Trump Tells Residents to Leave Upstate New York

Jerry Zremski's lede effectively teases the reason for the furor that's erupted over recent remarks by president Donald Trump:

President Trump has a message for down-on-their-luck blue-collar workers all across upstate New York:

Move.

And don't look back on the house you left behind.

The remarks were included in a Wall Street Journal interview published on July 26, in response to the news that Foxconn chose a Wisconsin location over Upstate New York for a new manufacturing plant.

In Trump's own words, from the interview:

I’m going to start explaining to people: When you have an area that just isn’t working like upper New York state, where people are getting very badly hurt, and then you’ll have another area 500 miles away where you can’t get people, I’m going to explain, you can leave.

Then, an exclamation point: "Don't worry about your house."

Zremski gathered responses from business and political leaders from around the region, finding mostly disagreement about the state of Upstate New York and the president's advice to decamp.

A separate article by Larry Rulison provides soundbites from Oneida County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. Oneida County hoped to land the Foxconn facility, and Picente is a Republican. Ruilson reports Picente's response to the president's statements:

"I'm working every day to make this place better, and I would have hoped that he would have done the same," Picente remarked, noting that it's been decades since America has had a president from New York. "I'm trying to get more people here."

Yet another article by Mark Weiner presents Republican Reps. John Katko and Claudia Tenney a chance to disagree with the president.