As much as the Trump sign is a visual nuisance, even offense, it is also a shiny object, an easy distraction from the building’s important, material failures affecting the city: a developer unable to lease a riverfront esplanade’s worth of commercial retail space depriving the city of tax revenue and a cooling system that has not met environmental regulations as a major, disproportionate user of river water, drawing nearly 20 million gallons a day.