Emily Heil and Tim Carman

The Roman Emperor Vespasian might not be as well-known as his predecessors Nero and Caligula, but when he died in AD 79, he left behind a legacy that included stabilising the empire, beginning construction of the structure that would become known as the Colosseum – and being the first politician recorded to have been pelted with flying produce.

During a visit to Africa, Vespasian was hit by rioters with turnips, according to the Roman historian Suetonius. Suetonius didn’t note precisely what had angered the people or how the emperor reacted, but one thing is clear: They were onto something, and some 2 000 years later, the tradition of hurling food in political protest endures. Throughout the centuries, protesters have flung all manner of foods – eggs, pies, tomatoes, even fully composed sandwiches – at the targets of their ire.

The latest incident occurred two weeks ago, when a man turned his Subway sandwich into a projectile and tossed it at a federal law enforcement officer, who was on the streets one day before President Donald Trump announced he would take over DC police “to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” The man has now been fired from his Justice Department job, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, and is facing felony assault charges.

Trump has been clear about his concerns over fruits and vegetables flying in his direction. In a 2022 videotaped testimony, Trump said, “I think that [his guards] have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening,” according to a transcript in a lawsuit that accused Trump’s security detail of assaulting protesters who allegedly planned to toss foodstuffs at a 2015 campaign rally. “Because if that happens, you can be killed if that happens. … To stop somebody from throwing pineapples, tomatoes, bananas, stuff like that, yeah, it’s dangerous stuff.”

There are no prominent accounts of politicians being assassinated, or even maimed, by flying food. And pineapples? The bulky tropical treats would make terrible projectiles – and how many of them would one need to lug around, anyway, to ensure a successful attack? Bananas, too, are an unlikely missile.

On tomatoes, though, Trump does have a point. Just hours after the news of Trump’s fruit fears emerged in 2022, then-newly reelected French President Emmanuel Macron was pelted with a hail of cherry tomatoes when he appeared at an open-air market in a Parisian suburb. Macron, however, survived the onslaught, thanks in part to an umbrella someone nearby hoisted to shield him.

Here’s a rundown of foods that protesters have aimed at politicians and others:

Sandwiches

On Sunday, FBI agents were already on the ground in Washington, helping local law enforcement deal with crime, but Trump had not yet taken control of the city’s police force or sent in the National Guard. Still, the presence of federal officers on the U Street NW corridor was enough to allegedly set off Sean Charles Dunn, who according to a federal court filing yelled obscenities at Metro Transit Police and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. He allegedly called them fascists, too.

Then came the sandwich toss seen ’round the city: Dunn allegedly turned his Subway sandwich into an overhand fastball, aimed directly at an officer’s chest. He fled on foot, only to be arrested sometime later. Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, announced Wednesday that Dunn was being charged with felony assault. At a Thursday news briefing, Bondi said Dunn, a Justice Department employee, had been fired.

The charge drew immediate ridicule on a subreddit for D.C., where commenters suggested Pirro could have accused Dunn of “assault with a deli weapon” or “assault with a breadly weapon.” Dunn became an instant hero to some: His protest was quickly turned into graffiti art, ready to share on social media.

“The gyro we deserve,” noted one commenter.

Tomatoes

Rotten produce, particularly tomatoes, has historically been associated with theatrical performances more than political ones. (The popular movie-reviewing site Rotten Tomatoes plays on the trope.) A bon mot that is often attributed to playwright Oscar Wilde – that when a rotten cabbage fell at his feet onstage, he apocryphally addressed its sender, quipping “every time I smell it, I shall be reminded of you” – was perhaps inspired by an actual event from 1895. The angry father of Wilde’s lover arrived at a performance of his hit play “The Importance of Being Ernest” with a bouquet of vegetables he meant to throw, although he was turned away by police.

And an actor in a New York Times story from a dozen years earlier was described as being “demoralized by tomatoes” during a lackluster performance. It’s unlikely, however, that tomatoes were thrown at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, as is sometimes described, since tomatoes weren’t introduced in Europe until much later.

Plenty of politicians, too, have been targeted by tomatoes (which are technically a fruit, not a vegetable, something the lawyers in the Trump deposition actually discussed in a very enjoyable aside.) Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was spared from a splat during a book signing at the Mall of America when the man lobbing the fruit at her from a balcony in 2009 missed; in 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s motorcade in Egypt was hit.

And while Trump’s fear of lethal tomatoes (maybe he’s been watching too many B movies?) is overestimated, they can hurt – particularly if you’re whacked with a hard, unripe specimen. One of the rules of La Tomatina – the festival in Bunol, Spain, where participants sling tomatoes at one another in celebration – is that you smash the tomatoes before throwing them at another person, to lessen the impact (and maximize the squish?).

Eggs

Egging is a long-standing tradition, carried on by middle-schoolers and political activists alike. As with tomatoes, the rotten variety has more impact (i.e. stench). In 2022, a trucker convoy protesting outside the home of a Democratic state lawmaker in Oakland, California, was met with a volley of eggs, many tossed by kids annoyed by the intrusion of the big rigs.

The origins of the practice go back centuries. In the 1871 novel “Middlemarch,” a man’s ill-fated run for Parliament includes a scene in which a mocking crowd pelts his image – and him – with eggs. Over the years, prominent US politicians have taken shellings: Eggs were lobbed at Vice President Richard Nixon at several stops on his 1960 presidential campaign; Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) was similarly greeted on the presidential trail in 1980. President Bill Clinton took an incoming oeuf in 2001 during a trip to Poland. And California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger should probably win the title for most-agreeable target for his reaction to getting hit in the (considerable) shoulders during his 2003 campaign. He defended the egging as part of free speech and joked that the perpetrator “owes me bacon now.”

Pies

A pie to the face is a quintessential comedic stunt, and it’s all the more primally satisfying when the object is a person of importance. The visual gag was popularized in vaudeville and in silent movies, and on-screen pieing became a cinematic staple, with practitioners such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges.

Many a political mug has been mashed into a pie, some the work of collectives such as the Biotic Baking Brigade and Pie Kill, which targeted the rich and powerful with pastry. The pie-to-the face roll call includes San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, New York Mayor Abraham Beame, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-New York), Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and Watergate plumber G. Gordon Liddy. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates too was a victim of a pie protest in Brussels.

A 2004 book by the Biotic Baking Brigade called “Pie Any Means Necessary” offered practical advice for aspiring piers (selecting the right variety, aim and the like) as well as history and ruminations on the deeper meanings behind the prank, which it deemed a “creative tool in the toolbox of resistance.”

“Pie-throwing utilizes carnival humor,” according to an essay in the book, “unsettling the authority and control that those in power try to project.”

Milkshakes

“Milkshaking” is a relatively more recent innovation. That could be because the milkshake itself has a shorter history than other commonly employed protest foods. It became a phenomenon employed against right-wing figures in the United Kingdom as Britain considered leaving the European Union.

One protester tossed a banana-and-salted-caramel milkshake at Brexit leader Nigel Farage. Other targets included anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, and anti-feminist political commentator Carl Benjamin, who was hit by a creamy treat on at least four occasions.

A point against the practice is the cost, relative to, say, the moldy, leftover contents of one’s produce drawer. But it has the advantage of being visually appealing – the sight of a suit-wearing stiff coated in sticky, drippy dairy is quite photogenic. And as The Washington Post reported at the time, “attackers sipping shakes are far less conspicuous than bystanders clutching eggs.”

Spaghetti

The tossing of ribbons of pasta is more specific to a part of the world that’s very much in the news now. In Russia and Ukraine, the expressions “hang noodles over your ears” reportedly is akin to “pulling one’s leg” or deceiving them. In the midst of the 2014 Ukrainian crisis, in which the country’s pro-Kremlin president was ousted, protesters threw piles of spaghetti at the Russian consulate in Odesa, essentially accusing the Russian media of inaccurate coverage.  |  The Washington Post

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