Trump returns to NYC, meets Australian leader
Donald Trump NEW YORK — turned his first trip home as president into a victory lap on Thursday, celebrating House passage of legislation that aims to undo much his predecessor’s health care law even as he returned to a city that has largely opposed him.
Trump only received 18 percent of the vote in New York City in November’s presidential election. Multiple modest protests were held across the city during his visit, some visible from the presidential motorcade as it roared past Wall Street and Manhattan’s famed skyscrapers.
His visit was shortened so that he could commemorate the House vote with a Rose Garden news conference. Slated to be in Manhattan only a few hours, Trump was not expected to visit his home at Trump Tower and pushed back his firsttime meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by several hours.
Trump and Turnbull spoke by telephone earlier Thursday, the White House said.
The leaders visited the USS Intrepid, a decommissioned aircraft carrier and floating museum, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the World War II Battle of the Coral Sea that reinforced the ties between the U.S. and Australia. Both countries’ warships and fighter planes engaged the Japanese from May 4-8, 1942, forcing the Japanese navy to retreat for the first time in the war.
Trump, in his Rose Garden appearance, said he was “so confident” that the measure will pass the Senate and vowed that premiums and deductibles will come down when it does.
“People are suffering so badly with the ravages of Obamacare,” Trump said.
At one point the president turned to the representatives lined up behind him and, suggesting the victory was especially impressive for a novice politician, exclaimed: “Hey, I’m president! I’m president! Can you believe it?!”
Trump and Turnbull were expected to discuss North Korea’s missile testing and security and economic issues, as well as Turnbull’s deal with Obama for the United States to resettle up to 1,250 mostly Muslim refugees from Africa, the Mideast and Asia who are housed in immigration camps on the Pacific island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
The agreement was a source of friction when Trump and Turnbull spoke by telephone shortly after Trump took office Jan. 20. The conversation made headlines, and Trump later tweeted about the “dumb deal.” But Vice President Mike Pence assured Turnbull during a visit to Australia last month that the Trump administration will honor the deal, though “that doesn’t mean we admire the agreement.”
During the campaign, Trump would fly thousands of miles back to New York to sleep in his own bed. But he hasn’t set foot in the city since leaving on Jan. 19 for Washington to be inaugurated into office the following day. He said in an interview last week that he so far has avoided returning to the city because the trips are expensive for the government and would inconvenience New Yorkers.
Trump’s wife, Melania, and son Barron live at Trump Tower most of the time while the 11-year-old finishes the school year. The president was not expected to spend the night there, instead sleeping at his golf club an hour away in Bedminister, N.J.