Donald Trump Throwing Ketchup

Submission 13,822

Part of a series on Donald Trump. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Donald Trump Throwing Ketchup refers to an alleged incident detailed in Cassidy Hutchinson’s June 28th, 2022, testimony to the January 6th Committee, in which former President Donald Trump purportedly threw a plate against the wall in the White House after watching a news segment on TV that angered him. The segment featured his recently-resigned Attorney General Bill Barr telling the press there was no evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The broken plate led to a ketchup smear which Hutchinson stated she helped the White House valet clean up. Following her testimony, the alleged event went viral online, seeing references in memes mostly poking fun at Trump for his behavior.

Background

The January 6th Committee in the summer of 2022 held a series of hearings investigating former President Donald Trump’s role in the alleged instigation of the riot at the U.S. Capitol and what the Committee called an attempted coup against the United States Congress on January 6th, 2021.^[2] On June 28th, 2022, the Committee heard testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, executive assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House Chief of Staff.^[3] During her testimony (seen below) Hutchinson shared that she observed a ketchup smear on the wall from a plate Trump had purportedly thrown out of rage while watching television, and helped the White House valet clean it up.^[4]

Trump immediately denied the incident ever happened in posts to his own social media platform, Truth Social. One post of Trump's (seen below) earned over 30,000 likes in the course of a day.^[5]

Online Reactions

Shortly after the news, a variety of pundits and commentators joked about Trump's alleged behavior and the ketchup on the wall, with some finding the incident hilarious. A tweet joking about Trump's ketchup incident, from user @JoJoFromJerz, was posted on June 29th, 2022, and received over 25,000 likes in five hours.^[6]

On June 29th, another tweet by comedian Jon Stewart in which he commented on the story earned over 19,000 likes in two hours (seen below).^[1]

Others asked social media users to focus on the more legally troubling aspects of Hutchinson's testimony — such as her claim that Trump, when informed that the crowd assembled at the Ellipse was heavily armed, allegedly asked for metal detectors to be removed and encouraged them to go to the U.S. Capitol. For example, on June 28th, a tweet from Twitter user @donwinslow made such an argument and received over 34,000 likes in less than two hours (seen below).^[7]