Make room, Mr. Met — Mr. Trump might be moving into Citi Field soon.
Donald Trump yesterday said he is interested in buying some or most of the Mets as a way to help the Queens baseball team’s struggling owners — who are reeling from the financial fallout of Bernie Madoff’s massive fraud.
“Fred Wilpon is a good friend of mine,” Trump told The Post, referring to the Mets’ principal owner. “Anything I can do to help Fred, I’d love to do.”
Trump said he called Wilpon “a couple of weeks ago” to broach the idea of buying the Mets, but they’ve yet to meet about the proposal.
“We’ll see what happens,” said Trump, who previously owned the New Jersey Generals in the United States Football League, and who was a frequent guest of George Steinbrenner at Yankee Stadium.
“It’s going to take a long time for [the Mets] to work out the situation,” said Trump, who added he would be willing to sell any interests he has in Atlantic City casinos to satisfy baseball’s prohibition of team owners running gambling houses.
Trump said he would not necessarily insist on owning a majority stake in the team, but he noted, “My history is I control things.”
Met spokesman Jay Horowitz said, “We’re not commenting on this,” even before a Post reporter asked about Trump’s interest in the team.
Wilpon, his brother-in-law Saul Katz, and their relatives two weeks ago were slapped with a lawsuit seeking up to $1 billion by the bankruptcy trustee who is trying to recoup money for victims of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
The Mets owners are accused of turning a blind eye to Madoff’s fraud for years so they could reap more than $300 million in profits that were used to operate their baseball team, cable sports network and real-estate empire.
Before that suit was unsealed, the Mets said they were looking to sell up to 30 percent of the team to raise cash, but noted the current owners would remain in control.
Former US Sen. Al D’Amato said he reached out to Trump recently to urge him to buy the team.
“He would be a natural,” D’Amato said of Trump. “A New Yorker to lead a New York team. You talk about pizzazz, knowledge and money? He’s got them all.”