PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER
Victoria Schneps-Yunis
CEO & CO-PUBLISHER
Joshua Schneps
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Matt Tracy
matt@gaycitynews.com
DIGITAL EDITOR
Tat Bellamy-Walker
tat@gaycitynews.com
FOUNDING EDITOR
Paul Schindler
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Duncan Osborne (News)
Donna Aceto (Photography)
Christopher Byrne (Theater)
Susie Day (Perspective)
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Nicholas Boston, Kelly Jean Cogswell,
Steve Erickson, Andy Humm,
Eli Jacobson, David Kennerley,
Gary M. Kramer, Arthur S. Leonard,
Michael T. Luongo, Lawrence D. Mass,
Brian McCormick, Eileen McDermott,
Mick Meenan, Donna Minkowitz,
Christopher Murray, David Noh,
Sam Oglesby, Nathan Riley,
David Shengold, Ed Sikov, Yoav Sivan,
Kathleen Warnock, Benjamin Weinthal
ART DIRECTOR
Leah Mitch
ADVERTISING
Ralph D’Onofrio
718-260-2524
rdonofrio@schnepsmedia.com
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES
Gayle Greenberg
Andrew Mark
Julio Tumbaco
Miriam Nieto
Laura Cangiano
Kathy Wenk
Jeannie Eisenhardt
Lenny Vigliotti
Elizabeth Polly
Please call 718-260-2524 for
advertising rates and availability.
CO-FOUNDERS EMERITUS
Troy Masters
John Sutter
Gay City News, The Newspaper Serving Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender NYC, is
published by Schneps Media. Send all inquiries to:
Gay City News, One Metrotech North, Third Floor,
Brooklyn, NY 15201 Phone: 212-22-1890
Written permission of the publisher must be
obtained before any of the contents of this paper, in
part or whole, can be reproduced or redistributed.
All contents © 2021 Schneps Media
Gay City News is a registered trademark
of Schneps Media
Fax: 212-22-2790
© 2021 Schneps Media
All rights reserved.
FOUNDING MEMBER
P E R S P E C T I V E : L e t t e r f r o m t h e B r o n x
GOP: Fifth Avenue Shooting
Just Trump Being Trump
Donald Trump campaigned in the January Georgia Senate run-off elections with US Representative Marjorie
Taylor Greene.
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
This week’s ethical punt by
the House Republican caucus
could force New York
City to consider an unprecedented
step: permanently sealing
off storied Fifth Avenue because
of the potential danger posed there by
a former US president, one Donald J.
Trump.
Five years ago, Trump, campaigning
in the Iowa caucuses, claimed,
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth
Avenue and shoot somebody, and I
wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s,
like, incredible.”
The comment was largely dismissed
as the braggadocio of an infamous
real estate blowhard. Six months
later, when Trump said, “Russia, if
you’re listening, I hope you’re able to
fi nd the 30,000 emails that are missing.
I think you will probably be rewarded
mightily by our press,” that
too was widely discounted as “Trump
being Trump.”
Now, with the GOP’s refusal this
week to clearly disavow fi rst term
Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor
Greene’s history of incendiary and
radical rhetoric — a clear surrender
to Trumpian disruption — is it so farfetched
to suspect Republicans might
concoct some pretzel logic excusing
a gun-slinging Trump causing mayhem
in his former hometown?
The litany of the GOP’s enabling
REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS
of the ex-president is familiar — and
dizzying. The party twice nominated
a man who traffi cked in the racist
birther theory about Barack Obama.
Announcing his candidacy in 2015,
Trump said, “When Mexico sends
its people, they’re not sending their
best… They’re sending people that
have lots of problems, and they’re
bringing those problems with us.
They’re bringing drugs. They’re
bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
That December, he called for a ban
on Muslims entering the US, a policy
he later enacted by blacklisting seven
nations.
Trump downplayed the 2017 neo-
Nazi, white supremacist violence in
Charlottesville by arguing, “You had
some very bad people in that group,
but you also had people that were
very fi ne people, on both sides.” His
get-tough immigration policy on the
southern border left children, separated
from their families, in cages. In
a 2018 summit with Vladimir Putin
in Helsinki, Trump publicly took the
word of Moscow’s strongman over US
intelligence agencies on the question
of Russian interference in his election.
When unambiguous evidence surfaced
in 2019 that Trump bullied the
Ukrainian government to help his
efforts to dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s
family by threatening to block vitally
needed defense aid against Russian
aggression, only one Republican —
Utah’s Mitt Romney — supported his
removal.
In the wake of Joe Biden’s victory
on November 3, more than half of the
GOP members of the House — 126,
including Minority Leader Kevin Mc-
Carthy — signed on to a ludicrous
lawsuit by the Texas attorney general
(supported by 19 other Republican
attorneys general) to throw out the
votes of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan,
and Wisconsin.
After that challenge and many
dozen others desperately waged by
Trump to overturn the election failed,
138 members of the House and seven
members of the Senate voted to refuse
certifi cation of Biden’s victory
in either Pennsylvania or Arizona,
or both, on January 6. This came
hours after a violent MAGA mob had
ransacked the Capitol and forced Congress,
Vice President Mike Pence, and
Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris to
fl ee the chambers out of fear for their
lives.
Which brings us to this week’s latest
GOP disgrace. Reporting in recent
weeks brought to light staggering
instances in which Greene, already
known to be a QAnon follower, supported
violence against political opponents,
co-signed conspiracy theories,
and voiced anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim,
and other racist sentiments.
On social media, Greene liked a
comment about putting a bullet in
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s head,
circulated a petition to have her impeached
for treason — the penalty
for which, she noted, was execution
— and stated, “The stage is being set”
for the arrest and hanging of Obama
over the Iran nuclear deal.
She endorsed false fl ag conspiracy
theories denying 9/11 and school
shootings in Sandy Hook, Connecticut,
and Parkland, Florida.
Greene also posted an anti-immigration
video that blamed the world’s
refugee problems on both Muslims
and “Zionist supremacists.” The 2018
midterm elections, she said, represented
“an Islamic invasion of our
government.” The Black Lives Matter
movement is equivalent to the neo-
Nazis and white supremacists who
marched in Charlottesville, Greene
argued.
Her most unhinged claim was that
the recurring wildfi res in California
are caused by space lasers operated
by the Jewish-owned Rothschild
banking fi rm.
➤ TAYLOR-GREENE, continued on p.17
February 11 - February 24, 2 16 021 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
link
link
link
link
link
link
