Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Sunday (as broadcast on LiveNOW from FOX) that he will block any transportation bill that includes a provision to rename Penn Station for Donald Trump, declaring the proposal dead on arrival in the Senate.
The threat escalates a running fight over Trump's push to stamp his name on the iconic New York rail hub — an effort Schumer said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy quietly slipped into a Wednesday letter to three Senate committees as a bullet-point priority for the station's rebuild.
"The bill does not move without democratic votes," Schumer said during his weekly Sunday press conference. "I will block it and I know I will have the support of my colleagues. And if the renaming is not in the bill, it ain't happening."
Schumer then widened the attack beyond Penn Station, cataloguing what he characterized as a pattern of self-branding by the president. "The Kennedy Center, Palm Beach International Airport, he wants to stamp his face on them," Schumer said. "He even talks about redoing Mount Rushmore to put him on."
I've never seen such a towering ego.
Schumer said Trump "spends more of his time trying to name things for himself than helping Americans reduce their costs," and accused the president of burying vanity projects inside must-pass legislation. "This one ain't slipping by, none of them will."
The New York Democrat also tied the naming fight to broader Republican spending priorities he opposed, including what he called "the billion dollar ballroom" and a foreign-gifted plane he dismissed as "a lemon" requiring millions in repairs. "It couldn't even fly Trump home because it was vulnerable," Schumer said.
Schumer noted that when he negotiated with Trump over Gateway tunnel funding, the president tried to cut the money and asked in return to have Penn Station named for himself — a demand Schumer said he blocked then, too. Duffy, when asked what the station's name would be, said "Trump Station has a nice ring to it," according to Schumer's recounting of the secretary's remarks.
Whether Senate Republicans test Schumer's blockade threat may become clear as the surface transportation reauthorization bill moves toward the floor.