Searching for Christmas Spirit Within the Walls of Trump Tower
“I wonder what’s going on over at Trump Tower?”
That is not a question most New Yorkers have ever asked themselves-especially not in the months immediately following the 2016 presidential election. In those dark days, the building was ringed with new security infrastructure while crowds of gawkers, protesters, and MAGA-hatted out-of-towners milled up and down the sidewalk, or lined up two-and-three deep behind stanchions across Fifth Avenue. Pedestrian and vehicular traffic slowed to a crawl, and New Yorkers who, not incidentally, gave Hillary Clinton 79 percent of their votes, did everything within their power to avoid Fifth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets.
Overnight, Trump Tower had become more than just a tacky eyesore. It was a black hole plunked down on the city’s street grid as well as, if I may mix metaphors, a red-state middle finger raised to urbane, cosmopolitan, progressive, tasteful Gotham. It was injury and insult both.
But, with time, New Yorkers can shrug off anything. Two years later, the cement truck bomb barriers are still in full force, but the crowds on Fifth Avenue have thinned, traffic is moving about as well as it ever does, and Trump himself is blessedly never around; it's almost as if Mordor has been shuttered.
Almost.
That will have to wait for the Trump Organization’s post-impeachment, post-prison fire sale. Meanwhile, with the holiday season in full swing, and the mid-point of the Trump presidency looming on the horizon, I thought it would be an interesting time to venture inside the belly of the beast-and learn the true meaning of Christmas, Trump-style.
Joy to the world, you can get an eggnog latte!
Trump Tower’s lower retail floors are technically a public space. Anyone can go! Even Robert Mueller and his Angry Dems! Plus, there’s a Starbucks!
I visited the Tower on a drizzly December Sunday. You could tell it was Christmastime because there was a single, desultory twelve-foot toy soldier by the building’s entrance, and some perfunctory stylized snowflakes stuck to the glass above the doors. Mind you, this is the home and signature building of a president who numbers among his greatest achievements an alleged uptick in the use of the greeting “Merry Christmas” (after eight years of Obama ordering everyone to say “Happy Holidays” or, if religious people absolutely insisted, “Jolly Ramadan”).
But Trump Tower was easily overshadowed in the seasonal cheer department by its next-door neighbor, Tiffany’s flagship store, which was strung with bling-y lights that suggested giant scarab brooches were attacking its façade, while the famous sculpture of Atlas holding a clock above the entrance had been replaced by a robot made of blue Tiffany’s boxes. If judged by the raised phones of passing tourists, Tiffany’s Yuletide trimmings beat Trump Tower’s in a landslide.
Inside the latter's lobby-past a surprisingly low-key Secret Service security check (it’s harder to get into Madison Square Garden and some Broadway shows)-the holiday atmosphere was no less cursory. There were a few wreaths and a row of potted poinsettias, and Johnny Mathis was singing “Toyland” on the PA system (at least I think it was Johnny Mathis, but the subway-worthy sound system blared and echoed, so it might have been Perry Como or even, in theory, Eric Trump).
There was nothing as distinctive or nightmarish as the blood-red trees Melania Trump ordered up for the White House. Rather, it was almost as if Trump Tower’s holiday décor was so intentionally bland that the first thing you notice upon entering is the sign directing visitors to the “Official Trump Campaign Store,” down the same escalator Trump famously descended to announce his candidacy.
The second thing I noticed was the Trump Store lobby concession which sells, among other items, Trump-branded Christmas tree ornaments emblazoned with the offending phrase “Happy Holidays.” Where was the famous Trump message discipline?
All I want for Christmas is the cod at the Trump Grill!
Trump Tower’s public space is a pink-marble-clad atrium that looks like the sort of upscale-ish “galleria” you’d find in a suburb of Dallas or Phoenix with a Neiman Marcus and Talbot’s attached, but it’s become a de facto Trump theme park because retailers such as Galeries Lafayette, Asprey & Company, Fila, and Charles Jourdan who once filled its five floors have long-since fled. Indeed, the top two floors are now entirely empty. Gucci still leases the building’s Fifth Avenue storefront, with its own entrance, and in the basement there’s an independently-run newsstand/souvenir shop, plus the aforementioned Starbucks on the atrium’s second floor, which will be interesting if that company’s former CEO, Howard Schultz, decides to run for president in 2020.
Otherwise, everything is Trump-owned and operated: the Trump Store (where a Trump fidget spinner is only $8), the Trump Grill (Trump fish du jour: cod!), the Trump Café (warning: the steak frites look soggy), the Trump Bar, and Trump’s Ice Cream parlor.
The crowd on this afternoon wasn’t altogether sparse, the atmosphere was not thoroughly moribund, but neither was the central atrium bustling in the traditional holiday-season-on-Fifth-Avenue manner. Tables were readily available at the restaurants. Clerks at the Trump Store were standing around, waiting for customers. Imagine your most popular local mall but on, say, a Tuesday afternoon.
Who actually comes here? As a group, the people I observed inside were lighter complexioned than those outside, though surprisingly, I saw only a single person wearing a MAGA hat (white, male, bearded halfway to Duck Dynasty). According to a worker I spoke with, visitors tend to be evenly divided between Trump true believers and the merely Trump-curious. By the way, this worker’s accent suggested immigrant origins, as did those of most Trump Tower employees I spoke to-with the notable exception of the stern Midwestern blonde running the Official Trump Campaign Store.
The first worker explained that employees are forbidden to discuss politics when I asked what she thought of the president’s immigration policies and rhetoric, although another worker, who told me sotto voce that he was of Latin American ancestry, volunteered that while he thought the right and wrong of border enforcement was a “gray area,” he was disturbed by family separations.
They're dreaming of a supremely white Christmas.
The Trump Campaign Store turned out be more of a stand, like a grab-and-go concession at an airport. On offer was a mostly uninspiring array of Trump-Pence and Make America Great Again hats, t-shirts, placards. Purchases are technically campaign contributions, so you have to show ID to prove you’re an American and not, say, a Russian national with dirt on Hillary Clinton heading upstairs for a meeting with Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort.
I found a lady from South Carolina at the stand buying a $20 MAGA t-shirt for her teenage son. “I don’t think the president has a bigger fan than my 15-year-old,” she said. Why? I asked. “Just the charisma, I guess. And my son hates socialism.”
But did she really consider a thrice-married, pussy-grabbing, porn-star-sleeping-with, teenage-beauty-pageant-dressing-room-barging-in-on president an appropriate role model for a 15-year-old boy? (Full disclosure: I didn’t phrase the question exactly that way.) “Oh, sure!” she said, cheerfully immune to my devastating irony. “I like him, too!”
If you have paid any attention to the president’s business career, it will not come as a surprise to learn that despite the Trump brand’s ostensible status as a luxury avatar, most of the merchandise for sale at Trump Tower is of the gewgaw variety, as you can see in the Trump Tower Holiday Christmas gift guide below. The serious retail action is at the Gucci store, where only actual beneficiaries of the administration’s policies can afford to shop and where I saw two unusually well-coiffed little girls oooh-ing and ahhhing over a $890 Gucci fanny pack. Those $13.99 Ivanka Trump earrings back at the Trump Store? Strictly for rubes.
Your Bonus Trump Tower Christmas Gift Guide!
Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is-thwappa-thwappa-thwappa! Because nothing says "Merry Christmas," or in this case "Happy Holidays," like an ornament featuring a rich man's helicopter. $20.00 at the Trump Store.
Not so fast, Lady With a Foreign Accent-let's see your green card! Oh, you have a "First Lady License"? In that case, welcome to America! (But "blonde?") $3.99 at Roger's newsstand.
Is that a get-out-of-jail-free card for Crooked Hillary? Not if Jeff Sessions had just done his job! But aww, look who's the King of Hearts... Actually, he's all the kings-and all the aces too. Seriously. Because of course. $12.99 at Roger's newsstand.
Don this exclusive Space Force t-shirt and you'll be rarin' to fight future intergalactic trade wars. Or you can pretend you went back in time and bought a souvenir at Tomorrowland circa 1974. $20.00 (technically a donation) at the Official Trump Campaign Store.
Too much "Executive Time" and not enough Fox and Friends on the DVR? With this Trump-branded fidget spinner, you'll fill countless productive hours of not reading briefing papers! $8.00 at the Trump Store.
('You Might Also Like',)
