#Trump says he considered selling DC hotel — but will never part with Trump Tower

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President Donald Trump in the Oval Office during an interview with the New York Post today.
David Butow

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday confirmed that he had considered selling his hotel in Washington, DC after spending more than $250 million renovating the iconic Beltway building — but said he has now changed his mind.

“I was thinking about it,” he told The Post during an exclusive Oval Office interview.

The Trump family purchased a 60-year lease on the 19th century Old Post Office in 2013 before Trump won his White House bid.

Reports emerged in 2019 that the family was exploring selling the Trump International Hotel due to criticism they were breaking ethics laws by profiting from the posh property, with world leaders and other executive-branch officials making hundreds of trips there.

But the president said he ultimately decided against it.

“I like it. It does well,” he said.

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal in October 2019, son Eric Trump, an executive at the Trump Organization, said the family was open to cashing out.

“Since we opened our doors, we have received tremendous interest in this hotel and as real-estate developers, we are always willing to explore our options,” he said. “People are objecting to us making so much money on the hotel, and therefore we may be willing to sell.”

One property the president is a lot less willing to part with, however, is his iconic Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

He may have officially decamped to Florida, but Trump told The Post on Thursday that he would never sell it.

“No, I don’t want to sell it,” he said of the Manhattan skyscraper he developed as a young property mogul in 1979 and where he resided in an opulent penthouse until becoming president in 2016.

“It’s always been good. It’s always been really nice. You build it from the ground up and I have a lot of stuff in New York. No, I wouldn’t want to sell it,” he said in the interview, where he also called the Big Apple a “cherished diamond.”

The president described his Financial District skyscraper at 40 Wall Street — dubbed “The Trump Building” — as a “great building” and said he wouldn’t be inclined to sell even as he feuds with the city’s leaders over rising crime.