The media has been having a heyday with the Trump revelation this week about him being worried about being pelted with fruit by protestors at his political rallies. Include me in that media since I wrote this week, “Trump Says Fruit Is ‘Dangerous Stuff.'”
That’s what Trump told a lawyer in a deposition that he sat for last October concerning a lawsuit against him. Trump said that in one of his political rallies in 2015, thus early during his political campaign to become the U.S. president, his security personnel told him in advance that they had a tip that a protestor might throw some fruit at him.
Trump then said to that lawyer in the deposition that when he spoke to that 2015 rally, he told the crowd that if anyone saw someone about to throw fruit, “knock the crap out of them.” Trump explained, “A tomato, a pineapple, a lot of other things they throw. . . . Because if that happens, you can be killed if that happens.”
There is no record of any politician anywhere in the world ever being killed by someone throwing fruit at that government official. So, it would seem that Mr. Trump’s worries about fly fruit are unfounded. But then, he does admit to having some phobias. How about the one about stopped up toilets. And he admits to being a cleanliness freak.
Surprisingly, there is a long history of people occasionally throwing fruit at a politician. Maybe they do it because it is cheaper. Of maybe they think differently than The Donald, that airborne fruit is not a lethal weapon.
This history about throwing fruit at politicians dates back to Roman Emperor Vespasian (reign: 69-79 AD). Before he became emperor, while Vespasian was a governor somewhere in Africa, probably North Africa, in 63 AD some African threw a turnip at him. There is no record of what caused the occasion or his response.
(Bible believers, especially Jews, may recall that early in Vespasian’s reign as emperor, in 70 AD, he sent his son Titus as general of the Roman armed forces to end the First Jewish Revolt going on in Israel. That was when Jerusalem’s temple was destroyed and the Jewish Diaspora afterwards began.)
To bring this food fight with politicians up to date, only hours after the media first divulged this week Mr. Trump’s phobia about flying fruit, someone actually threw a tomato at France’s President Emmanuel Macron. It was reported that it didn’t hit him and someone opened an umbrella to protect him. Now, there’s the solution for Trump’s flying fruit phobia–just carry his big golf umbrella around with him, especially at his political rallies, and he shouldn’t have any more such worries about flying fruit.
I wonder what Trump thinks about throwing a turnip. I guess he just doesn’t like food fights in general. “Dangerous stuff.”
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