What New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says she has learned about taking on Trump

(CNN) — Looking right at Donald Trump on Friday afternoon in the Oval Office, Gov. Kathy Hochul tried a different approach from telling him he was acting like a king for his attempt to end New York’s pay-for-entry congesting pricing system.

Just before heading to the White House, the Democratic governor laid out in an interview with CNN how she had been talking to Trump officials: This is about money — the $15 billion into public transit the plan is supposed to generate with tolls — and this is about the way she’s warning to try to turn the tide against the president.

“You can’t strangle the lifeblood of our city, because I’m going to make you guys own this. When the trains are late if this goes down, a signal doesn’t work, stations flooded and not fixed for weeks and shut down, I’m pointing it back at you,” Hochul said her message to Trump was. “Just giving you fair notice.”

Inside the Oval Office, Trump showed off the decor, including some of the paintings. Then, according to one person familiar with the conversation, they went at it in a spirited but not mean-spirited way. That back-and-forth followed their earlier flare-up in which Trump announced he was trying to kill congestion pricing with a surprise post that ended with “LONG LIVE THE KING” before Hochul fired back, saying kings don’t exist in America.

Before his first presidential campaign, Trump had eyed running for governor of New York but didn’t see a way to win. And though he moved to Mar-a-Lago in Florida, he’s still obsessed with the city that gave him his accent and where he first started building up his gold-plated real estate business.

To Hochul, who had a conciliatory chat with Trump during the presidential transition about why he should look out for New York, that looked like an opportunity. As the first president from New York since Franklin Roosevelt, “he should care about making sure that our subway system works. He should care that I have enough money to police our subways properly as I do. He should care that I have enough money to make Penn Station beautiful again.”

Hochul’s whirlwind week also makes her the first in this new Trump term of what many political insiders expect will be a long list of Democrats who try to make nice with Trump but have him turn on them anyway. She’s also the first to have other Democrats side with Trump when their interests align, as New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy did as he praised the administration’s move against the congestion pricing tolls hitting commuters from his state. (A spokesperson for Murphy declined comment, and Hochul said, “Since when do I have to be listening to what people in New Jersey want?”)

Hochul had been scheduled to talk congestion pricing with Trump a week earlier until she found out from seeing news on television that Attorney General Pam Bondi was planning to sue New York over its immigration policies. She canceled. Especially with the drama surrounding New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has denied any quid pro quo with the Trump administration to boost its immigration agenda in exchange for getting his corruption indictments dismissed, she didn’t want to look like she was interested in a trade-off.

“I was just making the point that I’m not going to have this happen to me and then all of a sudden run down to talk to you with the perception, ‘Oh, can you make that go away?’” she said.

Instead, Hochul made two trips to the White House on Friday while in town for the National Governors Association meeting — the first in the morning for a session with all the governors, several of whom were half-joking when they talked about protecting her if Bondi tried to serve her a subpoena on the spot, and the second on short notice in the late afternoon, where it was just her with Trump and a few other administration officials in the Oval Office.

Hochul pushed back on any suggestion that she had read Trump wrong, or been surprised to have him turn on her, so completely and so quickly.

“It’s not being naive. It’s just saying, ‘I will exhaust my options.’ And when this is a dead end then I’m going” to the more confrontational approach. “I don’t need to start here, even though some Democrats did.”

Hochul left without any commitment from Trump to change his position on congestion pricing, which Republican allies in the state — including some considering running against Hochul next year — have pushed him toward. But she did leave him with what an aide said was “a booklet on the early success of congestion pricing.”

White House aides did not respond to request for comment about the meeting.

Hochul has talked with the president more recently than she has spoken with the mayor, whom she announced on Thursday she would not flex her statutory power to remove from office. She is, however, putting in place “guardrails” to ensure he won’t go too far in giving in to the president.

Hochul didn’t answer directly when asked whether New Yorkers should have confidence in the mayor’s ability to do the job, but she smiled slyly when reminded that she said in announcing her decision that she was not removing him “at this time.”

“I’d be a fool to give up all my options in this position, given what it is,” she said.

Similarly to how Hochul is dealing with Trump, whom she left in the Oval Office with material trying to make a data-driven case for keeping congestion pricing, every move she makes with Adams is being seen through the prism of how it might tear at her politics if she runs for a second full term next year.

Hochul dismissed any suggestion that is what’s driving her.

“I piss off half of everybody no matter what I do,” she said of her decision on Adams. “How does this help me?

The-CNN-Wire
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