Donald Trump is a man of many, shall we say ... “peculiar” concerns. From stairs to windmills to toilets to going out like Stan Chera, the former president’s laundry list of worries is as varied as it is, uh, improbable. And yet. And yet. Sometimes, like a clock that’s not only broken but whose intricate gears and springs have been replaced with cheese wheels and twizzlers, the man still manages to be hilariously, improbably correct on occasion.
It’s rare, but it does happen. And it did happen recently, according to a newly released deposition transcript, conducted this past October, in which Trump raises the extremely reasonable fear that he might get clocked in his gigantic noggin by a pineapple.
Now, I should mention that former president’s specific concern over getting sniped by a special ops fruit-flinger came as part of a larger, less plausible fear about getting hit with “very dangerous” fruit in general during his 2016 campaign: stuff like “tomatoes” and “bananas,” which, he claimed, “you can be killed if that happens.” And, okay, look, I think we can all agree that getting walloped by a tomato or banana would suck, and probably ruin your day and your suit, but it’s not going to actually kill you unless the banana somehow lands in your mouth and then you accidentally swallow it and it blocks your air passage and you choke to death while everyone around you laughs and laughs and laughs at how ridiculous this whole scenario is. (Same goes for the tomato, but it’s gotta be either a small-ish tomato or an enormous mouth.)
But, a pineapple? In this very specific instance of theoretical assault by a deadly drink garnish, the man has a point. Pineapples are heavy and they are spiky and if you got clocked in the face with one hurled at you with maximum velocity, it would absolutely fucking hurt. A lot. You’d get all scratched up from the little spiky stuff on the outside rind, plus whatever blunt force trauma from the sheer oomph of being smashed in the punim by something that can weigh up to 10 pounds.
I don’t have a picture of Donald Trump with a pineapple, so here’s a recent Instagram post by domestic diva Martha Stewart instead, just to give you a sense of the face-to-fruit ratio we’re talking about here:
In any case, the October deposition is part of a lawsuit brought by a group of protesters who claim the former president directed his security staff to rough them up at a rally outside Trump Tower in 2015. As the transcript shows, Trump has sworn, under oath, that he did no such thing. Of course, when you live your life under threat of serious pineapple assault, who can say to what lengths you’d go to protect yourself?
