declined the invitation, citing “scheduling conflicts” and Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters he was unsure if he was even invited.
Though the president only spent about four hours in the city, the police department had to shoulder what was roughly $300,000 in security expenses for locking down not only where the president had visited, but protestors at his Midtown residence of Trump Tower, where his wife and son still reside.
While the police department had its resources spread thin to cover other parts of the city, they had lined 16 sanitation trucks on Fifth Avenue to protect Trump Tower, an anti-terrorist tactic preventing vehicles from nearing the building.
Outside the tower, one Vietnam veteran from Staten Island, Bill Johnsen, was protesting the arrival of the president.
“I have seen the growth, if that is the proper word…” said Johnsen. “The development of the persona of Donald J. Trump over the decades and he has been if one thing, and perhaps one thing only, an egomaniac of the extreme sort. Selling the Donald Trump name is ultimately who he is.”
The late arrival of Trump naturally led to the president avoiding the peak of the protests. Earlier during the day at Dewitt Clinton Park, just blocks away from the Intrepid, police had cleared a barricaded path for the protestors to march as close as permissible to the meeting. Many people marched banging pots and pans, known as cacerolazo, a common South American form of protest, which is meant to represent the common people. Many immigrants joined in speaking out, some like Christina Jimenez, a Queens resident, who declared that Trump, a Queens native himself, was not welcome here. “He isn’t a real New Yorker, he’s a penthouse New Yorker. We are the real New Yorkers.”
Last Wednesday night, members of the Women’s March hung a banner off the side of the Intrepid, as well as the Staten Island ferry, displaying the words “#NOTRUMPNYC.” The banner on the Intrepid was taken down, but the banner hung on the ferry could be seen most of the day. Protests lasted well into Trump’s arrival, while many passing New Yorkers honked in solidarity with their activist neighbors.
“New York City is the epitome of what is good about this world – People of all faiths, ethnicities, races and genders, living in one place with no space for hate at all,” said James just before seeing off the protestors on their march to the Intrepid. “If you try to build a wall, we will knock it down and build schools instead. If you try to deny us federals funds, we will say no, because when ignorance prevails, the courts always step in with sweet and tender justice. I know these past months have been overwhelming and draining, but silence, my friends, equals death; a death to a nation founded upon liberty and justice for all.”
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