Former President Donald Trump said in a sworn deposition that he was worried about his critics throwing “dangerous” fruit at him during campaign events. Yes, really.

Insider reported on a deposition Trump gave in October over a lawsuit claiming he dispatched his security to deal with protesters outside of Trump Tower back in 2016. During the deposition, attorney Benjamin Dictor confronted Trump with past statements where he encouraged violence during his rallies.

One of the rallies that came up was the one where Trump told his audience to “knock the crap out” of any protesters who seemed like they were going to throw a tomato at him.

“I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees,” he said. Asked if that was his statement, Trump answered “Oh yeah. It was very dangerous.”

“What was very dangerous?” Dictor asked.

“We were threatened,” said Trump

“With what?” Dictor asked again.

“They were going to throw fruit,” said Trump. “We were threatened. We had a threat.”

…It got weirder, per Insider:

The lawyer followed up: “How did you become aware that there was a threat that people were going to throw fruit?”

Trump answered, “We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. But we were told. And you get hit with fruit, it’s — no, it’s very violent stuff. We were on alert for that.”

Here the lawyer clarified the record.

“A tomato is a fruit after all, I guess,” he asked the former president.

“And you know what–” Trump continued.

But he was quickly interrupted, the transcript shows. The lawyers held a brief side discussion on tomatoes. Were they fruit? Or vegetables?

“It has seeds,” offered attorney Jeffrey L. Goldman, there to represent Trump’s campaign, also a defendant in the lawsuit.

Trump broke in.

“It’s worse than tomato. It’s other things also,” he said, according to the transcript.

The report says Trump and Dictor kept going back and forth on how the former knew of some tomato-y threat from the crowd. Trump said his remarks were “sort of in jest. But maybe, you know, a little truth to it. It’s very dangerous stuff. You can get killed with those things.”

Dictor asked, “So you were trying to incentivize people to engage in violence?”

“Objection,” said the campaign’s lawyer.

Trump answered anyway.

“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.

“No,” the former president continued, “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.”

And here’s the part of the report where Trump reflected on what other kinds of fruit could’ve been a major threat to his rally.

“Well, a tomato, a pineapple, a lot of other things they throw,” he said. “Yeah, if the security saw that, I would say you have to — and it’s not just me, it’s other people in the audience get badly hurt. Yeah, I think that they have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening.

The post Trump Says Under Oath He’s Terrified ‘Dangerous’ Fruit Will Be Flung at Him first appeared on Mediaite.

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