I know Trump has drawn much criticism after suggesting yesterday that he’d hoped if he’d been there he would have run into the Parkland school, even without a gun.
Many here have gone straight to Trump’s ‘dodgy’ deferment record keeping him from going to war, suggesting Trump is really a coward and would have never run into that school. While there may be some truth to that, there is something else that stands in support Trump’s comments, something he has done that might surprise you.
Now before you claim ‘fake’, you should know that I have already corroborated the fact that this is real. I actually searched philly.com and found the old article. Unfortunately they want money for it, so I declined.
Here’s what the article says via Epoch Times in 2016:
In the incident, Trump ordered his driver to pull over after he saw “a big guy with a big bat” bashing another person.
“Someone in the car looked over and said, ‘Gee, look at that, it’s a mugging,’ ” Trump said. “I said to my driver to stop the car because it was brutal-looking.”
Witnesses told the Daily News that Trump got out of his black stretch limousine on Monday during the assault in Manhattan. Marla Maples, who was married to Trump in the ’90s, was seen grabbing his arm.
“The guy with the bat looked at me, and I said, “Look, you’ve gotta stop this. Put down the bat,”‘ Trump said. “I guess he recognized me because he said, ‘Mr. Trump, I didn’t do anything wrong.’ I said, ‘How could you not do anything wrong when you’re whacking a guy with a bat?’ Then he ran away.”
Kathleen Romeo, a student at the time, said a bunch of people cried: “There’s Trump!” when he got out.
“A lot of people were surprised that he got out to see what was happening,” Romeo said, adding that the bat-wielder ran off right before he appeared. Trump then “just looked around and went back into his limo,” she said.
But another witness supported Trump.
“All of a sudden, a big long limousine pulls up on an angle, and Donald Trump pops out with the blond, too,” the unnamed witness added. “There was a guy with a bat, hitting a guy over the head, and Trump yelled, ‘Put that bat down. What are you doing?’ The guy dropped the bat, came over and started talking to him.”
“I’m not looking to play this thing up,” Trump said in the Nov. 20, 1991, report. “I’m surprised you found out about it.”
Now this was a bat and not a gun of any kind. But that said, it’s still commendable that a much younger Trump put himself at risk to stop this mugger from beating the crap out of the other guy.
UPDATE:
Daily Mail just ran a story on this Trump article from ’91 and they say there are conflicting witness accounts:
A named witness, who was neither Trump nor then-wife Marla Maples, told authorities the mugger was long gone by the time Trump got out of his vehicle. The witness added that when Trump did exit the vehicle, it was only to join a crowd of onlookers that had assembled nearby.
Kathleen Romeo, the aforementioned witness, said the incident occurred in front of Smiler’s deli. She said people gathering were cheering, ‘There’s Trump!’ as he arrived on the scene.
‘A lot of people were surprised that he got out to see what was happening,’ she told the paper at the time, adding that Trump ‘just looked around and went back into his limo’.
On the other hand…
An anonymous witness supported Trump’s recollection of the incident, however. The person said Trump told the aggressor in the situation to drop the bat and he complied. Police were not able to confirm this, or any other information about the incident because it wasn’t reported to them.
‘All of a sudden, a big long limousine pulls up on an angle, and Donald Trump pops out with the blond, too,’ the anonymous witness said.
‘There was a guy with a bat, hitting a guy over the head, and Trump yelled, “Put that bat down. What are you doing?” The guy dropped the bat, came over and started talking to him.’
The article also noted that Trump’s alleged heroism occurred just one month after his own mother was mugged.
Since we’re all about truth here, I thought it was only fair to post this.