About

Donald Trump Feeding Koi Fish refers to viral photographs and video of the 45th President of the United States Donald Trump dumping fish food into a koi pond during his visit with Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe in Japan. After many accused Trump of impatiently discarding the food, others pointed out that video footage revealed Abe had tossed the contents of his food box first.

Origin

On November 5th, 2017, The Daily Caller White House correspondent Alex Pfeiffer tweeted a photograph of President Donald Trump dumping the contents of a box of fish food into a koi pond while meeting with Abe.^[1]

Spread

That evening, many accused Trump of impatiently throwing the food into the pond, instead of carefully spooning it out (shown below).

Shortly after, CNN reporter Veronica Rocha tweeted a clip showing Trump throwing the fish food into the pond, along with the message "President Trump feeds fish with PM Shinzo Abe in Japan, then pours the entire box of food into the koi pond" (shown below). Hours laters, CNN published an article by Rocha titled "Trump feeds fish, winds up pouring entire box of food into koi pond."^[4]

The following day, The Guardian posted a video featuring a wider shot of the two men, clearly showing Shinzō Abe dumping the remaining contents of his food box first (shown below). That day, the video hit the #13 trending spot on YouTube. Meanwhile, the news site Mediaite^[2] published an article titled "Fact Check: Twitter Lost it Over Trump’s Fish Feed -- But Japan’s PM Dumped Food First." Foxnews accused the anti-Trump media of making up a fake news story of overfeeding the koi fish with accusations of bias.^[5] The South China Morning Post accused both leaders equally of being short on patience and of indeed overfeeding the Koi fish.^[6]

Also on November 6th, Redditor TotalPerspective submitted a photograph of Trump dumping the fish food into the koi pond to /r/photoshopbattles.^[3] Within 14 hours, the post gained over 1,500 points (90% upvoted) and 80 comments, many of which featured edited versions of the image (shown below).

Search Interest

External References