A protester featured Wednesday on CNN mocked the words of Donald Trump by referencing an infamous 2020 quote from the former president condemning demonstrators who were supposedly throwing soup at the police.
The protester in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, who identified himself as “Tiger,” told CNN’s Sara Sidner that he had been participating in the protests over the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright for the last four nights.
“I’ve been here all four nights, and I’m just standing here today with soup for my family and we’re just watching all this unfold,” the protester said, holding up a can of soup and winking at the camera. “It’s very unfortunate.”
Asked if he would throw the soup can at the police, the protester replied, “Like I said, it’s for my family.”
The protester was referencing a Trump speech from July 2020 that sparked a multitude of memes. At the time, Trump had met with leaders from the National Association of Police Organizations and lambasted “anarchists” who had weaponized soup against police officers.
“And they throw the cans of soup,” Trump said. “That’s better than a brick because you can’t throw a brick; it’s too heavy. But a can of soup, you can really put some power into that, right? And then when they get caught, they say, ‘No, this is soup for my family.’ And you have people coming over with bags of soup — big bags of soup. And they lay it on the ground, and the anarchists take it and they start throwing it at our cops, at our police.”
Trump added to this soup rhetoric in September by arguing that protesters in Democrat-run cities would throw tuna fish — specifically “Bumble Bee brand tuna” — at law enforcement.
At the time, the 45th president frequently stressed that cities such as Seattle, New York, Chicago and Portland, Oregon, were full of civil unrest largely due to Democratic leaders like Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who rejected Trump’s suggestion of sending in federal law enforcement to quell protests.
Images on social media showed items like bottles, cans of beans and beverages that Portland police said protesters had thrown at them after the police killing of George Floyd in May.
Watch a longer version of the “soup” interview here, courtesy of Mediate.