“I can’t have a fair trial in New York,” lamented Donald Trump, who appeared before a judge on Tuesday to hear charges that will lead him to sit on the bench in his hometown, which has always been hostile to him despite the fact That it was here that he built his fortune and his legend.
His surprise election in November 2016 to the presidency of the United States was very poorly received in Manhattan, where protesters let him know that “New York hates Trump”.
At the time, the New York Times and the BBC analyzed the “love” of the 45th US president for this megalopolis that “doesn’t love him”, a city where Trump “hates to be hated”.
When he arrived at his Trump Tower on fabled 5th Avenue on Monday afternoon for his historic appearance before Colombian judge Juan Merchán, the billionaire had to settle for a handful of supporters declaring “We love Trump!” (“We love Trump!”) at the foot of his sumptuous skyscraper.
For a narcissist like him, he sure didn’t appreciate the banners asking “lock him up” and “throw away the key.”
immigrant city
According to Brian Arbour, a professor of political science, the “main reason for the antipathy” of New Yorkers to Trump is mainly because it is “a city of immigrants”.
in this extraordinary cultural mosaic of 8.5 million inhabitants “Many are immigrants or their parents or grandparents were, and they still cling to their roots,” this professor at John Jay College of the City University of New York (CUNY) told AFP.
Thus, his “anti-immigration policies” and his “harsh, incendiary, racist rhetoric are especially disastrous in a city where so many residents believe that dynamism and growth come from foreign communities,” Arbor points out.
Politically, New York has been a “profoundly Democratic city for a century,” according to Arbor, as confirmed by the election of left-wing former mayor Bill de Blasio (2014-2021), replaced on January 1, 2022 by another a slightly Democratic further right, former African-American police officer Eric Adams.
If the “Republicans did better” in the city and in the more rural and conservative state of New York in the last midterm elections, in November, this was due “mainly to the question of insecurity”, analyzes the professor.
History
Born in the popular county of Queens on June 14, 1946, Donald J. Trump grew up in a context of Protestant European immigration: his father Fred Trump, born in 1905 in the Bronx, was the son of a German immigrant and his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was born in 1912 in Scotland.
Trained in a military school, he started working in the family business after finishing his studies in economics. But contrary to the legend that has been created, there is nothing “self-made man” about him. After World War II, his father built a real estate empire in New York, building apartments for the middle class in poor neighborhoods.
Donald Trump took over the reins of the company in the 1970s with solid financial support from his parentsbefore becoming a television star thanks to the famous broadcast of the game show “The Apprentice”.
In her biography published in 2022 (“Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America”), the political reporter for the New York Times Maggie Haberman writes that “the dynamics that defined New York in the 1980s sculpted and marked Donald Trump for decades. As if frozen in time.”
In a September article, the New York daily deciphered its reporter’s thesis: “You can’t truly understand Donald Trump if you don’t know the vaporous, theatrical and histrionic customs and codes of New York’s political and economic scene.”
Source: AFP
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.