Trump Among New York’s Elites at a Charity Dinner: It Got Awkward

 

campaign notebook

Trump Among New York’s Elites at a Charity Dinner: It Got Awkward

 

There were grudge matches and sycophancy in equal measure at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. “Isn’t it just exciting, what’s going on,” Donald Trump said.

 

Shawn McCreesh

By Shawn McCreesh

Oct. 18, 2024

Updated 4:18 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/18/us/elections/donald-trump-al-smith-dinner-new-york.html

 

Donald J. Trump and the assorted fat cats to whom he was speaking seemed to be processing many complicated emotions all at once.

 

“You think this is easy?” the former and perhaps future president asked. “Standing up here in front of half a room that hates my guts, and the other half loves me?”

 

There he stood, the godhead of a populist revenge movement, tucked into his satiny cummerbund, a black bow tie around his neck. It was the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in Midtown Manhattan.

 

This charity event, held Thursday evening in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel, has been a stop for presidential candidates ever since 1960. That’s when John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon showed up, at the dawn of the television age, to make self-deprecating jokes while courting the Roman Catholic vote. In 1970s New York, the era in which Mr. Trump came up, the dinner was one of the glitziest events on the social calendar, attended by governors and mayors and media machers and real estate titans.

 

In 2016, he came as a presidential candidate himself. But when Mr. Trump’s remarks about his then-opponent, Hillary Clinton, veered into nasty territory, he was booed. He and his wife, Melania Trump, slunk out of the room the second it was over.

 

Eight years later, the dinner he returned to was not the same. Like so much else in the Trump era, the Catholic charity event had become savage, warped by blunt force politics. There were all sorts of open wounds and grudges on display among the tuxedoed and the begowned. There were sycophants and there were outcasts. You could see the ones who had submitted to Mr. Trump, sitting beside members of a gorgonized establishment still unsure how to treat him, much less stop him.

 

“I don’t know what’s going to happen three weeks from now,” Mr. Trump said at one point. “Isn’t it sort of exciting? Right? Isn’t it just exciting, what’s going on. It’s a process. It’s a rough process, too. Not so pretty. And yet, sometimes, very beautiful.”

 

The room was still.

 

Mr. Trump did not have to face an opponent at this year’s dinner. Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t bother showing up. She sent a video instead. It was short, and premised on a cameo by the actress Molly Shannon, reprising her role as a Catholic schoolgirl on “Saturday Night Live.” Very few people laughed. Some openly fumed that her absence was disrespectful. But the assembled elites also seemed unsure what to make of the candidate who did attend.

 

Lately, Mr. Trump has been scaring the bejesus out of his opponents with his talk of “the enemy within”; the menacing images of migrants generated by artificial intelligence at his rallies; his proposal for “one violent day” in which the police can behave with impunity; and the fact that, in a new book by Bob Woodward, a top general who worked with Mr. Trump described him as “fascist to the core.”

 

The comedian Jim Gaffigan tried. “We have 19 days until the election, and, likely, a civil war,” he began his routine. Mr. Trump half-smiled at this. He was sitting in the center of the dais. To his left was his wife. To his right was Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan. Mr. Gaffigan turned to the cardinal and said: “The pope did say that this election is a choice between the lesser of two evils. And so, two questions: One, do you agree? And two, who’s more evil?” Mr. Trump smiled a little wider.

 

He had many supporters there to comfort him. Directly in front of him sat Ken Langone, the 89-year-old billionaire megadonor who initially supported Nikki Haley for president but who seemed to come back around to Mr. Trump after he was nearly assassinated over the summer. Behind Mr. Trump, clapping furiously in white evening gloves, was the Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. (It was to Ms. Bartiromo that Mr. Trump talked a few days ago about “the enemy from within.”) A few chairs down was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently threw in his lot with Mr. Trump. Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets whom Mr. Trump appointed as ambassador to Britain, was up on the dais, too. And so was Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker.

 

But Mr. Trump had many nemeses there as well. The air was thick with the vinegary stench of old grudges.

 

Directly in front of Mr. Trump, beside Mr. Langone, sat Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots. He was once a close ally, but in an interview a few days ago, he revealed that he had not spoken to Mr. Trump since he sicced a mob on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Kraft likened his rise to a “drunken fraternity brother” becoming president. When Mr. Kraft was mentioned at the dinner, Mr. Trump did not clap. The men did not look at each other, despite sitting inches apart.

 

Next to Mr. Kraft was the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spent more than $1 billion on a failed presidential campaign in 2020 in hopes of taking on Mr. Trump. Mr. Bloomberg called Mr. Trump “a carnival barking clown” that year; Mr. Trump labeled him “Mini Mike.” Mr. Bloomberg sat red-faced in his emerald bow tie throughout the dinner.

 

A few seats down was New York’s current mayor, Eric Adams, currently under criminal indictment for improper ties to Turkey. The room erupted into laughter when Mr. Trump said this: “The mayor’s dietary restrictions are well known, but I’ve got to say I’ve never met a person who’s a vegan who liked Turkey so much.” But then he said he thought Mr. Adams would beat the charges, at which point the mayor twisted around in his seat and looked hopefully at Mr. Trump.

 

Behind Mr. Adams was New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who won a civil fraud case against Mr. Trump that could cost him a cool $450 million in penalties and interest. Mr. Trump has called her “racist” and “grossly incompetent.” She stared straight ahead, unblinking, for the entirety of his remarks.

 

Also on that side of the dais was Peggy Noonan, the Ronald Reagan speechwriter turned Wall Street Journal columnist. She recently described Ms. Harris as “beautiful” in one of her columns, which was headlined: “The Fight of Trump’s Political Life.” Mr. Trump did not take kindly to this. At a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in August, he said: “I read a so-called Republican who Ronald Reagan didn’t like, by the way, and she didn’t like him, but she got credit for being this Reagan speechwriter. Highly overrated. I don’t know anything about her. I don’t know her, treats me badly, but that’s OK. She called it wrong. She’s called it wrong now for about eight years …” Once Mr. Trump began speaking, Ms. Noonan whipped out a blue pen and started scribbling, a smile on her face.

 

A few feet in front of her was Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News. A few hours before the dinner, Mr. Trump had fumed about her in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social: “Why does Suzanne Scott of Fox News keep putting on third rate ‘talking heads’…”

 

Mr. Trump’s speech was fascinating for all the ways it had and had not changed from eight years earlier. Even though he was back in the city where he came from, across the street from the tower he’s lived in for decades, attending a dinner he grew up revering, speaking to a roomful of people who, at least in theory, he always craved the approval of, he could no longer speak their language. He speaks only one language these days. That is the language of his rallies — where he never has to wear a bow tie or pretend to play nice to experience pure, unadulterated respect. And so, he spoke as though he were at one. He made raunchy jokes about adultery and menstruation and swore while standing feet from a cardinal. He praised Rush Limbaugh and talked about “the China Virus,” and the “Democrat party” and he emphasized Barack Obama’s middle name (Hussein). When he said Ms. Harris wanted to bail out looters and rioters, the room groaned.

 

At least half the dais looked profoundly depressed when he said, “I’m going to win.”

 

But there is nothing they — in all their money and their power and their media mastery — can do about it. This is what thrills his supporters. He can show up to these places and offend these people who are powerless to stop him, and, by extension, them.

 

After Mr. Trump finished speaking, and the polite applause ceased, Cardinal Dolan returned to the podium and addressed the crowd.

 

“Whaddya say we all just pray?” he asked.

 

They closed their eyes and bowed their heads.

 

Shawn McCreesh is a Times reporter covering the 2024 presidential election. More about Shawn McCreesh