People skate at Central Park ice rink on Christmas day on December 25, 2017 in New York City.
Amir Levy/Getty Images
When Donald Trump took over the construction of two ice rinks in Central Park in the 1980s, Donald Trump did what Donald Trump does: He emblazoned the rink with “TRUMP” everywhere. The Trump-branded Wollman Rink and Lasker Rink at opposite ends of the park have been run by the Trump Organization ever since and been a tourist draw for years, even when Donald Trump morphed into a president. This winter, however, the Trump Organization has quietly scrubbed the complexes of its Trump labelling, the Washington Post reports.
“Now, as skating season begins, the president’s name is gone from the boards around each rink where large red ‘TRUMP’ signs once surrounded skaters. It is mostly gone from the desk where visitors rent skates: There, the white tarp used to hide the Trump name wasn’t quite big enough for the job, so a ‘T’ still sticks out,” according to the Post. “And where the president’s name remains, it is largely relegated to the fine print. The welcome sign out front of one rink used to say ‘Trump’ at the top; now the name is at the very bottom, under the phone number. ‘Operated by the Trump Organization,’ the sign says.
It’s quite a moment when the Trump brand is too toxic for the Trump Organization. “It’s a complete rebranding,” a member of the watchdog group NYC Park Advocates told the Post. “They’ve taken [the name] off everything. Off the uniforms, everything.” The Trump Organization informed the city parks department in August that it was making a change to the rinks’ branded décor, though the Trump business has not given the reasoning behind the change. Given that there is no product too schlocky for Donald Trump to put his name on, in gold and all caps, it seems unlikely the Trump Organization would have removed his name for any reason other than it was costing him money. A rink employee speculated to the Post that that was the case. “A lot of the schools, you know, liberal private schools up here, come to parties up here,” the employee said. “That was a big income earner up here Monday and Tuesday night.”
The jury’s still out on the hotels and golf clubs and steaks and other bearers of the burdensome TRUMP name.
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