For Moses Hendrix, the first sign that something was brewing in his Harlem neighborhood was the appearance of the “big white guys from Terminator” a week ago. They were snooping around the Sanaa Convenience Store on the corner of 139th Street and Broadway, owned by his friend Maad Ahmed.
So he called Ahmed, who told him a secret: “Trump is coming.”
“I said, ‘Get out of here. Why would Trump come here?’ “, remembers Hendrix.
But he did so Tuesday evening, during an unexpected field trip after the second day of his criminal trial in Lower Manhattan.
Sanaa, a bodega barely bigger than a closet, was at the center of racist angst in the city two years ago after a Latino employee, Jose Alba, stabbed to death a black customer who he attacked. The employee was charged with murder and then, after howls of outrage, released.
For the former president, this week’s visit was an opportunity to turn his legal troubles into a campaign event. In front of television cameras and cheering crowds, the tough-talking Trump vowed to “right New York.” It was also a perfect backdrop to reaffirm his claim that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was prosecuting him at the expense of real victims of crime and violence.
Two days later, west Harlem was still buzzing. “It’s the bodega!» — it’s the bodega! — said a woman to a friend as they walked past them.
It turns out that many residents of the spiritual home of Black New York — despite being a neighborhood increasingly populated by Latinos and Middle Eastern immigrants — were at least sympathetic to Trump, or even pure supporters. Several expressed dissatisfaction with the economy and immigration, as well as a fondness for a New York icon who – although born rich – had somehow made a symbol of himself of the agitation and courage of strangers.
“Trump is really popular,” said Federico Rosario, 40, a father of three who works in insurance sales. “If you ask me, the country was better when Trump was in power. [in the White House].”
The smartly dressed Dominican native rejected the claim that Trump, who broke bread with white nationalists at his private club and described immigrants as rapists, was racist. He was simply expressing himself in a way that other politicians refused to be.
Anthony Hayes, 43, a security guard who works in Midtown Manhattan but was born and raised in Harlem, agrees. “At the end of the day, I think he’ll be president,” Hayes said, expressing frustration with the post-pandemic scourge of shoplifting and petty crime.
Not everyone praised Trump. “A lot of locomotive” — very crazy — remarked an older woman, shaking her head.
Julie Puello, 30, a self-described Democrat who moved to New York from the Dominican Republic five years ago, also felt visible distaste for Trump’s combative personality. Still, Puello understood its appeal to many neighborhood residents. Even newcomers like her were unhappy with the wave of immigration and the perceived benefits newcomers received at their expense.
“It’s a headache,” she says of the problem.
Trump’s relationship with Black New York is more complicated than his enemies suggest. He was once a mainstay of hip-hop songs by artists such as Ice-T and Lil Wayne. In this world, and before his political debut, he was deployed like Cristal or a Mercedes-Benz – a sign of material success. “Back then, you wanted to be like this guy because he’s rich,” Hayes says.
Trump is longtime friends with Don King, the black boxing promoter, with whom he staged a series of Mike Tyson fights at his Atlantic City casinos. In 2017, King told Politico: “I say, ‘Mr. President, you know what it’s like to be a black man.’ . . No matter what you say or do, you’re guilty as hell.’
At recent campaign rallies, Trump has stepped up his appeal to black voters by expressing regret that they are the most affected by uncontrolled immigration. “Honestly, this should be the case for 100% of black people. [that] vote for Trump because I have done more for black people than any president other than Abraham Lincoln,” he said at an event in Georgia in March. “It’s true.”
But Trump is also the man who, to this day, refuses to apologize for buying a full-page ad in THE New York Times in 1989, calling on the state to reinstate the death penalty for the Central Park Five — a group of young black and Hispanic men wrongly imprisoned for the rape of a jogger that set the city ablaze.
“I’ll never forget it,” said Hendrix, 52, who grew up in Harlem and now owns a clothing store, Feared Voices, that sells baseball caps and clothing. (He wore an obligatory Knicks cap.) Hendrix also hasn’t forgotten how Trump encouraged the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama, the first black president, was not an American citizen.
“We were like, ‘Wow. What time is Trump in right now? “, he said, recalling his reaction. “He used to be cool.”
Yet Democrats would be wrong to assume that, on racial issues, Hendrix also had much sympathy for Biden. One of his cousins spent 22 years in prison for a crack-related offense, under harsh sentencing guidelines that the then-senator championed in the 1990s.
As a small business owner, his biggest concern seemed to be Biden’s economy, whose robust numbers didn’t seem to reflect the situation on the ground in Harlem. “Tell me that, who has a damn stock here that I can’t move,” he said.
Ahmed, 36, also felt the precariousness of the economy. “These kinds of businesses, if you don’t know about them, you lose them,” he said, standing in his cramped store amid an explosion of colorful packaging and potato chip advertisements, candy, soda, lottery tickets, etc.
An American flag was pinned to the entrance and a handwritten sign was taped to the security glass near the cash register: “He is haram buy from thieves. It was a message that the Sanaa convenience store would not participate in a local racket in which products stolen from large pharmacies, like CVS, would be resold in bodegas.
Eight years ago, Ahmed fled the war in Yemen with his wife and two sons. Two days ago, he received the former American president in his humble bodega. He seemed more sheepish than pleased by all the attention.
He was dismayed, he said, when Trump issued an executive order banning the entry of travelers from six Muslim countries, including his native Yemen, shortly after taking office in 2017. But he now appreciates the former president’s campaign against illegal immigration.
“If you want to come to this country, you have to have papers,” he said. “He’s doing the right thing.”
Then he added: “I think he’s better than Biden.” Stronger than Biden.