New Yorkers make clear how they feel about President Trump

WASHINGTON — “You can’t go home again,” author Thomas Wolfe famously wrote.

It’s a lesson that may well have occurred to President Donald Trump as a motorcade carried him from his long-time home at Trump Tower to Madison Square Park for a Veterans Day event Monday and “IMPEACH” and “CONVICT” signs taunted the beleaguered commander in chief from high-rise windows.

Trump was the first U.S. president to attend “America’s Parade,” in his hometown, where 30,000 people were expected to line city streets in thanks to U.S. veterans.

In September, Trump filed papers to move his primary residence from Fifth Avenue to his Mar-a-Lago digs in Palm Beach, Florida. It was a break-up long in the making.

“I cherish New York, and the people of New York and always will,” Trump explained on Twitter, “but unfortunately, despite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year, I have been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state.”

“Good riddance,” New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo countered. “It’s not like Mr. Trump paid taxes here anyway. He’s all yours, Florida.”

It’s an odd departure for a man whose brash persona linked him so inextricably to the city that never sleeps and who conquered the New York Post’s Page Six before he took the New Hampshire primary.

Yet fewer than one in five New Yorkers supported Trump in the voting booth. Trump lost four of the five boroughs — including his childhood home, Queens, to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton of Chappaqua, New York. Only Staten Island went for Trump.

Trump is hardly the first presidential nominee to lose his home state. Massachusetts voters went overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2012, and under-whelmingly for former Gov. Mitt Romney.

In 2000, George W. Bush won 51 percent of the vote in Tennessee, where former Sen. Al Gore came in second place.

While Palm Beach County voters preferred Clinton over Trump by a 16-point margin, the state narrowly went for Trump over Clinton in 2016. Also, Trump has friendlier relations with Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott – Republicans all.

According to NBC News, which keeps track of the time Trump spends at his properties, the president spent 99 days at Mar-a-Lago and 20 days at Trump Tower between taking the oath of office in January 2017 and last month.

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg recalls how everyone expected Trump to return to Fifth Avenue regularly.

Manhattan with its glamour and fast-paced nightlife was key to the Trump brand. Even after he won in November, the president-elect could be seen out on the town, as when he famously took 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney out to a dinner of frogs’ legs and crow at the Jean-George restaurant.

But Trump, Nunberg told the Review-Journal, defied expectations by moving his base of operations to the White House.

Trump has cited the traffic nightmares caused by Secret Service measures as reason for him to avoid the Big Apple. A businessman until he won election, Trump is acutely aware that bringing traffic to a standstill is bad for business.

Trump’s trip to the Big Apple follows the news that another Gotham billionaire, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is considering running for president as a Democrat in 2020. Trump’s reaction was typical New York: “Little Michael will fail.”

Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.