Splash & dash on Fifth Ave.
Trump Tower BLM mural splattered
Mayor de Blasio’s Black Lives Matter mural outside Trump Tower is getting dumped on.
A vandal splashed the Fifth Avenue mural’s yellow letters with red paint in broad daylight Monday and ran off before cops could stop him.
“I knew it was going to happen. There’s all this racist s- -t going on,” said construction worker Billy McCabe, who witnessed the attack.
“The mural shouldn’t have been done right in front of Trump Tower.”
The giant slogan has been there since Thursday, when de Blasio, First Lady Chirlane McCray and the Rev. Al Sharpton helped paint it outside President Trump’s skyscraper.
It has since become a flashpoint for protester face-offs.
Police said the man behind Monday’s splash attack walked up Fifth at 12:13 p.m. in a black shirt and hat and dumped the paint. He then ran down West 56th Street, they said.
The paint was then smeared over much of the mural by traffic.
Paul Rossen was selling anti-Trump merchandise nearby when the vandal showed up.
“I wish I’d tackled him, but I’m old and fat so I didn’t,” said Rossen, who wore a “Dump Trump” face mask and a Black Lives Matter T-shirt.
Nearby, a man in a MAGA hat held a sign that said, “The only time black lives matter is when they are shot by a white policeman or an Oreo cookie. Defend all policemen.”
“He shouldn’t have done it,” the man, who gave his name as Michael, said of the vandal. “But that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
City Department of Transportation crews closed the stretch of Fifth outside the building and had restored the mural by 4:30 p.m.
“To whoever vandalized our mural on 5th Avenue: nice try. @NYC_DOT has already fixed it,” de Blasio tweeted later Monday. “The #BlackLivesMatter movement is more than words, and it can’t be undone.”
His office claimed the cleanup cost nothing, because it was done by taxpayer-funded DOT workers.