Former President Donald Trump feared being targeted by people throwing “dangerous fruits” at him during rallies, a newly released excerpt from a deposition revealed.
“It’s very dangerous stuff,” Trump said. “You can get killed with those things.”
The comments were made last October as part of Trump’s deposition for a lawsuit filed by protesters that accused his security guards of assaulting them outside of Trump Tower in 2015.
AttorneyBenjamin Dictorquestioned Trump about comments he made to a crowd at one of his 2016 rallies in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“And you said that ‘if you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them, would you.’ That was your statement?” Dictor asked.
Trump confirmed he was speaking to the audience, “It was said sort of in jest. But maybe, you know, a little truth to it.”
Dictor asked if Trump had incentivized his supporters to engage in violence.
“No, I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit. And some fruit is a lot worse than — tomatoes are bad, by the way. But it’s very dangerous.”
“I wanted them to watch. They were on alert. I remember that specific event because everybody was on alert. They were going to hit —they were going to hit hard,” he added.
Trump said he never found out if people actually had tomatoes, but that no one threw them
