Prez can’t see canning ‘Mr. Magoo’
DONALD TRUMP’S long-held claim that he stopped a brutal assault in Hell’s Kitchen more than a quarter-century ago is bogus, the event’s only known witness told the Daily News.
Trump had said he came to the aid of a man who was being attacked with a baseball bat in November 1991 – a story recirculating online after the President claimed this week that he would have run into a Florida school during a recent shooting “even if I didn’t have a weapon.”
“He came at the tail end of the event,” Kathleen Romeo-Nunez, 43, said Thursday of the sidewalk attack.
“There was no opportunity” for Trump to intervene, she said.
Decades before entering the White House, Trump was on his way to a Paula Abdul concert with Marla Maples and another couple in his limo when the group noticed a crime in progress.
“Someone in the car looked over and said, ‘Gee, look at that, it’s a mugging,’ ” the future President told The News at the time. “I said to my driver to stop the car because it was brutal-looking.”
Trump said that he confronted the man holding the bat.
“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.”
An unidentified witness told The News at the time that Trump confronted the assailant, yelling, “Put that bat down. What are you doing?” before the man dropped the bat and started talking to the real estate mogul.
A story about the attack was published in the Daily News Nov. 20, 1991, with the headline “Mugger’s Trumped.”
Trump – well known for planting coverage or creating sources to promote himself and his companies — initially feigned modesty.
“I’m not looking to play this thing up,” Trump said. “I’m surprised you found out about it.”
Romeo-Nunez, then a 16-year-old student at St. Michael’s Academy in Manhattan, said Trump did not do anything to stop the attack. She recalled on Thursday that she had just come out of a store at 45th St. and Ninth Ave. when the incident was ending, and that Trump arrived a few minutes later.
“A car pulls up, he gets out, people acknowledge his presence,” she said. “He’s looking around, seeing what’s going on. Then he got back in and left.”
The beatdown was never reported to the police.
Romeo-Nunez said she always wondered who the other unidentified witness was, but said that person’s account was not true. The assailant “was running away” as Trump got out of the limo, and the attacker and Trump never spoke to each other, she said.
Trump said Monday that he would have run into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida to save students during last month’s massacre, even if he was not armed. “I highly doubt that he would do that,” Romeo-Nunez said.
The Trump Organization and White House did not respond to requests for comment. PRESIDENT TRUMP has no plans to sack Attorney General Jeff Sessions, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday.
“Not that I know of,” Sanders said when asked if Trump plans to fire the country’s top prosecutor.
Trump’s relationship with the nation’s top prosecutor has soured once again, leading to speculation about Sessions’ ultimate fate.
“The President has made his frustration very clear, and I don’t have anything to add about that,” Sanders said.
Trump attacked Sessions on Twitter on Wednesday, and The Washington Post reported he calls him “Mr. Magoo” behind his back.