Important Investigative Journalism: Embarrassing President Donald Trump May Be Innocent in Koi-Gate
Photo via Twitter videoI am not a Donald Trump fan, but here at Paste, we are committed to truth. That’s why, when we saw the story about our embarrassing president overfeeding koi fish in an appearance with Shinzo Abe, we refused to just take it at face value—even though Trump blundering his oafish way through a foreign appearance fits in neatly with our perception of him.
Here’s the tweet I saw last night:
Per pool, Trump & Abe were each feeding koi in a pond spoonfuls of fish food. Then this happened: https://t.co/1eI8IbA8hc
— Julie Davis (@juliehdavis) November 6, 2017
And the picture, for context:
— Alex Pfeiffer (@PfeifferDC) November 6, 2017
On the surface, it appears that Trump, while feeding koi with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, chose not to parcel out his fish food in graceful spoonfuls, but instead just dumped it all at once—like a lumbering idiot.
We wanted nothing more than to seize this story and run with it, because casting Trump as the ugly American is almost always a winning bet. But then video emerged:
Here’s video of the koi pond feeding, for those curious (via @NBCNews) pic.twitter.com/VKQt9VHO55
— Axios (@axios) November 6, 2017
As you see, Trump appears to be emulating Abe. He spoon-feeds when Abe spoon-feeds, and dumps when Abe dumps. He did his best, we think.
So there you have it: Trump overfeeding koi? Fake news. Sort of. If you want your dose of Tacky Trump, though, there’s always this:
Pres. Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinz? Abe bond over golf—and “Make Alliance Even Greater” hats. https://t.co/QsY2aiQA7Kpic.twitter.com/wFrHLVM71L
— ABC News (@ABC) November 5, 2017
And as usual, Vic Berger had the best possible truther take on the scene:
PROOF that Trump dumped his entire box of fish food at once into the koi pond and Abe didn’t. This is beyond disgusting. pic.twitter.com/AWDYd8cHKS
— Vic Berger IV (@VicBergerIV) November 6, 2017