De Blasio Says He's Trying to Meet With Trump, But Doesn't Have His Phone Number

LOWER MANHATTAN, NY — Mayor Bill de Blasio took questions from the press Thursday afternoon for the first time since Donald Trump was elected the next U.S. president. (Video below.)

"We're going to meet with him and try to find common ground," de Blasio, un unabashed Hillary Clinton fan, told a packed room of reporters at New York City Hall. "I'm going to offer an open hand and hope for the best."

Asked by one reporter whether the Mayor's Office had set up that meeting yet, de Blasio said: "We called his staff. I don't have his personal number. ... Before 9/11, I literally do not remember being in the same room with the guy."

The mayor said he would also "happily invite him to dinner to have a conversation. Again, I think he's busy right now. But I'm going to hold out hope that we can have a productive conversation — maybe even sit down and see if there's a common ground."

Another reporter asked whether meeting with Trump could be considered "normalization."

"We'd like him to succeed," de Blasio said. "President Obama's right. You're supposed to have a patriotic impulse to want your president to succeed." However, he added, "if we see the same Donald Trump we saw during the campaign, there will be no normalization."

The mayor later said: "I have a profound critique of Donald Trump and what he's said to date." But if, for example, Trump proposes "a huge infrastructure program that could help New York City, I'm going to do my darndest to work with him," de Blasio said.

One day earlier, in a brief statement issued on the sobering morning following election night, de Blasio congratulated Donald Trump, calling him "the New Yorker who won the election."

But his tone was somber and cautionary. "I call on all New Yorkers to move forward together" into Donald Trump's America, he said, "to protect and preserve the city we love, and the values we cherish."

Thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers answered that call Wednesday night when they marched from Union Square to Trump Tower in a massive anti-Trump protest mirroring similar demonstrations in big cities across the country. "Not my president!" they chanted. "Dump Trump!" "Donald Trump, go away! Racist, sexist, anti-gay!"

Sixty-five of the protesters were arrested by morning. Asked at his Thursday Q&A how he thought the NYPD handled crowd control and security at the protest, de Blasio said: "I think they did a brilliant job."

Securing Trump Tower itself along Fifth Avenue, where Trump will be living until his move to Washington, D.C., in late January (prompting some to call it "White House North"), will be "a challenge," de Blasio said, but not an "overwhelming one."

"The holidays are coming up anyway," he said. "Midtown is going to be messed up anyway."

Lead image via the NYC Mayor's Office