Trump Claims It Was Chuck Schumer’s Idea to Put President’s Name on Penn Station: ‘He Suggested That To Me’

President Donald Trump claimed that, actually, Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) came up with the idea to name Penn Station after the president.

Punchbowl News reported on Thursday night that Trump and Schumer had a conversation in which the president said he would unfreeze $16 billion for a rail tunnel project connecting New York and New Jersey. The catch? Schumer would agree to support an effort to put Trump’s name on Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport.

Trump froze the money during the government shutdown in the fall. This week, New York and New Jersey sued the administration in federal court in Manhattan. On Friday night, a judge ordered the administration to unfreeze the money.

“There’s nothing to trade,” a source close to Schumer told Punchbowl. “The president stopped the funding and can restart the funding with a snap of his fingers.”

On Friday aboard Air Force One en route to Mar-a-Lago, Trump took questions from reporters, one of whom asked about the report.

“Mr President, can you set the record straight?” he said. “There are reports circulating that you told Chuck Schumer that, in order to restore funding for the Gateway train tunnel in New York-New Jersey, you would want Penn Station and Dulles Airport to be named after you. Is that true?”

“He suggested that to me,” Trump insisted. “Chuck Schumer suggested that to me, about changing the name of Penn Station to Trump Station. Dulles Airport is really separate. Dulles Airport is really not too involved with Congress. It’s a separate kind of a deal, as you know. But it was suggested to me by numerous people. Unions, Democrats, Republicans, a lot of people suggested it. But nothing’s been done on that.”

In December, the president announced the renaming of the Kennedy Center in Washington to the Trump-Kennedy Center. The move was more cosmetic than anything else, as the venue’s official name – the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts – is codified in law and can only be changed via legislation. In subsequent weeks, several artists canceled their shows. Trump has since announced he is closing the Kennedy Center for “renovations,” which will supposedly take about two years.

The same month, the State Department added Trump’s name to the U.S. Institute of Peace. Weeks later, the president unveiled a new “Trump-class” of battleships that he said he would personally help design.

Shortly before Punchbowl published its report on Thursday, Trump spoke at the White House and announced the launch of TrumpRx, which the president claimed will help Americans buy drugs directly from pharmaceutical companies, and at lower prices.

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