Remember When Trump Definitely Did a Heroism

Donald Trump proclaimed on Monday that he, unlike the armed deputy assigned to the school, definitely would have charged into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to stop the bad guy with a gun. “You don’t know until you test it,” Trump said, “but I think, I really believe I would have run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon.”

This almost certainly would not have happened, because Trump is both very cowardly and very slow. But in his father’s defense, Donald Trump Jr.—the Trump child that Trump senior would almost certainly choose to save last—retweeted on Tuesday a 1991 New York Daily News story that details a definitely real act of Trump’s heroism:

In the article, Trump tells the New York paper how he had his driver pull over his limo so he could stop a mugging. This is how the incident went down in Trump’s retelling:

“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.”

Here’s that exchange broken down a bit more:

Trump: Look you’ve gotta stop this. Put down the bat.

Mugger: Mr. Trump I didn’t do anything wrong.

Trump: How could you not do anything wrong when you’re whacking a guy with a bat?

[Mugger runs away]

The only named witness in the story, a 16-year-old student, said that Trump actually “just looked around and went back into his limo.” Another witness corroborated Trump’s account but “asked not to be identified.”

Very coincidentally, three weeks before this act of everyday heroism, Trump’s mother was mugged, which led the Daily News to call his definitely not made up good deed “a karmic sequel.” Hmm.

“I’m not looking to play this thing up. I’m surprised you found out about it,” Trump told the Daily News. Yet he was also happy to speak to the Associated Press about his very real deed: