Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday that New York City will end its contracts with the Trump Organization after President Donald Trump fueled a violent mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The contracts are for two ice-skating rinks at Central Park, the Central Park Carousel and the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, a city-owned golf course in the Bronx.
Contracts for the rinks were set to expire in April, the New York Times reported.
The mayor said he would terminate the relationship due to the President’s role as inciter-in-chief in the violent Capitol raid last week that left five people dead.
While the city has previously considered severing contracts with the Trump Organization, de Blasio said last week’s incitement of violence qualified as “criminal activity” and gives the city the right to cut ties.
“The President of the United States directed a mob to attack the U.S. Congress during the electoral college vote,” de Blasio said during an MSNBC interview, adding: “The City of New York will no longer have anything to do with the Trump Organization.”
De Blasio estimated that the Trump Organization profits about $17 million annually from the contracts from the four sites.
“They have profited from these contracts, they will profit no longer,” he said.
The Democratic mayor anticipated that the company will put up a fight in court against the city’s decision, but he asserted that an end to the contracts stood “on strong legal ground.”
New York City is just one of the many entities who have signaled their disgust with President Trump by abruptly cutting ties — although the existence of a golf course operated by the Trump Organization and funded by taxpayers arguably raises its own set of questions. The Washington Post previously reported that the opening of the golf course managed by the Trump Organzation in 2015 had cost taxpayers $127 million to erect.
The growing list of groups and individuals shuffling away from Trump in the aftermath of last week’s attack, also includes the 2022 PGA Championship, whose president announced earlier this week it would be yanking from the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
