For several minutes at the Republican National Convention, it seemed like President Donald Trump was winning the vote of Black and Latino public housing residents.
In a 2-minute and 27-second video shown Thursday night, four New York City Housing Authority tenants and a tenant leader praised the Trump administration and harshly criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has faced backlash over his handling of the massive public housing system during his tenure.
“I would really hate to get started on this mayor,” said one of them, Carmen Quiñones, the president of the tenant association at the Frederick Douglass Houses on the Upper West Side.
“Bill de Blasio and the way he has dealt with public housing residents is disgraceful,” said Claudia Perez, the tenant association president at Washington Houses in East Harlem.
The animosity some public housing residents feel towards de Blasio is well known. He has proposed several controversial strategies to raise the billions of dollars needed to make building repairs, and it was during his watch that scandals involving lead paint and mold prompted the federal government to appoint a monitor to oversee the authority.
But some of the statements in the video are misleading. Adding to that misdirection is news that three of the speakers say they do not support Trump.
At one point, for example, Manuel Martinez, the head of the residents council of South Jamaica Houses, is quoted as saying that funding for NYCHA was at an all-time high under President Donald Trump.
It is literally truebut not because of Trump. The president actually proposed eliminating capital funding for public housing across the country for the past three budgets he has submitted. It was only due to Congress that funding was restoredand increased.
Martinez, in an interview Friday, said that he does not plan to vote for Trump nor does he endorse the president.
“This is us trying to make a statement that we need to vote for better Democrats,” he told Gothamist/WNYC. “We need to have our voices heard. We need to be better represented.”
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Manuel Martinez, head of the residents association at South Jamaica Houses, says he doesn’t support Trump but made the video to make a statement. “We need to have our voices heard,” he said.
Republican National Committee
Quiñones, likewise, said Friday she did not support Trump, but that the video was an opportunity to put NYCHA front and center.
The video was created after the Republican National Committee contacted Lynne Patton, the longtime aide to the Trump family who is now the New York-New Jersey regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The RNC approached me after deciding the long overdue improvements to NYCHA were a relevant story they wished to cover, Patton told Gothamist/WNYC in an email. They asked if any residents would be willing to speak to them.
Patton said she reached out to Quiñones, who, in turn, recruited the others.
The only resident Ive ever met or spoken to before the video was made is Carmen Quiñones, Patton said.
But The New York Times reported that Pattons involvement was much deeper than she let on, and that she personally interviewed the four individuals before the camera.
The Times also interviewed the two other women in the video. One of them, Judy Smith, in fact does support Trump; the other, Perez, said she doesnt.
I am not a supporter of his racist policies on immigration, Perez was quoted in the Times as saying. I am a first-generation Honduran. It was my people he was sending back.
The Times also reported that three of the people in the videoPerez, Quiñones, and Martinezsaid they were not told beforehand that the video would be shown at the RNC.
Every resident of @NYCHA knows that I would never allow the @GOPconvention to air anything with which they felt uncomfortable & showed the draft video – in full – to the resident organizer PRIOR to its airing and was told by them that it was amazing and wholly accurate.
— Lynne Patton (@LynnePatton) August 28, 2020
A Trump spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, told the newspaper that the interview subjects were fully aware of the purpose of the interviews–although did not specify whether they were told before or after the interviews took place.
Patton told the Times the White House had cleared the video for any potential violations of the Hatch Act, a 1939 law limiting how much federal employees can get involved in politics.
In a series of Tweets Friday, she also disputed a portion of the article that said Perez was not shown the video before it aired even though she had asked.
Reporting contributed by WNYCs Mirela Iveracread more
NYCHA Resident Leaders Who Appeared In RNC Video Clarify That They Don’t Support Trump
