Bringing up a report that New York City wants to paint the words “Black Lives Matter” on Fifth Avenue, right outside his flagship property, US President Donald Trump said the city’s police were mad about it.
Tweeting from a trip to Wisconsin on Thursday, Trump said he heard Mayor Bill de Blasio wanted to paint the city yellow with the name of the movement – and noted that some of its slogans are calling for the murder of police.
Told that @NYCMayor Bill de Blasio wants to paint the fabled & beautiful Fifth Avenue, right in front of Trump Tower/Tiffany, with a big yellow Black Lives Matter sign. “Pigs in a Blanket, Fry ‘Em Like Bacon”, referring to killing Police, is their chant. NYC Police are furious!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2020
Mere minutes before that, Trump referenced an interview with a self-proclaimed Black Lives Matter leader, saying that his comments about wanting to “burn down this system and replace it” amounted to “Treason, Sedition, Insurrection!” – all serious federal crimes.
Earlier this month, de Blasio reacted to angry demands to resign by declaring that a major street in every borough of New York City would be painted with the words “Black Lives Matter,” just as Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser did with a street north of the White House.
It was time, de Blasio said, that the city did something “to represent the fundamental power of Black Lives Matter.” The message on the streets will be that “now our city must fully, fully, deeply feel – and this nation must as well – that Black Lives Matter.”
Originally, de Blasio planned for the Manhattan street mural to be “near” the City Hall, which is a good distance away from Trump Tower. On Wednesday, however, he said it would be moved to Fifth Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets, and painted sometime before July 4.
“The President is a disgrace to the values we cherish in New York City. He can’t run or deny the reality we are facing, and any time he wants to set foot in the place he claims is his hometown, he should be reminded Black Lives Matter,” the mayor’s spokeswoman, Julia Arredondo, told the New York Daily News.
Trump resided in the Trump Tower before moving to the White House in January 2017. In September 2019, he officially changed his residency from New York to Florida. Earlier that year, Democrat activists led a push to rename the stretch of Fifth Avenue outside the building “President Barack H. Obama Avenue” – the same portion de Blasio is now painting with this political gesture.
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