Donald Trump tried his best on Inauguration Day to come off as the kind of terrifying, bigoted monster who also sort of has his shit together sometimes, but dig beneath the orangey ophidian surface just a bit and you will see a man barely staying focused long enough to plagiarize a well-known super villain speech, whose tie was pieced together with scotch tape. In other words, not only is most of what Trump does just for show, he also has piss poor production value.
We have now learned that Trump continued to offer up Apprentice-season-four-quality optics at the “Salute to Our Troops” inaugural ball, where he served guests a spectacular nine-tiered cake made mostly of styrofoam. No one would have probably noticed if the design for the cake hadn’t also been ripped off without permission.
Early Saturday morning, Food Network personality and baker Duff Goldman, who made Obama’s inaugural cake four years ago, pointed out on Twitter that Trump (or someone on his team) had commissioned the exact same cake for his own inaugural festivities, but from someone else.
The Washington Post—surely our mendacious President’s next most-despised media outlet—investigated Goldman’s claim and managed to get an interview with Buttercream Bakeshop owner Tiffany MacIsaac, who admitted to making Trump’s cake on Saturday. MacIsaac told the Post that a client asked her “pretty last minute” to make a copy of Obama’s second inaugural cake for them. MacIsaac did not reveal who placed the order, but said they sent her a photograph to work off of.
MacIsaac also told the Post she was surprised her “cake” ended up getting so much attention because it was made almost entirely of styrofoam (only the bottom three inches of it were edible). Goldman’s cake, in contrast, was composed of nine differently-flavored layers of cake, because it was an actual cake.
In a happy turn of events, MacIsaac told the Post that she plans to donate proceeds from the cake to the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for equal treatment of LGBT people and has stated that Trump is not qualified to be President.
It’s too bad Obama’s cake wasn’t also made of styrofoam. It would have been so much easier to just dust off the old cake and hand it over to Trump and Pence to practice their swordsmanship on.