But enough about public policy.

Let’s put aside the financial benedictions New York has bestowed on Mr. Cruz’s presidential quest: the $11 million Mercer donation to the Cruz PAC, as well as the December fund-raising gathering at the Madison Avenue offices of the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm, or the undisclosed $1 million in loans, including money from Goldman Sachs and Citibank, to Mr. Cruz’s successful 2012 Senate campaign. It bears repeating: Hypocrisy is more widely practiced than any religion or creed.

The subject here, after all, is not hypocrisy but the villainy of embodying New York values.

In 2013, Mr. Mercer was sued in federal court by the servants on the domestic staff of his Long Island home, who said they were docked pay and bonuses if the toiletries fell below one-third full, or when they failed to stock bathrooms with extra towels. The suit was “amicably” settled, a lawyer for the servants told The New York Times.

It is one thing for a politician to take campaign money from people who pore over federal code to get around $6 billion in taxes.

It is quite another to be the creation of someone who may have calculated monetary punishments for people who did not swab the toilets to his specifications.

Representative King has spoken warmly of Mr. Trump and openly encouraged his participation in the Republican primaries. But even Mr. King, who has taken a hard line on Muslims in America, claiming that they were insufficiently diligent in cooperating with the police, has taken exception to Mr. Trump’s call to ban immigration by Muslims.

A couple of years ago, at the screening of a documentary at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, Mr. Trump’s face briefly flickered across the screen. It was as if the bad guy wrestler had just climbed into the ring: The auditorium erupted in jeers, hoots and boos. And back in September, a crowd waiting on Fifth Avenue to see Pope Francis roll by discovered that Mr. Trump was watching from an upper floor of Trump Tower. There were boos aplenty, according to reporters on the scene. Mr. Trump has never run for office in New York City, and with good reason. Mr. Trump’s values are about one person. The city is just a prop, like the campaign and everything else.

It is just another week at the office when some politician uses New York as a straw man for his or her dumb prejudices. Things have reached a far greater level of injury, however, when the likes of Donald Trump are anointed the standard-bearer of our tribe.