An answer provided by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at Tuesday’s press briefing may have unintentionally outed President Donald Trump for telling a brazen lie. Leavitt was grilled on why Trump asked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to help him rename New York’s Penn Station to Trump Station. On Friday, Trump told reporters on board Air Force One as he traveled to Florida for the weekend that it was Schumer’s idea for the train station rebrand. The New York Democrat quickly snapped back and said it wasn’t. ‘Absolute lie. He knows it. Everyone knows it,’ Schumer posted to X.
A multibillion-dollar trade
Four days later, Leavitt didn’t even bother correcting the framing of the question – that changing the name of the train station was, in fact, the president’s idea. ‘To your first question about the renaming, why not?’ she responded. ‘It was something the President floated in his conversation with – with Chuck Schumer,’ she added – cementing Schumer’s version of the story. The New York Times reported earlier on Friday that top administration officials had told Schumer that he could get Trump to unfreeze the federal dollars meant to fund the Gateway Tunnel project if he agreed to help the president get the Trump name attached to Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport.
The $16 billion standoff
The Gateway Tunnel has been a long-needed infrastructure project to build a new rail tunnel to connect New York City and New Jersey. It would replace – for a time – the current North River Tunnel, which was put into service in 1910, so it could be rehabilitated for modern rail travel. The $16 billion project was halted on Friday – and won’t resume until federal funds are released. The Trump administration said the funds were paused over DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – initiatives. Trump and Schumer met at the White House in January to discuss the frozen funds. Sources told the Times that Schumer refused Trump’s request to help him with the name change. If Schumer did acquiesce, even as the top Senate Democrat, he doesn’t have direct oversight over either locale. ‘Only one man can restart the project and he can restart it with the snap of his fingers,’ Schumer said in his Friday X post.
To a question about whether it was appropriate for Trump to hold up the funds to get Penn Station named after him, Leavitt responded, ‘as for the funding, the President has addressed that separately himself.’ New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said Tuesday at a press conference that the funds had been stopped ‘because Donald Trump is throwing a temper tantrum,’ amNewYork reported. Trump has gone to great lengths to cement his legacy as a two-term president, even with nearly three years left in his term.
He’s putting his mark on the White House by constructing a ballroom, which has been made more controversial by ordering the East Wing demolished before it went through an oversight process. Trump had his name added to the Kennedy Center in mid-December – and then announced that the performing arts venue in Washington, DC would close for two years after July 4th festivities for renovations that would have a Trumpian flair. He already showed off designs for marble to be added to the Kennedy Center’s seats. Trump has also green-lit Trump $1 coins to be minted to mark the country’s 250th birthday, with detractors saying that it’s un-American for a living president to be depicted on U.S. currency.
