Leavitt Contradicts Trump Over the Attempt to Rename Penn Station After Him

February 10, 2026 by No Comments

President Trump Spends Weekend At His Mar-a-Lago Resort In Florida

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt contradicted President Trump on Tuesday, stating that it was Trump himself who raised the idea of putting his name on New York’s Penn Station and Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport during a conversation with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“About renaming, why not? It is something the President floated in his conversation with Chuck Schumer,” Leavitt said.

That’s not how Trump portrayed the discussion four days earlier. On Friday, Trump claimed it was Schumer who had proposed renaming Penn Station to Trump Station as part of a deal to unlock federal funding for the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnel project—an initiative that would add another commuter tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan.

“Chuck Schumer suggested that to me about changing the name of Penn Station to Trump Station,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “Dulles Airport is really separate. Dulles Airport is really not too involved with Congress. That’s a separate kind of a deal, as you know.”

Schumer said last week that Trump’s account of their conversation was an “Absolute lie.”

Trump has already placed his name on the facade of the largely gutted U.S. Institute of Peace, and added his surname to the Kennedy Center’s exterior prior to its two-year closure for a construction project.

Trump froze the funding for the Gateway Tunnel last year during the government shutdown. A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to either resume payments for the project by 5 pm on Feb. 12 or appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas noted that New York and New Jersey have demonstrated the suspension of federal funding will have an “immediate and severe” impact, and that significant delays could lead to the loss of up to 95,000 jobs. The project aims to build a new rail tunnel into Manhattan and renovate the existing 110-year-old tunnel beneath the Hudson River.