Media-shy Kamala Harris will likely find an excuse to skip Al Smith Dinner – and avoid run-in with Trump

As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debate over how many presidential debates they will have before Election Day, they may soon meet face-to-face at a more unusual venue: The annual
Al Smith Dinner in New York City. 

The event, in its 79th year, begins with Timothy Cardinal Dolan of the New York Archdiocese giving some opening remarks.

Various muckety-mucks from finance, politics and government attend to raise money for catholic charities.

The dress code is formal but that’s usually about as serious as it gets.

Jokes are a mainstay, particularly in presidential years where the candidates are invited as headliners, throw zingers at each other and leave as frenemies. 

That all changed when Donald Trump burst on the political scene in 2016, sharp elbows and all.

It is why the betting among attendees I spoke to is that while Trump will show, the press-shy Harris will find some excuse to skip the event, like coming down with a cold, or a necessary campaign stop somewhere in deep-blue America.

They think she will find anything to relieve herself of the trauma of going toe-to-toe with her haymaker challenger. 

If Harris ducks, it wouldn’t be the first time she’s sought to avoid confrontation.

Her softball interview with CNN was her first (and maybe only) formal Q & A since being anointed the Dem nominee after Sleepy Joe Biden’s withdrawal over a month ago.

She has agreed, albeit tentatively, to just one formal debate with Trump. 

There isn’t anything formal about the Al Smith Dinner, but with Trump it could turn perilous for Harris, upend a tight presidential race, given her penchant for oddly idiosyncratic remarks, not to mention her off-putting cackle. 

Recall: With his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton seated just a few feet from him, Trump took to the dais to riff on the Clinton email-server controversy, or in his words: “I wasn’t really sure if Hillary was going to be here tonight because, I guess, you didn’t send her invitation by email. Or maybe you did, and she just found out about it through the wonder of WikiLeaks.” 

Ouch! 

‘Vlad’ tidings 

Hillary shot back, taking aim at Trump’s sometimes fawning attitude toward Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

Trump gave his speech at the dinner, she said, “translating from the original Russian,” adding: “Donald really is as healthy as a horse — you know, the one Vladimir Putin rides around on.” 

Yes, lots of laughs, but also lots of tension, I am told by people who were there. 

The question is, will we receive a replay of that between Harris and Trump this year?

For answers, I called Joseph Zwilling, the long-time spokesman for the New York Archdiocese.

He told me that both candidates have been invited to this year’s dinner on Oct. 17 and he doesn’t expect a confirmation of their attendance until at least after Labor Day. 

“We look forward to welcoming them,” he said.

“Right now, it’s too early to say.” 

The confab is sponsored by the Archdiocese of New York and is formally known as the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation ­Dinner, named after the great 1920s governor of New York. 

For the unacquainted, Smith was an old-school Democrat who grew up in poverty on the Lower East Side, fought for labor reform and went on to be the first Catholic to be nominated president. 

In 2020, the event was held remotely because of the COVID pandemic, which seemed to prevent The Donald from taking a few jabs at Joe Biden that year. 

My bet and the betting of other invitees I spoke to is that Trump would love to meet Harris one-on-one and give her the Hillary Clinton treatment, and Harris will figure out a way to avoid the scrutiny, which she’s done throughout the campaign. 

Is the ‘Citi’ asleep? 

If you Google “Citigroup and money laundering,” you will get some interesting results, like very recent headlines stating that Citi has a rep as “money launderers’ favorite bank.”

In 2020 it paid the feds a $400 million fine because of inadequate controls.

Common sense would tell you culling the anti-money-launder staff in the US is probably not a wise move. 

But that’s exactly what Citi did. 

The Post has learned that earlier this week, Citi cut 65 people in its US anti-money-laundering operations. Citi is a big bank — one of the biggest in the world with around 230,000 employees, so the cuts seem like a drop in the bucket.

But — and this is a big but — Citigroup probably needs every one of those people given its past problems involving its operations designed to prevent bad guys from using the bank to clean their cash. 

Yes, the bank is restructuring its businesses to slash costs and boost its stock price because it’s perennially one of the laggards in the banking business.

All good until you cut so much fat that you start to hit muscle. 

In addition to job cuts, anti-money-laundering positions have been moving overseas to cheaper places like Costa Rica, which last I checked isn’t exactly a haven for such expertise. 

A Citi flack offered this statement: “We are growing headcount to support these needs and continue to make significant investments . . . Any suggestion that minimal staffing adjustments in a particular geography — which account for less than 1% of our team supporting Know Your Customer and anti-money-laundering would impact that commitment is categorically false.”