What New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says she has learned about taking on Trump

Looking right at Donald Trump on Friday afternoon in the Oval Office, Gov. Kathy Hochul tried a different approach from telling him he was acting like a king for his attempt to end New York’s pay-for-entry congesting pricing system.

Looking right at Donald Trump on Friday afternoon in the Oval Office, Gov. Kathy Hochul tried a different approach from telling him he was acting like a king for his attempt to end New York’s pay-for-entry congesting pricing system. Just before heading to the White House, the Democratic governor laid out in an interview with CNN how she had been talking to Trump officials: This is about money — the $15 billion into public transit the plan is supposed to generate with tolls — and this is about the way she’s warning to try to turn the tide against the president. “You can’t strangle the lifeblood of our city, because I’m going to make you guys own this. When the trains are late if this goes down, a signal doesn’t work, stations flooded and not fixed for weeks and shut down, I’m pointing it back at you,” Hochul said her message to Trump was. “Just giving you fair notice.” Inside the Oval Office, Trump showed off the decor, including some of the paintings. Then, according to one person familiar with the conversation, they went at it in a spirited but not mean-spirited way. That back-and-forth followed their earlier flare-up in which Trump announced he was trying to kill congestion pricing with a surprise post that ended with “LONG LIVE THE KING” before Hochul fired back, saying kings don’t exist in America. Before his first presidential campaign, Trump had eyed running for governor of New York but didn’t see a way to win. And though he moved to Mar-a-Lago in Florida, he’s still obsessed with the city that gave him his accent and where he first started building up his gold-plated real estate business. To Hochul, who had a conciliatory chat with Trump during the presidential transition about why he should look out for New York, that looked like an opportunity. As the first president from New York since Franklin Roosevelt, “he should care about making sure that our subway system works. He should care that I have enough money to police our subways properly as I do. He should care that I have enough money to make Penn Station beautiful again.”