On Shooting People on Fifth Avenue

By Prof. David Eller | 2 February 2026
Shuddhashar

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain / Arquivo Nacional Collection)

The recent executions of American citizens in Minneapolis test Trump’s 2016 claim that he could shoot someone on the street and not lose any voters. This dark image—a threat and a prophecy—has become too real, without any clear sense of where it ends.

One of the first pronouncements that candidate Trump made in the 2016 presidential campaign season was, and I quote, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” At the time, when the man was considered more a clown than a serious contender for the highest office on the planet, decent folks vacillated between disbelief that a public figure could say something so crass and dismay that it might just be true.

There were many occasions after that, as a campaigner and as the president, when he displayed the same hostility toward American citizens—and even more toward citizens of other countries, or especially of citizens of other countries living in America—and even contempt for his own voter base. Just a few examples:

  • During a rally in Nevada on February 22, 2016, just a month after his infamous utterance above, he said of hecklers in the audience, “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks….I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.”
  • Two weeks later, in North Carolina, he said, “We had some people, some rough guys like we have right in here. And they started punching back. It was a beautiful thing. I mean, they started punching back.”
  • Two days later in St. Louis, he said of other hecklers/protesters, “Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick them out] is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.”

Part of the problem is that nobody wants to hurt each other anymore—that’s what the man who won the Republican nomination and then the election in 2016 and 2024 said in public. Sure enough, in Michigan, just a few days before his first victory, he praised the roughing-up of protesters by police as “a beautiful thing.” True to form, he retained enough voters to win then and again eight years later. In fact, not only did he remain popular, but he earned the commendation of prominent figures like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, who reckoned that Republicans and conservatives “were tired of being kicked around by Barack Obama and his leftists” and “are finally glad that there’s somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully” (quoted in Dovere 2018).

Not to be outdone, Christian radio personality Rick Wiles, in mid-2020, during Trump’s reelection bid, reminded the president in relation to the Portland, Oregon protesters that he was “now in possession of Obama bullets,” therefore, “You don’t have to tolerate this anymore. They were purchased for the purpose of putting down an insurrection. Well, you got one, so put the hollow-point bullets to good use and get out there and put down this communist revolution so the rest of us can live our lives peacefully” (quoted in Stone 2020).

Ironically, since Pretti actually was packing a legal handgun, he was posthumously vilified (again, as a domestic terrorist) for carrying a gun by the very folks who have so vociferously defended Americans’ rights to own and carry guns. Apparently, that Second Amendment right only extends to conservatives like Rittenhouse or right-wing militias like the Proud Boys. It is even more ironic that conservatives have long justified gun ownership for the very purpose of resisting government overreach and tyranny, but when it is their preferred government overreaching and tyrannizing, that right seems to vanish.

Since then, Trump and his appointees and acolytes have voiced an untold number of insults and threats against rivals and opponents—making good on many of those threats by taking legal and financial action against them and, on more than a few occasions, encouraging and excusing actual violence against them—while lauding the violence committed by Trumpers like Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who carried a weapon to a protest to kill people and did so, not to mention ICE agents armed like Desert Storm troopers who drag unarmed men, women, and children from their homes, workplaces, and schools. Not to mention badmouthing our international allies and slandering non-Western places as “shithole countries.”

So conspicuous, so persistent, and so despicable were these attitudes and the actions they spawned that Adam Serwer (2021) rightly concluded that “the cruelty is the point” in a book by that title. Others like Miguel Diaz-Barriga and Margaret Dorsey have diagnosed Trump’s (and other authoritarians’) dictator aesthetic characterized by “cruelty, menace, violence, and arbitrariness” (2017: e84), with a dash of sexism and racism for good measure.

Still, most Americans, I suppose, did not believe that he would cross the line from tough talk to real action, except perhaps against the people whom they thought deserved a swift kick, which includes primarily immigrants and Muslims but also anyone who stands in the way of the rule of self-appointed real Americans. When it comes to petty cruelty, like denying people’s healthcare and food benefits or costing their jobs and ruining their businesses through tariffs or detention of their workers, those real Americans were often shocked that the pain would fall on them, too.

Everyone knew, of course, that Trump would not personally take his own Glock onto the streets and shoot anyone: the man who dodged military service in his youth with a reputedly bogus doctor’s excuse of bone spurs is too much of a coward to carry a weapon and perpetrate the acts himself. But he is happy enough to order others to do so and to observe the carnage with pleasure. It began with ominous threats toward personal enemies and, of course, official pardons for convicted felons who perpetrated violence in his name and in his interest on January 6, 2021.

Next, the “no new wars” and “ended eight wars” president launched a series of military attacks around the world, including on Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, and most proudly Venezuela, where at least forty people died—including Cuban nationals—during his abduction of Venezuela’s leader. He and his supporters in the Cabinet and Congress have since talked openly about assassinating the head of Iran, as he masses military assets near that country. Additionally, he has conducted a murderous campaign of missile attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and east Pacific, allegedly against drug runners but without any evidence of that fact (notwithstanding that drug trafficking is not a capital offense), killing at least 95 more people.

Finally, in early 2026, one year into his second reign, a line has at last been crossed: American citizens have been shot on the street, not on Fifth Avenue in New York but on the mean streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota. During his paramilitary occupation of that city (not the first but the most overwhelming such action so far), on January 7, Renée Good was shot dead in her car while trying to drive away from ICE agents; agents, regime spokespeople, and Trump himself called the killing self-defense and branded Good a “domestic terrorist,” sorely abusing that nebulous label. Just over two weeks later, on January 24, Alex Pretti was likewise gunned down on the streets of Minneapolis, falsely accused of brandishing a gun and shot multiple times while subdued on the ground.

Ironically, since Pretti actually was packing a legal handgun, he was posthumously vilified (again, as a domestic terrorist) for carrying a gun by the very folks who have so vociferously defended Americans’ rights to own and carry guns. Apparently, that Second Amendment right only extends to conservatives like Rittenhouse or right-wing militias like the Proud Boys. It is even more ironic that conservatives have long justified gun ownership for the very purpose of resisting government overreach and tyranny, but when it is their preferred government overreaching and tyrannizing, that right seems to vanish.

Fortunately, many Americans deem these extrajudicial and authoritarian murders unacceptable, and a groundswell of criticism has emerged, even among some Republicans and, deliciously, that right-wing stalwart the NRA, which condemned the condemnation of gun owners and carriers. Yesterday (January 30), there were mass protests and shutdowns (of schools and businesses) in opposition to the escalation of violence against Americans and against immigrants in America. Trump’s approval rating has never been lower, and recent polls indicate that nearly half (48%) of Americans now endorse abolishing ICE, including 19% of Republicans and as many as 84% of Democrats.

Of course, ICE as such is not the problem: there is nothing in principle wrong with immigration and customs enforcement. But when a government agency becomes a private army—Trump’s version of Mussolini’s brown shirts, Hitler’s Gestapo, or Lenin’s Cheka—then it morphs from a legitimate organization to an undisciplined goon squad. And Americans largely agree: according to a report by Navigator Research (Cousens and Boudreau 2026), a few days after Pretti’s slaying, 59% of respondents believe that ICE has been too aggressive, although a disturbing 12% feel that agents have not been aggressive enough.

And, although Republicans and conservatives are not quite as unified behind their president as they once were, a hard core of 30+% continue to approve of him, apparently proving that, while he might not lose no voters by shooting people on the street or ordering them to be shot, he will not lose all voters.

For the rest of us, it is time to move beyond the standard and worn-out judgment that Trump is a pathological liar and/or a demented near-octogenarian. Those assessments are probably both true. But we are past that now. As his second year gathering power unto himself and undermining our democracy at every turn commences, we must see him as the sadist that he has revealed himself to be. It is too mild to call it cruelty; it has crossed into homicidal bloodlust, and now that he and his minions have tasted blood—and for the moment gotten away with it—there is no reason to think that he will be satisfied until more blood has been spilled.

References:

Cousens, Maryann and Julie Alderman Boudreau. 2026. “ICE’s Aggression is Fracturing Republicans.” navigatorresearch.org/ices-aggression-is-fracturing-republicans, accessed January 31, 2026.

Diaz-Barriga, Miguel and Margaret Dorsey. 2017. “Trump’s Wall and the Dictator Aesthetic” Anthropology News 58 (4):  e83-6.

Dovere, Edward-Isaac. 2018. “Tony Perkins: Trump Gets ‘a Mulligan’ on Life, Stormy Daniels.” Politico, January 28, 2018. www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/23/tony-perkins-evangelicals-donaldtrump-stormy-daniels-216498.

Serwer, Adam. 2021. The Cruelty is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America. New York: One World.

Stone, Michael Stone. 2020. “Christian TV Host Asks Trump To Use ‘Hollow-Point Bullets’ On Portland Protesters.’ Patheos, July 24, 2020.

Reprinted with permission from the author.

Jack David Eller is a cultural anthropologist and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology with Woxsen University in Hyderabad, India. He is the author of numerous books and articles on anthropology, religion, ethnic and religious violence, and contemporary populism, including Trump and Political Theology: Unmaking Truth and Democracy and (as editor) The Anthropology of Donald Trump: Culture and the Exceptional Moment.

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