According to a New York Daily News report dated November 20, 1991, when he spotted a “big guy with a big bat” beating on another guy, Donald Trump told his limousine driver to pull over. Witnesses told the paper, that “with [then-girlfriend] Marla Maples tugging at his arm to try to stop him, [Trump] leaped from his black stretch limousine Monday evening during the Manhattan assault.”

The Manhattan billionaire, who was 45 at the time, told the story from there. “The guy with the bat looked at me, and I said, “Look, you’ve gotta stop this. Put down the bat. 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.”

Trump added that he saw the mugger deliver “five or six good whacks” before he put a stop to it.

Witness accounts varied. One young woman says Trump only got out of his limo only to see what was going on after it had already happened and the mugger was long gone.

Another witness, though, backed The Donald’s account. “All of a sudden, a big long limousine pulls up on an angle, and Donald Trump pops out with the blond, too,” the unnamed witness said. “There was a guy with a bat, hitting a guy over the head, and Trump yelled, ‘Put that bat down. What are you doing?’ The guy dropped the bat, came over and started talking to him.”

Trump, who was on his way to a Paula Abdul concert, said that he only left the scene when he knew an ambulance was on the way and saw that the victim was being treated by a witness who appeared to be a doctor.

At the time, there was no police report filed about the attack.

The reporter, James Rosen, does not disclose how he learned of the incident. Trump said he was surprised anyone heard about it. “I’m not looking to play this thing up,” Trump told Rosen. “I’m surprised you found out about it.”

Rosen also reports that “Trump was at first reluctant to discuss his daredevil deed, but then he warmed to the task.”

Trump’s famous ability to manipulate the New York press should always be kept in mind.

New York in the pre-Giuliani days of 1991 was not the New York of today, the New York that looks like a Hollywood backlot dressed for a romcom. No, in 1991, New York looked like this and the statistics looked like this. Just a few weeks earlier, in fact, Trump’s own mother had been mugged before a bystander named Lawrence Herbert chased the thug away.

A full 27 years later, this story surfaced online after the media roundly mocked President Trump over his claim that, unlike the local deputies at the scene, he would not have stood outside as innocent children were being massacred at a school in Parkland, Florida.

CNN’s anti-Trump pundit, Jake Tapper, who is himself using traumatized children as human shields to hide from the widespread criticism of his mishandling of last week’s anti-gun town hall, angrily lashed out at Trump over the school shooting comments. Tapper has yet to comment on this 1991 report.

In its own snarky attack on Trump, the far-left Washington Post also failed to inform its readers about this report of Trump stopping a mugging.

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