Just a couple guys from Queens: Lynch cheers Trump at RNC

PBA NYC President Pat Lynch, a Bayside resident, urged Americans to vote for Donald Trump during the Republican National Convention Thursday. Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via AP

By David Brand

For a few minutes Thursday, a Queens native not named Trump took center stage at the Republican National Convention.

Police Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch, a Bayside resident, appeared on televisions across the United States to deliver a distorted depiction of New York City amid a recent spike in crime.

“We are staring down the barrel of a public safety disaster,” Lynch said. “The Democrats have walked away from us. They have walked away from police officers and they’ve walked away from the innocent people we protect. Democratic politicians have surrendered our streets and our institutions.”

Earlier this month, Lynch’s union endorsed Trump for reelection. 

Immediately after Lynch’s speech, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani took the podium at the D.C. convention center hosting the (mostly) virtual propaganda fest. Giuliani, too, spewed a frightful image of the Big Apple.

The city he once led has been overtaken by an "unprecedented wave of lawlessness," the ex-mayor said.

There have been 208 murders so far this year in New York City, according to NYPD data. There were 319 murders in all of 2019.

In 2001, Giuliani’s last year in office, there were 649 murders in New York city.

Though he’s more associated with his native Brooklyn and the posh parts Manhattan, Giuliani once called Queens home, too.

He lived in Woodside with his first wife early in his legal career.