I GUESS IT'S CONCEIVABLE THAT ERIC TRUMP REALLY DID THIS

Something dramatic is said to have happened to one of the Trump sons last week, literally on the streets of midtown Manhattan at rush hour, and yet it went unreported for five days until "Washington Secrets" columnist Paul Bedard told us about it in the Washington Examiner today:

Eric Trump rushes into NYC traffic to save ailing woman

An ordinary morning in New York City last week for President Trump’s son Eric Trump abruptly turned frantic when he rushed to the aid of a woman who passed out near a train station, dodging rush-hour traffic to chase down a passing ambulance.

According to an eyewitness account provided to Secrets, Trump and his security detail stopped to tend to the unidentified woman outside of the F train stop near 57th Street and 6th Avenue on Wednesday morning.

Our tipster, who requested anonymity, said Trump then spotted a passing ambulance and rushed to stop it.

“I watched as Eric looked up, spotted an ambulance slowly passing by on 6th, ran into traffic — almost getting hit by a bicyclist — and shouted at the ambulance to get its attention,” said the observer.

“Not sure if the ambulance had been called for or if Eric managed to hail one out of the blue, but in any case his sense of urgency was clear and he succeeded in getting the paramedics to stop and tend to the woman,” added the observer, who has no ties to Trump.

Despite being the president’s son, prominent in New York for his role as the Trump Organization’s executive vice president of development and acquisitions, his Good Samaritan role went mostly unnoticed. “I don’t know if anyone really noticed all of this going on, there wasn’t a crowd of people watching,” said the observer.

No local media outlet found out about this over the past five days? In addition to the Times and The Wall Street Journal, New York has two very competitive tabloid papers, one owned by Rupert Murdoch (in case you think the problem is that the "liberal media" wouldn't touch this story). The city has five local TV stations with large, tabloid-minded news organizations, two of which are also part of the Murdoch empire. The city has two top-rated 24-hour news radio stations. And that's just the legacy media. None of these folks got wind of the Trump story between Wednesday and now? The scoop went to Paul Bedard, a GOP-friendly columnist for a media operation most people in New York have never heard of?

I'll add that no New Yorker in living memory has ever talked like this: "in any case his sense of urgency was clear and he succeeded in getting the paramedics to stop and tend to the woman." The word "tend" with this meaning hasn't been used anywhere in the five boroughs since the days of the Model T.

And since midtown traffic is usually slowed to a crawl, Eric's reported leap into the street wasn't as brave as it seems. (Yes, the ambulance would be "slowly passing by" because all midtown car traffic in the daylight hours passes slowly.) Bedard says that Eric was almost hit by a bicycle, but that happens to the average New Yorker once or twice a week.

This story is reminiscent of a 1991 tabloid report about Eric's dad:

When he saw "a big guy with a big bat" bashing another fellow, Donald Trump did what any self-respecting billionaire would do: He ordered his driver to pull over....

Witnesses said Trump, with Marla Maples tugging at his arm to try to stop him, leaped from his black stretch limousine Monday evening during the assault on Ninth Ave. near 45th St.

Brutal-looking

"Someone in the car looked over and said, 'Gee, look at that, it's a mugging,'" Trump said. "I said to my driver to stop the car because it was brutal-looking." ...

"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."

Dad had a who, me? response to a reporter's query in '91:

"I'm not looking to play this thing up," Trump said yesterday. "I'm surprised you found out about it."

As did his son 27 years later:

For his part, Trump gave the credit for helping the ailing woman to the medical team he flagged down.

“I’m glad we were able to play a small role in getting help for the woman on 58th Street,” he told Secrets. “We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’m especially grateful to the EMTs who took over. It was certainly my first time hailing an ambulance in New York City,” he added.

Did either of these incidents actually happen? Did they happen as reported? I suspect only John Barron knows for sure.