Trump Dumps An Entire Box Of Fish Food At A Koi Pond, But Only After The Japanese PM Does The Same

On Monday, President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Akasaka Palace in Tokyo for a fish-feeding photo op with journalists. Presented with wooden boxes and spoons with which to feed the koi carp in the palace’s large, decorative pond, a camera feed obtained and spread by ABC News, CNN and other American outlets appeared to show Trump tossing a few spoonfuls to the fish before growing impatient. Smiling at Abe, the American president then proceeded to dump the entire box into the pond before moving on.

CNN promptly ran with the footage in a post titled “Trump feeds fish, winds up pouring entire box of food into koi pond,” while others ran with less diplomatic headlines. Meanwhile, American journalists following the incident on Twitter shared the footage in question — which zoomed in on Trump just before and during the box-dumping episode — without fail.

https://twitter.com/christinawilkie/status/927392266406256641

The thing is, as the wider shot above obtained by the AFP news agency demonstrates, it wasn’t Trump’s apparent impatience that led to his dumping the entire box of fish food into the pond. Rather, it was Abe’s decision to forgo the spoonfuls and instead empty the box’s contents beforehand that encouraged the president to do the same. So despite how obviously hilarious Twitter’s many “President Salt Bae” jokes (and other similarly funny, albeit cruder lines) are, Trump only did what he did because his Japanese counterpart did it first. So much for “AMERICA FIRST.”