Donald J. Trump refurbished the Central Park skating rink two and a half months ahead of his own speedy six-month schedule and $750,000 below his own projected $3 million budget, having taken over the project after the city spent six years and $12 million unsuccessfully trying to get the job done. …
Mr. Trump did the project free of charge, saying it irritated him just watching the fiasco, although he has reaped torrential publicity and much good will.
I owe my knowledge of the 1986 NYT article to victorygirls, who comment:
Sounds a lot like his presidency. A thankless, and for him salary-free job. He came in as his typical larger than life persona, didn’t ask for thanks, didn’t ask for followers to believe he was a messiah. He recognized a problem, and worked to fix it, but didn’t seem to worry that people who disliked him would also skate on the rink.
I read the old article myself and extracted one more quote.
“He built the most fabulous rink I have ever seen”, said Vera Banchet, watching her daughter skate. “I saw Trump on TV again last night. If I may say so, he is not one to hide his light under a bushel.”
That too is a lot like his presidency.
We can thank the New York Times and friends for making a world in which one is either loud enough to be heard over them or else one is silenced – a world in which not letting his light be hidden under a PC bushel has become simply another of the Donald’s virtues! 🙂
I liked this line:
Not so much “before they were famous” but “back when they were famous for different things”.
Talking of flashbacks, here is one about the other guy running for the presidency:
From Rhetorical Question by Michael Crowley, The New Republic, October 22 2001.
I’m now assured that that is his primary vice. He should have apologized, explained that “I didn’t build that rink”, and given proper credit to the marginalized and oppressed peoples who made the rink possible.
(BTW, I liked this line in the NYT article: “A visitor yesterday commented: ”The place looks almost too nice, like it’s in Minneapolis. It could use a good coat of New York grime.”” They’ll be happy to learn that Minneapolis has since burned down.)
Further on the rink – New York had gone on that project for several years at that point, it was an enormous boondoggle that cost a fortune. One example, New York decided to use Freon cooling; a whole lot of small copper pipes instead of big black iron pipes circulating chilled brine (this is obviously before the Great Freon Blow-up). The system leaked, but the Freon pipes are embedded in concrete now – how can you find the leaks? Anywhere you jackhammer into the concrete, yeah there’s a leak there!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollman_Rink
Trump charged a $1(?) admission for the finished rink. He didn’t get a cent of it; the fee was exclusively for maintenance and rink salaries. And it was very popular, I mean $1 is a real cheap night-out in New York!
Trump is a Big Man in the anthropology sense, while his detractors howl that he’s a Big Man in the political science sense.
Surely, Comrade, you do not want Trump back?
(Just warming up. A Google search for “surely you don’t want Trump back” produced zero results today.)
Wow! And here was me blaming Obama and Ben they-literally-know-nothing Rhodes for the Iran deal that did exactly that a decade later. Who knew Barack got the idea from Biden.
Snopes will fact check you sternly if you dare to make a joke about that.
“Before they crossed the Democrat/media complex”.
If only Donald John Trump had become President when he was a younger man – and if only he had not been so trusting for most of his Presidency.
I do not think that President Trump even now grasps that most Federal officials (certainly in the “Justice” area) are totalitarian scum who want to do the United States as much HARM as they can.
The truth is just too horrible for him to accept – which is why he never cleared them all out on January 20th 2017 (although he had the legal power to do so).
It is not a “few bad apples” – the “Justice” Department, the FBI, and the rest of the bureaucracy has proved to be rotten to the core.
They are “waiting for Biden” so they can build the totalitarian system they crave.
Does President Trump even grasp that deaths from Covid 19 were deliberately INCREASED by the bureaucracy of the Federal and State governments, by making it very difficult to prescribe well known medicines till it was too late (EARLY treatment being vital)?
Again I do not believe that President Trump (who is 74) really grasps the true evil of the government of which he is the nominal head – to him (as for Rudy G.) it is still the 1980s – America has severe problems, but is still a basically good country with a government which may be incompetent, but is made up of essentially patriotic people.
But it is not the 1980s President Trump – I wish it was, but it is not.
“I do not think that President Trump even now grasps that most Federal officials (certainly in the “Justice” area) are totalitarian scum who want to do the United States as much HARM as they can.”
President Trump knows full well what scum populate too much of the federal bureaucracy. That is why he labeled it The Swamp. He is far more intelligent and prescient than for what most media clowns give him credit.
President Trump also knows full well that he cannot wipe out legions of federal employees without having qualified and heavily vetted personnel ready to replace the terminated people. And he knows that finding those loyal, patriotic, and appropriately qualified people is difficult in and around DC, much less anywhere where they are ready to uproot themselves and move to the center of corruption – Washington DC.
Finally, let me close by noting that our current President does NOT approach and resolve long standing problems in expected or “typical” ways. He goes about his job finding unique methods to fix seemingly unfixable problems.
Be patient. These problems weren’t created in 4 years. And they won’t all be resolved in 8 years.
Although I think he is the best President we have had in a long time (Lincoln might be a bit of an exaggeration though), lest this become a hagiography, let me say that the most surprising thing about the Wollman rink is that it isn’t called the Trump Rink.
We need a few decades to see things in perspective.
But, i submit, we need not a minute longer to conclude that Trump is clearly the greatest President since Reagan.
A background question to my post is: how does Trump take three-and-a-half months and two-and-a-quarter million dollars to do what New York takes six years and twelve million dollars to not do?
Trump’s habit of getting up early might have something to do with it. But, if we assume the governing culture of New York City and New York State are not so far apart, then maybe Andrew Cuomo’s habit of shaking down hard contractors working for the state hints at what the problem might have been. (For the record, it was Mario Cuomo, not Andrew Cuomo, who was Lieutenant Governor and then Governor during those six years.)
Trump is the last man in power trying to preserve the free world. The rest are slowly dragging it under……
Yes Itellyounohing – President Trump, in spite of all his faults, is the last line of defence.
GB Bari.
TIME HAS RUN OUT.