Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So many bastards, so little time.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Wait, what?

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

T R E 4 5 O N

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Noo Yawk Knife Fight Open Thread: Nadler v Trump

Noo Yawk Knife Fight Open Thread: Nadler v Trump

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There is no feud like a NYC feud, especially one between a politico and a developer. NYCers — as an expat, I can say this — cherish a decades-long, no-holds-barred contest between two powerful enemies:

Assembling a group of House Republicans at the White House to talk trade last month, President Trump suddenly launched into a tirade about the congressman leading an extensive investigation into his presidency: his New York antagonist, Rep. Jerrold Nadler….

“I’ve been battling Nadler for years,” Trump told the GOP lawmakers, who were embarrassed by the outburst, according to several individuals in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the remarks.

Trump and Nadler are currently the main foes in a constitutional clash over executive power, as Nadler aggressively moves to investigate the president’s conduct and weighs whether to hold impeachment proceedings. But Trump’s jabs at Nadler were a fresh reminder that the animosity between the two native New Yorkers is personal as well as political — rooted in a decades-old fight over a tract of New York City real estate.

The feud between Trump, 72, and Nadler, 71, began in the 1980s when Nadler, a New York state assemblyman and later congressman, proved to be a major obstacle to a vast development project that Trump envisioned for Manhattan’s West Side, Nadler’s turf.

“Jerry was on him from Day One,” said Linda Rosenthal, a former Nadler aide who later won his state Assembly seat. “He keenly understood that this was a man who would try to get the government to pay for all his mostly bollixed attempts at development . . . His casinos failed. He lost money on deals. He left the banks on the hook for his bad financial plans. . . . He was just such a braggart and such an insincere person, but Jerry saw through that.”

Trump never forgave Nadler, and privately he has simmered about the chairman and his investigation, calling him an irritant who has long been out to get him and recounting their New York run-ins to aides. He was alarmed by the chairman’s early March demands to 81 of Trump’s close associates and business partners for a range of documents, including material on Russia’s election interference and the president’s finances…

The feud began in 1985, when Trump purchased a dilapidated former railroad yard in Nadler’s assembly district and proposed turning it into a mega-community: 7,600 apartments in six 75-story towers surrounded by television stations, a shopping mall, a massive 7,600-car parking garage and the world’s tallest building — a 150-story skyscraper.

Already considered a real estate go-getter in his late 30s, Trump wanted to call his development along the Hudson River between 59th and 72nd streets “Television City,” and he predicted that it would be “the greatest piece of land in urban America.”

But the proposal generated fierce community opposition from locals who feared that the area would become too commercialized and congested. Standing with them was Nadler, who wanted the city to buy the land and upgrade the rail system to preserve middle-class transportation jobs…

Full story (really, it’s worth reading!) at the link. Of course I’m Team Nadler, but given Trump’s other choices during the mid-1980s, it’s pretty clear the Big Apple dodged a major-caliber bullet when Jerry refused to let him scam the government for the cash to despoil another urban site before abandoning his latest ‘dream project’ unfinished and unusable.

Reader Interactions

23Comments

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Donald shouldn’t go there on fat, because he’s morbidly obese, no matter what his doctors may say. I know a lyin’ tub of lard when I see one.

  4. 4.

    Aleta

    Here’s some entertainment I first saw on John’s twitter.
    Robert E. Lee Facts

    Robert E. Lee Facts
    Robert E. Lee only commanded one country’s army in his life and he did such a bad job that after he lost and surrendered that country no longer existed.

    Robert E. Lee Facts
    ‏The E in Robert E. Lee stands for “Eh guess it’s time to go surrender since I lost the war”.

    Robert E. Lee Facts
    … Robert E. Lee was racist. His gravestone says “Here lies Robert E. Lee, who was racist.”

    Inept-Manlit alec
    He hated slavery

    Robert E. Lee Facts
    ‏False. Robert E. Lee loved slavery. We know this because of all the documented times where he stated “God damn I love slavery.”

    
Robert E. Lee Facts
    ‏The first time Robert E. Lee saw the confederate battle flag he is said to have stated “Wow. That flag looks like shit. You’d have to be a real dumbass to keep flying it after we lose this war.”




    Robert E. Lee Facts
    I have read a lot and can assure you everything I have posted today is 100% true.



    Andy Perrigo
    Lee was a smart man. An interesting part of his military career was his time spent as an engineer building forts and trying to mitigate flooding issues up and down the Mississippi, especially in the St. Louis area.

    Robert E. Lee Facts
    Another interesting part of his career was losing the only war he commanded an army in.

    Robert E. Lee Facts
    ‏Robert E. Lee marched outnumbered and outgunned troops across an open field against a fortified higher position in the face of artillery, and still gets to be called a military genius.

    Unstoppable Juggernaut 
@CypressGrove33

    
Lee was asked to command the Union army. But he refused to take up arms against his home state of Virginia. He quit the US Army a few days after VA seceded. What’d that Grant guy ever do anyway?

    Robert E. Lee Facts
    Beat Lee in a war while he was drunk like half the time.

    Robert E. Lee Facts

    Historians agree that the only reason there are so many statues of Robert E. Lee is he always wanted to stand around and get shit on by birds but while he was alive he was too busy being racist to do it.


    Those are the polite ones.
    


  5. 5.

    NotMax

    Was going to bring up the rail yards fiasco several times before but figured everyone already knew about it.

  8. 8.

    prostratedragon

    Once in a discussion of the Ypsilanti Water Tower (we were in Ann Arbor at the time, probably establishing directions to somewhere) a friend exclaimed in desperation, “Don’t they make renderings and look at these things in advance?!” That photo is a sort of answer, I guess.

  9. 9.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    Trump is much fatter than Jerry Nadler now, but if anybody called him “fat Trump” he’d whine bigly on Faux news ’til the apocalypse.

    Question: (I know I’m late with this but the appropriate thread is dead) Why isn’t Candace Owens indicted for lying to Congress? Lee Atwater made an infamous recording explaining the Southern strategy—and he was a principal architect, right there at its inception.

    I understand that not all testimony given to Congress is under oath, but I was under the impression that false testimony was still a crime. Is this one of those rules that only applies to Democrats?

    And why the hell didn’t any Dem representatives push back? I’m enraged by the notion rethuglicans have a right to Gish gallop lies out into the universe. The existence of the Southern strategy shouldn’t be open for debate but now it is—gas-lighters will use Owens (unchallenged) testimony to prove it never existed.

    For fuck’s sake, Ted Lieu cued up audio of that slag praising Hitler; he couldn’t cue up Atwater’s “You start out saying N-clang” comments as well?

  10. 10.

    Aleta

    In 1985 he wanted to name a development “Television City” ? It sounds like something he drew in his notebook when he was 13. And then tried to pitch to the 1964 World’s Fair as a pavilion.

    “The greatest piece of land in urban America.” And everyone who lived there would walk around in these cool baseball hats he invented.

  11. 11.

    Aleta

    @Mnemosyne: I already knew he was a horrible person, but that disrespectful insolence woke the dog with my shrieking. He was so flustered at losing to her that he said “gravel” instead of gavel and his paint began to peel.

  12. 12.

    Mnemosyne

    @Aleta:

    He thought he could act like a snotty 15-year-old while he was under oath in front of a House committee. His panic when he finally realized that he had screwed up bigly made me LOL. ?

  13. 13.

    Brachiator

    The feud between Trump, 72, and Nadler, 71, began in the 1980s

    Two old farts continue decades old feud. Jeez, what a shit show.

    In 1985 he wanted to name a development “Television City” ?

    This was the name of the CBS facilities in Hollywood.

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    @BillinGlendaleCA
    Not CBS any more.

    CBS Corporation on Monday announced that it had reached an agreement to sell its 25-acre CBS Television City property in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, as well as its soundstage operation, to real estate developer Hackman Capital Partners for $750 million. L.A.-based Hackman Capital also acquired the rights to use the Television City trademark.
    [snip]
    CBS originally bought the property at Fairfax Avenue and Beverly Boulevard in 1950. But since 2008, the company’s primary studio facility has been the 40-acre CBS Studios Center in Studio City, which is a full-service production facility with 18 sound stages and over 210,000 square feet of office space. Source

  21. 21.

    Ian G.

    @Aleta:

    Robert Nivelle and Douglas Haig are called butchers for doing things like Pickett’s Charge, and their side won their war. Lee is Jesus and Einstein combined, and he probably lost the war that day. Shit never made a lick of sense to me.

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