What Would Happen If Trump Really Did Shoot Someone in the Middle of Fifth Avenue
What did Donald Trump say to his gun after killing an Antifa thug in self-defense? You’re fired! #MAGAFunnies
In 2016, Donald Trump famously quipped of the bind loyalty of his cult, “"You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”
At the time people naturally assumed that Trump was joking, that he was engaging in comic hyperbole. From the vantage point of 2020, however, it’s achingly apparent that Trump wasn’t joking at all.
If Donald Trump were to stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and fatally shoot someone, say a 90 year old Holocaust survivor who just happened to be walking by, on camera, while yelling at the top of his lungs, “I’m Donald Trump and I’m shooting this man just because I can” this is how I think the aftermath would play out.
The White House would immediately begin pushing a series of bogus narratives that don’t just absolve Trump of all blame but posit him as a hero. It doesn’t matter if these counter-narratives blatantly contradict each other: Trump’s supporters will believe them all.
bang bang bang!
Kayleigh McEnany will angrily insist that the 90 year old man had a knife and was trying to stab Trump in the heart when he shot him in self-defense.
Matt Gaetz will argue that everyone has killed at least one person in cold blood over the course of their lives and that expressing horror at the most powerful person in the world engaging in the occasional thrill kill represents nothing but woke “virtue signaling.”
Right wing websites will begin reporting that the 90 year old that Trump killed on camera because he could was not actually a Holocaust survivor at all but rather a Nazi being paid off by George Soros to make Trump look bad. The Trump’s angry army of apologists will start asking why punching Nazis in comic books makes someone a hero but killing them in self-defense is supposed to be some sort of “crime.”
Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson will start indignantly inquiring as to why it’s somehow acceptable, even “heroic” for action heroes to kill people in Hollywood movies made by left-wing Democrats but when a man kills a single person in real life that somehow makes him a “murderer” and a “bad person.”
Gangsta rap will once again be scapegoated by cultural Conservatives apoplectic that black men can get rich rapping about committing multiple murders but when a rich man kills someone for sport and fun it’s seen in a much darker, more negative light.
QAnon will of course be overjoyed. They’ll insist that the meek 90 year old Holocaust survivor that Trump killed in the middle of Manhattan was the world’s biggest child sex trafficker, if not Jeffrey Epstein himself in a cunning disguise. Trump’s very public murder will single-handedly justify their insane delusions about him fighting a righteous war against a Satanic cabal of child sex traffickers.
A day after the shooting, Trump will begin insisting that Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton were behind his murder of a 90 year old man and angrily demand a murder investigation be opened into their involvement with a murder he’s on camera committing, then bragging about.
The Trump administration will say that the footage of Donald Trump killing the 90 year old man while bragging about it is doctored, an elaborate Deepfake designed by Democrats to make the President look bad.
He seems nice!
Attorney General Barr, meanwhile will announce that Trump has the right to pardon himself, but that he will not have to use that right because under his reading of the law, it’s perfectly legal for the President of the United States to kill people.
Chappaquiddick will be invoked by Trump murder truthers to prove that Democrats only care about a powerful politician getting away with murder when he’s on the other side. Evangelicals will uniformly support the President, insisting that “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is a very misunderstood commandment that actually means “Thou Shalt Kill.”
Seemingly overnight, murder will become normalized. Left-wing journalists who angrily insist that murdering someone on camera after first bragging about how you could literally get away with murder is a a serious crime that should be punished with jail time will be dismissed as partisan hysterics perpetually looking for a reason to criticize the President.
Trump cultists will accuse the media and the Democrats of blowing a minor manner out of proportions. Extensive news coverage of Trump’s murder of an old man will only cause the public to hate, fear and distrust the non-right-wing media.
Trump’s approval rating would dip a point or two in the immediate aftermath of his killing of an old man but a week later they will have actually improved slightly.
Finally, Trump would get re-elected by a populace for whom not even clear-cut murder is a deal breaker.
It’s almost too depressing to even contemplate, so it’s a very good thing that Trump hasn’t followed through and killed someone in the middle of 5th avenue just for giggles and to see if he would get away with it.
Yet.
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