During the election campaign in 2016, Donald Trump was afraid that hostile demonstrators would throw “very dangerous” fruits such as “pineapples, tomatoes, bananas” likely to “kill”, the former American president declared under oath before the justice of New York according to a court document.
The Republican billionaire, the target of several legal proceedings in the United States, testified under oath on October 18 before lawyers by videoconference in New York under the aegis of the Supreme Court of the State.
This testimony, known for six months, is part of a civil complaint by demonstrators of Mexican origin who accuse Mr. Trump’s bodyguards of having assaulted them in September 2015, during a demonstration in Manhattan, when he was a candidate for the Republican primaries the following year.
The New York justice made public on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday the transcription of more than four hours of testimony, which the Daily Beast media was the first to echo.
According to the nearly 200-page document, Mr. Trump is being questioned by plaintiffs’ attorneys about a February 2016 campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he told his supporters, “If you see someone ready to throw a tomato, smash his face, you will”.
Asked whether it was “incitement to violence”, the 45th President of the United States justified himself by advocating self-defense, even if it meant using physical violence “to prevent someone from throwing pineapples, tomatoes, bananas, stuff like that, yes, it’s dangerous”.
“A tomato, a pineapple and a lot of other things thrown, if security saw that (…) and others in the crowd could be badly hit, I think they had to be aggressive to avoid let it happen, because if it did, you could be killed, ”continued Donald Trump.
“It’s a very dangerous thing. You can be killed by these things”, he insisted in an exchange with the defense of the plaintiffs.
On September 3, 2015, three months after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican primaries, several people of Mexican descent protested outside Trump Tower in Manhattan and claim they were beaten by bodyguards of the man in charge. ‘business.
At the time, the plaintiffs were furious with Donald Trump, who accused Mexicans of exporting “drugs” and “crime” to the United States and of being “rapists”.
The former president, also sued in civil and criminal cases in New York on suspicion of “fraudulent” tax practices by his group Trump Organization, had called this complaint by protesters in 2015 a “ridiculous story”.