De Blasio On Trump: People With Major Differences Can Still Work Together
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) President-elect Donald Trump and Mayor Bill de Blasio have said plenty of negative things about each other – with Trump even going so far as to call de Blasio the worst mayor in the United States.
So how will the mayor and the president-elect move forward? CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer asked Mayor de Blasio about it.
For the second time in two days Thursday, Mayor de Blasio strode into the Blue Room at City Hall to talk about a presidential election that repudiated much of what he stands for – and those five gold letters, T-R-U-M-P, that dashed his hopes of being the catalyst for moving American policies to the left.
De Blasio said he will have an open-handed policy with regard to Trump, but not without limits.
"We're not going to take anything lying down," de Blasio said. "Anything we see as a threat, we're going to fight."
And while U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo spoke with Trump on Wednesday, somehow the mayor of the nation's largest city has been unable to get through. Has that been simply that the president-elect has been too busy, or that the two men are not exactly simpatico?
Kramer reported that she would have asked on Wednesday, de Blasio did not take questions at his Wednesday appearance. She did ask on Thursday.
Kramer: "Mr. Mayor, since Donald Trump has described you as the worst mayor in the United States -- and you have been highly critical of one of his top advisors, Rudy Giuliani – I wonder how you plan to forge a relationship with him and his administration."
De Blasio: "I think it's fair to say that there are lots of people who have had differences, but can still work together. I don't expect him to retract the things he said about me, and I'm not going to retract the things I said about him, because I believe them. But that doesn't mean we can't work together.
And it is important for the city to get along with the folks in Washington. Federal aid accounts for about 10 percent of the city's $82 billion budget – money for public housing and the New York City Housing Authority, for public hospitals, for homeland security, and for transportation.
Kramer asked de Blasio if Trump could afford to turn his back on New York City.
"I also think it would be seen as a different kind of hypocrisy to turn against the place he came from," de Blasio said.
The mayor said there may be an X factor in his relationship with the president elect. He said at this point, we really don't know which Trump we're going to be getting.
