Trump’s fear of being hit by killer fruit has become a major apprehension for him.
Donald Trump was worried that “dangerous” fruits could be flung at him by protesters, according to newly-released excerpts from his sworn deposition for an upcoming trial in New York.
According to the Daily Beast, the former president expressed his serious scepticism about weapon fruit in an October 2021 statement that was filed in court on Tuesday.
Trump stimulates violence against critics
Trump was swearing under oath in a civil claim filed by five activists who professed that they were violently assaulted by Trump’s security guards outside his Manhattan tower in September 2015. They say that Trump’s security team, led by his longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller, ripped away their signs and punched and briefly strangled one protester.
“I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit,” Trump said, according to a transcript of the deposition.
“It’s very dangerous stuff. You can get killed with those things,” he said of tomatoes. He also said it was necessary for security to be “aggressive” in stopping people from throwing “pineapples, bananas, tomatoes, stuff like that.”
Trump was questioned regarding his statements at a rally held in Cedar Rapids, lowa.
Trump made the statements as he was interviewed during the confirmation about his statements at a February 2016 rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he told attendees to “knock the crap out of” protesters who might throw tomatoes at him. He promised to pay the legal fees to anyone who did so.
It was one of the multiple events in which Trump stimulated violence against his critics.
During the confirmation, Benjamin Dictor, an attorney for the five activists, asked Trump how he knew about the alleged plot to throw tomatoes at the 2016 rally.
“We were told,” Trump said vaguely. When questions were pressed on whether anybody was actually found to have tomatoes in their possession, Trump said, “I don’t know. But it didn’t happen. It worked out that nothing happened.”
In 2020, Trump claimed that “anarchists” were throwing cans of soup at police, saying they were “coming over with bags of soup, big bags of soup, and they lay it on the ground and the anarchists took it and they started throwing it at our cops.” When soup-hurlers got caught, Trump claimed, “they say ‘no, this is soup for my family.’”
What was Dictor apprehensive about?
Dictor, the attorney for the plaintiffs charging Trump, told The New York Times last year that his questioning would focus on the former president’s control and responsibility for the violent actions of his bodyguards.
“The issue of the use of physical force at Trump rallies throughout his campaign, and the presidency for that matter, are serious matters of public interest,” Dictor told the Times. “This incident, from Sept. 3, 2015, was one of the first examples of Donald Trump and his employees’ willingness to utilize physical force against peaceful demonstrators.”
