Trump Brags About Riding Between Subway Cars

Speaking as a New Yorker, I can attest that there are many moments when considering President Donald Trump and his actions, one tends to forget (read: block out) the fact that it is his hometown. However, once in a while, we get a little reminder, and on Thursday it came in the form of a New York Times interview with the president in which he blatantly bragged that he used to ride between the subway cars growing up. This, it's important to note, is now illegal in New York.

The Times' interview was about infrastructure, and the conversation veered to the New York public transportation system. NYT White House Correspondent Glenn Thrush asked Trump what he thought of the subway and when he last rode it, and Trump answered:

It’s been a long time. It’s been a long time. It has been. I know the subway system very well. I used to take it to Kew-Forest School, in Forest Hills, when I lived in Queens. And I’d take the subway to school. Seems a long time ago... I’d take it from Jamaica, 179th Street. Jamaica, right? To Forest Hills. I understand the subway very well. I used to ride between the cars.

Trump may have been trying to prove a point by saying he took the subway so often that he felt comfortable riding in between cars, but this revelation has not gone over so great. In particular, the NYPD Chief of Transit Bureau Joseph Fox was not pleased by Trump's subway revelation. Fox tweeted out a reminder to New Yorkers and tourists to not ride between the subway cars:

It's also not a terribly responsible thing for the president of the United States to brag about doing, considering that it is both illegal and dangerous. The Metro Transit Authority changed the subway code of conduct in 2005 to prohibit moving between train cars, even when the subway was stopped. Violators are given a $75 fine.

An important point here is that Trump clearly stated that he rode between the cars. Not that he slid the doors between the cars open to get to a less-crowded car (which is very tempting to do sometimes), but that he actually rode in between the cars while the subway was moving. Maybe that does seem fun for a kid growing up in the city, but riding between subway cars can actually be dangerous.

In his conversation with the New York Times, Trump also didn't offer any warnings that readers shouldn't ride between the cars or say that he would never do that now. It was Maggie Haberman who asked him how his parents reacted to him riding between the cars, to which Trump said that they didn't like it.