What if Trump Did Actually Shoot Someone on Fifth Avenue?
Your vote in the midterms matters, because Republicans in Congress wonât restrain the presidentâs excesses.
![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/04/02/opinion/thomas-l-friedman/thomas-l-friedman-thumbLarge.png)
By Thomas L. Friedman
Opinion Columnist
CreditCreditAl Drago for The New York Times
Sept. 3 (AP) â President Trump stopped his motorcade in Manhattan today, jumped out of his limousine and shot a man on Fifth Avenue who was shouting anti-Trump epithets. The shooting was recorded by the White House press pool as well as by dozens of bystanders with cellphones and by security cameras in the area. When asked for his reaction, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, âWe will need more information than is available at this point.â
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said through pursed lips that he âwas not going to comment on every up and down with this president.â House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he already had information indicating that the man whom Trump shotâworked for the Clinton Foundation and may have been a relative of former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.â
Fox News did not cover Trumpâs shooting at the top of its broadcast, which focused instead on the killing of an Iowa woman by an undocumented immigrant. Foxâs only reference to the fact that the president shot a man on Fifth Avenue was that âa New York City man died today when he ran right into a bullet fired by the president.â
Senator Lindsey Graham quipped that âTrump shoots as well as he puttsâ and that this incident would not cause the South Carolina senator to cancel his coming golf round with the president at his Bedminster, N.J., course.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/...on=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending
Thatâs because we all now know that Trump was right when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would stick with him. Weâve seen him get away with too much by now. No restraint on Trump will ever come from his party or his base â especially after the passing of John McCain. So save your breath. Trump will be restrained only if his party loses the House or the Senate. Thatâs what is at stake in the midterm elections â so vote accordingly.
And for those Republican moderates, independents and suburban white women who voted for Trump in 2016 and are considering voting against G.O.P. House and Senate candidates in November to put some limits on the president and show their disapproval at G.O.P. lawmakersâ failure to act as an independent branch of government, let me describe the stakes in another way:
America, we all know, won the Cold War. Our values and economic system proved superior to Russiaâs. But what is at stake in the 2018 midterms is who is going to win the post-Cold War.
Yes, that question is back on the table. Because what we are seeing in the behavior of Trump and his toadies in the G.O.P. is the beginnings of the Russification of American politics. Vladimir Putin could still win the post-Cold War.
At the Cold Warâs height, noted Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future and an immigrant from the Soviet Union, Americans took seriously the notion that we had to serve âas a contrastâ to the Russians.
Because the Soviets claimed to have built a workerâs paradise, it was important that we had strong unions, a strong middle class, less inequality and an adequate social safety net. The Soviets did not have the rule of law. So we had to have it more than ever.
âI came here from Russia in â75,â Gorbis added, âand it was remarkable to me that in this society there were laws and norms and principles, and people abided by them. The idea that people actually paid their taxes was kind of remarkable to me.â In the Russia she grew up in, said Gorbis, âwe did not have that; if there was a law, there was always a way to bribe and get around it.â
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But with the Cold War now far back in our rearview mirror, Trump has not only insisted on bringing America closer to Putinâs Russia geopolitically, but also politically. This, despite the fact that our intelligence agencies and biggest internet companies have confirmed multiple times that Russia interfered in our 2016 election and continues to meddle.
Your vote in the midterms matters, because Republicans in Congress wonât restrain the presidentâs excesses.
![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/04/02/opinion/thomas-l-friedman/thomas-l-friedman-thumbLarge.png)
By Thomas L. Friedman
Opinion Columnist
- Aug. 28, 2018
![merlin_140121612_db6bdfe9-7c5d-4cb8-9962-75cb84737ed8-articleLarge.jpg](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/08/28/opinion/28friedmanWeb/merlin_140121612_db6bdfe9-7c5d-4cb8-9962-75cb84737ed8-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)
CreditCreditAl Drago for The New York Times
Sept. 3 (AP) â President Trump stopped his motorcade in Manhattan today, jumped out of his limousine and shot a man on Fifth Avenue who was shouting anti-Trump epithets. The shooting was recorded by the White House press pool as well as by dozens of bystanders with cellphones and by security cameras in the area. When asked for his reaction, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, âWe will need more information than is available at this point.â
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said through pursed lips that he âwas not going to comment on every up and down with this president.â House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he already had information indicating that the man whom Trump shotâworked for the Clinton Foundation and may have been a relative of former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.â
Fox News did not cover Trumpâs shooting at the top of its broadcast, which focused instead on the killing of an Iowa woman by an undocumented immigrant. Foxâs only reference to the fact that the president shot a man on Fifth Avenue was that âa New York City man died today when he ran right into a bullet fired by the president.â
Senator Lindsey Graham quipped that âTrump shoots as well as he puttsâ and that this incident would not cause the South Carolina senator to cancel his coming golf round with the president at his Bedminster, N.J., course.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/...on=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending
Thatâs because we all now know that Trump was right when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would stick with him. Weâve seen him get away with too much by now. No restraint on Trump will ever come from his party or his base â especially after the passing of John McCain. So save your breath. Trump will be restrained only if his party loses the House or the Senate. Thatâs what is at stake in the midterm elections â so vote accordingly.
And for those Republican moderates, independents and suburban white women who voted for Trump in 2016 and are considering voting against G.O.P. House and Senate candidates in November to put some limits on the president and show their disapproval at G.O.P. lawmakersâ failure to act as an independent branch of government, let me describe the stakes in another way:
America, we all know, won the Cold War. Our values and economic system proved superior to Russiaâs. But what is at stake in the 2018 midterms is who is going to win the post-Cold War.
Yes, that question is back on the table. Because what we are seeing in the behavior of Trump and his toadies in the G.O.P. is the beginnings of the Russification of American politics. Vladimir Putin could still win the post-Cold War.
At the Cold Warâs height, noted Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future and an immigrant from the Soviet Union, Americans took seriously the notion that we had to serve âas a contrastâ to the Russians.
Because the Soviets claimed to have built a workerâs paradise, it was important that we had strong unions, a strong middle class, less inequality and an adequate social safety net. The Soviets did not have the rule of law. So we had to have it more than ever.
âI came here from Russia in â75,â Gorbis added, âand it was remarkable to me that in this society there were laws and norms and principles, and people abided by them. The idea that people actually paid their taxes was kind of remarkable to me.â In the Russia she grew up in, said Gorbis, âwe did not have that; if there was a law, there was always a way to bribe and get around it.â
ADVERTISEMENT
But with the Cold War now far back in our rearview mirror, Trump has not only insisted on bringing America closer to Putinâs Russia geopolitically, but also politically. This, despite the fact that our intelligence agencies and biggest internet companies have confirmed multiple times that Russia interfered in our 2016 election and continues to meddle.