Trump is scared to death of this one thing and it’s giving us revenge fantasies

The art of poisoning has a subtle, fascinating, and very gay history. Sometimes discussed (erroneously) as a “woman’s method” of killing in the Victorian era, it’s long been a fear of despots that they’ll meet their end after digesting a particularly delicious steak or nightly glass of wine.

Donald Trump apparently fears that he’ll meet his grisly end by ingesting poisoned ketchup, as ex-Trump staffers recently confirmed.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, went on Kimmel last night to discuss—among other things—how often Trump would throw ketchup at the wall out of a fear of being poisoned.

“He likes to hear the ‘pop’,” Hutchinson said, by way of explaining why Trump prefers tiny bottles single-serv Heinz to the regular size.

Call me crazy, but it’s got me thinking…are there any artisan ketchup makers in the house? Can we find a way to infiltrate those tiny ketchup bottles? I’m just asking questions here!

But seriously, having a fear of being poisoned is kind of funny at this point. Trump seems to be living in his own little Borgia fantasy, little realizing that if someone wanted to kill him (outside of, you know, everyone in this country) there are less subtle ways to do it.

Related:

Gabrielle Union-Wade had the perfect response to Kevin McCarthy’s ousting

Forever our hero.

Poisoning also has a fascinating gay history: in Oscar Wilde’s 1889 essay “Pen, Pencil, and Poison,” he charts the artistic life of the forger and serial killer Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, a fascinating twink who used strychnine to end the lives of not only his sister-in-law and possibly his own uncle, but countless others according to Thomas de Quincey. Using a poison “nearly tasteless, difficult of discovery, and capable of almost infinite dilution,” he was able to get away with his crimes for years, until the law caught up with him in 1837, when he was carted off to the penal colonies in Australia.

“The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose,” Wilde wrote of Wainewright. To him, this murderous tinge actually enhanced the man’s artistic legacy.

Wainewright was only caught by mistake, according to Wilde’s account, after opening a window to discover the source of some commotion in the street. Before that, he was possibly poisoning victims for years, without anyone being the wiser.

So I guess what I’m asking is: where’s our modern Wainewright? Heinz ketchup factory workers, this is your moment to shine!