Trump settles lawsuit that revealed his fear of killer tomatoes

Mr Trump said he had been ‘threatened’ by protesters who ‘were going to throw fruit’

Former president Donald Trump has quietly settled a lawsuit against him by protesters who were allegedly beaten by his private security staff in the days after he announced his first presidential campaign in 2016.

Attorneys for both Mr Trump and the protesters told NBC News that the case had been settled just as a jury was being selected for trial in a Brooklyn courtroom.

The lawyer who represented the protesters, Benjamin Dictor, said the settlement represented “an incredible day” for his clients, who he described as “lifelong activists in the community … who stood up to defend the right to speech on the public sidewalk and have litigated for seven years”.

“Today, the matter was resolved on terms that they are very, very happy with," he added.

Mr Dictor had previously elicited testimony from Mr Trump in a pre-trial deposition which revealed the twice-impeached ex-president feared that he could be killed by flying fruit if protesters were to fling such foodstuffs at him.

According to a transcript of the deposition, when Mr Dictor asked about his exhortation to attendees at a February 2016 campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to “knock the crap” out of anyone they might see preparing to throw a tomato,” the ex-president replied that he had been “threatened” by protesters who “were going to throw fruit”.

“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,” he recalled.

Mr Trump told the attorney that his remark telling the crowd to “knock the crap out of” would-be fruit-slingers “was said sort of in jest”.

Asked if he was trying to “incentivise people to engage in violence,” the ex-president replied in the negative.

“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,” he said.

He also told the attorneys that his concern was not limited to tomatoes, but also included potentially thrown pineapples and “a lot of other things”.

“Yeah, I think that they have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening. Because if that happens, you can be killed if that happens,” he said.