Donald Trump Eating / Flushing Classified Documents Rumor

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Overview

Donald Trump Eating / Flushing Classified Documents Rumor refers to claims that former President Donald Trump illegally disposed of Presidential records in a variety of ways, reportedly including eating them and flushing them down the toilet. The claims have come from numerous sources, though Trump denies the rumors. After the rumors began circulating in mid-February 2022, Twitter users joked about Trump's supposed methods of disposing of classified information in various memes and reactions.

Background

In 2018, former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman wrote in her book Unhinged that she once saw former President Trump eating a piece of paper, where she wrote that she assumed the paper contained "sensitive information." The claim was laughed off by White House officials at the time.^[2]

On February 7th, 2022, The Washington Post^[1] reported that the National Archives had to travel to Trump's Florida Mar-a-Lago to retrieve Presidential records Trump had wrongfully removed from the White House. These included correspondence between Trump and Kim Jong-Un, and it's unclear what other records were stashed there.

On February 9th, Axios^[3] reported that in New York Times political columnist Maggie Haberman's upcoming book about the Trump administration, Confidence Man, she described that White House staff had found crumpled up pieces of paper in White House toilets and that they believed Trump had put them there.

Developments

After the report about Haberman's book was published, Omarosa repeated her claim that she saw Trump eat a piece of paper on MSNBC.^[4] Trump denied he flushed evidence down the toilet.^[6] The rumors about Trump eating and flushing classified documents led to much discussion on social media in early February 2022. For example, user @ItsJeffTiedrich^[5] posted, "hard to believe, I know, but somehow against all odds I've manged to go my entire life without needing to hide, eat or destroy evidence. not even one time. I suspect I'm not alone here," gaining over 1,800 retweets and 18,000 likes (shown below, left). Congressman Eric Swalwell^[6] joked, "My diet includes a lot of things I should cut out. Maple bars. Midnight spoonfuls of peanut butter. Cookie dough. But you know what it doesn’t include? Classified documents," gaining over 6,900 retweets and 53,000 likes (shown below, right).

Memes about the rumors were created on Reddit in early February 2022 as well. For example, Redditor shamwowj posted a meme about the rumor in /r/PoliticalHumor,^[7] gaining over 3,600 points (shown below, left). User PhilDesenex posted a meme featuring a gold toilet in reference to the rumor, gaining over 220 points (shown below, right).