NOT ALWAYS AN ART LOVER
PRESIDENT Trump thinks destroying sculptures is bad — but that wasn’t always the case. Trump Tower, the skyscraper that put the former real estate developer on the map, was steeped in controversy after the future President reneged on a promise to save valuable pieces of artwork. The contentious tale goes back to 1980, about a year after Trump bought the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Ave. and 56th St. The Metropolitan Museum of Art offered to take a pair of sculptures from the 11-story Art Deco building, which Trump planned to raze to make way for his Trump Tower. Trump ordered them destroyed anyway. John Baron, a Trump Organization executive later revealed to be Trump himself, told The New York Times the preservation was scrapped because “the merit of these stones was not great enough to justify the effort to save them.” The faux spokesman also told The Times the sculptures weren’t worth even $9,000 in “resale value.” At a party at his Grand Hyatt Hotel in November 1980 attended by a New York magazine reporter, Trump said the gold table cloths and lion’s head medallions there were “real art, not like the junk I destroyed at the Bonwit Teller.” THE MOTHER of the woman who was mowed down by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville, Va., has gotten death threats and several calls from the White House, according to a report on Thursday.
Susan Bro told MSNBC that she turned her phone off after she buried her daughter Heather Heyer on Wednesday — and had three missed calls from President Trump.
“It feels awful, but I just haven’t had time to talk to the President,” she said.
Given the chance, Bro said she would tell Trump, “My daughter had a mission to make things fair and equitable for everyone, and I am going to continue that mission.
“And anything he can do to further that mission, I'm going to be behind him,” Bro added.
Heyer knew the risks of going to the march to protest white supremacists in Charlottesville Saturday, but the 32-year-old decided to go anyway, MSNBC reported.
Bro also took aim at Trump’s assertion that “both sides” were at fault for the violence that took her child’s life.
“Whether there was violence on both sides or not is irrelevant. The guy mowed my daughter down and, sorry, that’s not excusable.”