Documents obtained by the Daily Dot show that the US Secret Service was concerned former president Donald Trump would be hit with a milkshake during a visit to the United Kingdom in 2019.
Mr Trump’s UK visit came shortly after his political ally Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Indepdence Party (UKIP) had been targeted with a shake in Newcastle.
Mr Trump ultimatley escaped the UK without suffering an ice cream-based humiliation. But after Mr Farage was splattered in the northeast, documents show that the Secret Service was determined to be alert to what it considered a very real threat.
In 2019, the protest act of throwing milkshakes at far-right political leaders — a practise known as “milkshaking” — had gained popularity across the UK. In addition to the Five Guys milkshake that 32-year-old Paul Crowther threw at Mr Farage, far-right UK politicians Tommy Robinson and Carl Benjamin were repeatedly hit with milkshakes.
Mr Farage suggested Mr Crowther’s decision to throw a milkshake at him augured the end of “civilised democracy”.
The Secret Service, meanwhile, were on alert for any threat to the president’s safety. After Mr Farage was milkshaked, Secret Service officials shared articles about the possibility of a similar incident affecting Mr Trump.
“We’ll have to keep an eye on SplashThe[Fash],” one person wrote, referencing a hashtag associated with the milkshaking movement. “I’m sure it will get a lot of attention. I’ll pass it along to the person monitoring the trips. I personally would not waste a milkshake.”
Another Secret Service member wrote in a seperate email chain, “Social media searches for mentions of President Trump and milkshakes revealed numerous posts suggesting for milkshakes to be thrown at the President while in London.”
In the leadup to the trip, the Secret Service continued to monitor various social media platforms for milkshaking threats agianst Mr Trump.
The milkshaking phenomenon has since cooled, though milkshakes again made headlines during the US racial justice protests in the summer of 2020 when the New York Police Department (NYPD) claimed without evidence that employees at a Manhattan location of Shake Shack poured bleach into the milkshakes of three officers.
After an NYPD investigation showed “no criminality” on the part of Shake Shack, the location’s manager sued members of the NYPD, the city of New York, and the city’s police and detectives unions for alleged defamation and deprevation.
