“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?” –Donald Trump
Well, it’s been a remarkable few days since the political world was turned upside down by a shooting in New York City on February 20, 2020. Reports rocketed around the world just moments after an unidentified man was killed instantly by two rounds from a Glock 19 wielded by an assailant initially identified as President Donald J. Trump. That assertion was fiercely disputed by the White House in the hours following the killing. A spokesperson said the president was not in New York at the time of the murder, having organized a social event on that afternoon at the Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, where friends and associates had been invited to dance on the grave of John McCain. Yet more than a dozen witnesses identified the president at the scene, saying they saw him elude his Secret Service detail in an uncharacteristically agile move, and produce a hand gun from that famous, flatteringly voluminous overcoat. Bystanders recalled hearing two shots, and seeing the victim fall in the middle of the street.
A day later, White House spokesperson Natalie Lockjaw revised the previous statement, announcing that the president had indeed been at the murder scene with a gun, but had actually been shooting at pigeons, far above the heads of pedestrians. It was part of his personal effort to clean up New York City, she said, and provide meals for the homeless at the same time. Republican National Committee spokespersons offered a somewhat different explanation, insisting that he was actually shooting at a mural which included a likeness of comedian Stephen Colbert.
That evening, Fox News reported that the murder victim had been a member of the gang known as PG-13, related to the better-known and equally violent MS-13, but which is reportedly also a fierce advocate of limiting sex scenes in movies. Other sources reported that the victim was employed by Café Kovfefe, on 42nd Street, a business suspected by InfoWars of being at the center of a sex-trafficking ring run by George Soros, Ellen DeGeneres, Chelsea Clinton, and National Public Radio.
Autopsy and ballistics reports confirm that the bullets retrieved from the victim’s body were fired from the weapon in the president’s hand when he was apprehended, but members of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee for Finding Whorish Ways to Explain Away Presidential Malfeasance released a statement saying that “there are lots of guns everywhere in America, many identical to the president’s. But because his is registered as a patriotic gun, it could not have been used for any purpose other than to make America great.”
Yesterday evening, Sean Hannity, Fox News commentator and spokesperson for the organization Americans Who Are Just Intelligent Enough to Use a Knife and Fork, announced that he had gullibly-believable evidence that multiple shooters were involved in the killing, and that both of the assailants escaped in foreign cars which should never have been in America in the first place. He also interviewed the president’s personal physician, who testified that the president was far too heavily medicated to be able to aim and fire a weapon.
The president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, also made an appearance last evening, at the Timewasters Comedy Lounge in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Before being injured by martini glasses, Champagne bottles, shoes, and other items hurled at him in appreciation, he suggested that the death of the man was not a shooting at all, but rather a heart attack.
“Listen, this kind of heart attack, though rare, is violent enough to cause blood to spurt from the body through small holes created by the pressure of the aorta’s something-or-other. Sure, it can look like a gunshot wound, but people who know what they want to hear understand that it’s something completely different. Whether the president did anything or not, what he did or didn’t do just isn’t criminal. And my opinion is worth at least as much as the spittle that gathers at the corners of my mouth when I rant, okay?”
Finally, this morning, presidential spokesperson Belle Coldsore announced to the press that the president was indeed the shooter in the Fifth Avenue incident. “The president has no regrets. Though the identity of the victim remains unknown, his sources say it was either an Islamic terrorist, an illegal immigrant, or a bad hombre. The president is clear that it was the greatest shooting in our long history of gun violence. And for all those clamoring for him to be punished, those who hate our country and want to destroy it, he says, ‘Get over it. And go back where you came from.’”