The Donald. The Governor?
Why not?
Donald Trump is as serious as a PBS special. The real-estate tycoon and star of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice’’ told me the current chief exec of New York, Andrew Cuomo, is “controlled’’ not by his TV-chef girlfriend, Sandra Lee, but by a man who’s done more damage to the state than a fleet of Alec Baldwins — unelected, anti-fracking environmental activist RFK Jr.
“He’s a weird dude,” said Trump.
“We have a governor who is being controlled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. What’s going on with him?”
This was the first rocket fired in Trump’s maybe campaign to unseat Gov. Cuomo next year. That’s right. The Donald, 67, is thinking about blowing out of Trump Tower with his stylish wife, Melania, to spend quality time in the land of short skirts, big hair (he should feel at home) and supersized taxes: the sleepy and scandal-scarred state capital of Albany.
“Albany, yeah, I know,’’ said The Man dubbed The Donald by his Czech-born first wife, Ivana. “I actually find Albany a good place . . . if I do the governor thing.”
He said the answer to the state’s financial woes, particularly in impoverished areas upstate, is fracking — hydraulic fracturing. That’s a potentially profitable method of removing natural gas from the earth. But without proof that the practice pollutes water and harms humans and animals, environmentalists fight against fracking as fiercely as one might object to clubbing to death baby seals for their fur.
In February, Cuomo — whom Trump said he gets along with “nicely” — was poised to approve limited fracking in New York.
But then Cuomo took a series of calls from the son of slain Sen. RFK, Kennedy told The Associated Press. By early March, Cuomo banned fracking for another year or longer to give RFK Jr. time to receive the results of an environmental study.
This is an outrage. Is it also the result of nepotism?
Cuomo was married to, then dumped by, RFK Jr.’s sister Kerry.
“Andrea, we could pay off the debt, have better health care” with fracking, said Trump. “I’m a person who is very much liked by environmentalists. But the environmental madness is hurting New York!”
Is he for real?
Trump has repeatedly teased like a tart on spring break about running for president. In 2011, the entire press corps and I schlepped to New Hampshire to watch the maybe 2012 GOP candidate and famous germaphobe descend from a helicopter emblazoned with the name “Trump” and step onto an actual red carpet. Trump tooled aroundPortsmouth in a stretch limo so fabulous, there was no place big enough to park it. He shook voters’ icky hands in a diner.
Later, he said “never mind” about that president thing. But Gov. Trump?
The idea sprang not from Trump’s crazily coiffed head, but was floated Dec. 4 by a group of a dozen GOP state legislators and strategists in Trump’s office in Trump Tower.
“We believe we moved him from a soft no to a firm maybe,” said Michael Caputo, who ran Republican Carl Paladino’s disastrous 2010 campaign for governor. State Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox said Trump had “a smart political mind” after a Dec. 13 meeting in Cox’s Manhattan office with a top Trump deputy. After a Dec. 16 Trump Tower meeting with his people, Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long told Page Six, “Mr. Trump would give Andrew Cuomo heartburn.”
An even bigger group of legislators is to meet Trump next month.
Trump told me a pal, billionaire financial whiz Wilbur Ross, has moved with his wallet from New York to Florida to avoid crushing taxes. Meanwhile, Albany politicians are regularly accused of sexual harassment or indicted for ripping off citizens. New York, warns Trump, “will become Detroit.”
But, “if I ran and won, this state would become so rich, our taxes would come down, people would come back, our health care would be taken care of at the highest level. Our infrastructure would be rebuilt,” said Trump, who a source said donated $64,000 from 2001 to 2009 to Cuomo’s campaigns for governor and state attorney general.
Will he get the chance to tell Cuomo, “You’re fired!”?
A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC4/Marist poll shows Cuomo would kick Trump’s butt, 70 to 24 percent. (“It’s because I’m new,” scoffs Trump.)
Asked last week about a Trump challenge, Cuomo ignored the elephant in the room. “Oh, I don’t know, we have plenty of time for politics. I’m thinking more about the State of the State and the budget.’’
Trump plans to announce his decision next month. I hope he runs.
How refreshing to have a conservative in office who’ll stand up to environmentalist madness.
How sweet to have a little oomph in that drab state capital.
Go for it.
‘Daddy’ issues
Married dad-of-three Gregory Kenney, 50, coached soccer, basketball and golf at Manhattan’s private Trinity School for 15 years. Last year, the Long Island native was fired, he claims — because he’s heterosexual.
Kenney accuses the school’s new lesbian athletic director, Pat Krieger, 53, of favoring childless women while piling family-unfriendly night and weekend duty on Kenney, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court reverse-discrimination suit. He was let go, he claims, after Krieger accused him — falsely, he says — of illegally subletting his Trinity Tower apartment and leaving students unsupervised. (Trinity’s head of school denies Kenney’s allegations.) Was this man is a disrespected dad? If Kenney were a mom, I wonder, would it have come to this?
Car trouble for the snooty UWS
It’s a Tale of Two Jalopies. After losing his apartment in Riverdale, Rabbi Steve Blumberg, 62, has lived on and off since 2007 in a 1984 Chevy Pathfinder RV named Bessie, he told The Post. Bessie recently was parked on high-rent Central Park West.
“Why is this ugly piece of junk here?’’ demanded area activist Gretchen Berger.
Also on CPW stood a 19-foot 1975 Dodge Sportsman camper that resident Ron Hoffman said “looks like it would fit more in the mountains of West Virginia than on the Upper West Side.’’
Mess with property values of liberal Upper West Siders and see how quickly they turn into Scrooges.
A new wrinkle for Botox stars
Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow claim they’re kicking the habit. Kate Winslet, Meryl Streep and Salma Hayek just say no to today’s overused drug of choice.
Botox, the wrinkle-halting injectable toxin that temporarily paralyzes the foreheads of suspected abusers, from Bruce Jenner to Renée Zellweger, seems to be going the way of the dinosaur, The Post reported, as Hollywood A-listers reject the drug like carbohydrates.
Now, if we could just get Gwyneth to eat.
A&E’s bad ‘Duck’ call
Bring back Phil Robertson!
The clan at the center of the hit reality show “Duck Dynasty” seems ready to waddle into the sunset. This after A&E suspended family head Robertson, 67, for telling GQ, “It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me.’’
He also declared that bestiality and fornication were as sinful as gay sex, a notion that was greeted with outrage by the homosexual industrial complex.
“We cannot imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm,’’ the Robertsons of Louisiana posted on duckcommander.com.
Even liberal “Daily Show” host John Stewart said, “I think what the guy said is ignorant, but I also have an inclination to support a world where saying ignorant s- -t on television doesn’t get you kicked off the medium.”
It isn’t too late, A&E suits. I dare you to say you were wrong.