When Trump's Fifth Avenue Prophecy Became Reality

Ten years ago, Donald Trump declared he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" without losing voters. Most dismissed it as hyperbolic rhetoric about voter loyalty. Ten years and one day later, his administration's agents shot and killed a disarmed man on a Minneapolis street in broad daylight. Perhaps we should have taken him both seriously and literally.

The dynamic Trump identified was simple: he'd forged an unbreakable bond with supporters that no external facts could sever—not even cold-blooded murder on an American street. This is the crux of the crisis we've tumbled into over the past decade.

The Innovation of Limitless Spin

All politicians spin, of course. Trump's innovation was recognizing that conservative media had trained devotees to ignore mainstream sources entirely, relying only on movement loyalists for information. This gave him virtually unlimited power to control his supporters' perceptions. And because they'd believe anything, he could do anything.

After Customs and Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis yesterday, the Trump administration immediately branded him a "domestic terrorist." Their justification? Pretti was armed while filming agents, supposedly intending to "massacre federal officers." Even if true, this wouldn't remotely justify what multiple videos show: agents shooting Prettiafter they'd pinned him to the sidewalk and disarmed him.

Until recently, conservative rhetoric valorized gun ownership as a bulwark against tyrannical government. Conservatives defended Kyle Rittenhouse as a hero for bringing a rifle to Wisconsin protests in 2020, and cheered armed protesters marching into state capitols during COVID lockdowns.

The Selective Second Amendment

For Trump supporters to infer homicidal intent from exercising a right they've fetishized represents a Fifth Avenue–level mental reversal. Their view of the Second Amendment mirrors their view of the First: protections that apply exclusively to themselves.

The administration's immediate "terrorist" label isn't just hyperbolic accusation—it's an umbrella term for political opposition generally. "There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country," White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wrote in October. "The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks."

Miller's terrorism definition doesn't require specific motives. Owning a gun while protesting qualifies. Driving a car, like Renee Nicole Good did, qualifies. He's deployed state power on a scale resembling piecemeal martial law. The more abusive the state becomes, the angrier people get—which the administration uses as pretext for harder crackdowns.

The War on Recording

Administration allies play along with this logic, treating protesters' reactions to crackdowns as their cause. "For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement," the National Rifle Association claimed yesterday, as if documenting federal misconduct provokes the misconduct itself.

In reality, Minnesotans take to the streets because federal immigration agents appear to routinely violate the law. Democratic leaders urged residents to record activities to create evidence. That's why Pretti held his phone, not his gun, when he intervened to protect a woman being tear-gassed by CBP agents who then killed him.

The phone, not the gun, is the weapon this administration fears. Phones produce evidence of agents' misconduct—which the administration seems determined to destroy. Officials' insistence that recording citizens provoke violent retribution justifies what's becoming a literal war on truth.