Trump, de Blasio: Both look in mirror and see a president
NEW YORK — He’s deeply unpopular among fellow New Yorkers, often savaged by the city’s tabloids and fights with the media that cover him. He also believes he can be elected president in 2020.
That’s Donald Trump. And that’s Bill de Blasio.
On the day when de Blasio, New York City’s Democratic mayor, announced his unlikely candidacy for president, the current occupant of the White House was headed back to his hometown of New York to raise campaign cash.
The men wasted little time trading barbs. “The Dems are getting another beauty to join their group. Bill de Blasio of NYC, considered the worst mayor in the U.S., will supposedly be making an announcement for president today,” Trump tweeted early Thursday. “He is a JOKE, but if you like high taxes & crime, he’s your man. NYC HATES HIM!”
De Blasio dished out his own gibes.
“I’m going to keep calling him ‘Con Don’ because that’s what he deserves to be called,” de Blasio said after declaring his candidacy. “He’s a con man, and we New Yorkers know a con man when we see one.”
There are significant limits to any comparison between the two men: They are on opposite ends of the political spectrum and have wildly different family and economic backgrounds. And while Trump is the most polarizing and talked-about politician on the planet, de Blasio suffers from low national name-recognition and is often greeted with shrugs even across the five boroughs he governs.
But they are also deeply intertwined, their political pasts — and perhaps futures — connected to the city they call home.
The president’s shadow looms large over New York, buildings that bear his name filling the skyline. On Thursday, he was set to attend a fundraiser on Manhattan’s Upper East Side — not far from the mayoral residence, Gracie Mansion.
Trump, who is wildly unpopular in the city, was greeting with a small group of protesters, chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go.” Trump has largely avoided visiting the city, saying he doesn’t want to snarl traffic, as he did during Thursday’s evening rush hour.
After arriving in New York, Trump tweeted a video of himself aboard Air Force One predicting that the mayor won’t last long in the 2020 race and saying that de Blasio, who was traveling to Iowa on Thursday to campaign, should go home.
“I wish him luck. But really, it’d be better off if you got back to New York City and did your job for the little time you have left,” Trump said.
De Blasio, who was reelected in 2017 to a second term governing the nation’s largest city, has spent years defining himself as the antiTrump.
Earlier this week, de Blasio held a rally outside Trump Tower, threatening its owner with hundreds of thousands of dollars in environmental fines. He feuded on Twitter with the president’s two adult sons over his mayoral record. And when announcing his presidential bid on Thursday, he made the case that he was the ideal candidate to take on Trump.
“I know how to challenge this guy,” he said. De Blasio, a liberal former political operative, is far more representative of his hometown’s politics than Trump, who received just 18 percent of the city’s vote in 2016. But for a mayor who was reelected with 66 percent of the vote only a year and a half ago, de Blasio’s presidential candidacy has been met with derision and mockery at home.
Only 21 percent of New York City Democrats wanted de Blasio to run for president, according to one recent poll, while 73 percent did not.
By nearly any measure, and contrary to Trump’s morning broadside, New York has continued to prosper under de Blasio’s watch: Crime is at a record low, the economy is booming, tourists are coming and his signature plan to institute free pre-kindergarten is being copied across the nation.