What better allegory for Trump presidency than ketchup?

If you watched or read anything about Cassidy Hutchinson testimony to the Jan. 6 commission Tuesday, I suspect you had the same, sobering thought as I did: What is it with Republicans and ketchup?

Richard Nixon infamously loved ketchup on his cottage cheese; Ronald Reagan insisted ketchup was a vegetable; George W. Bush had his own W brand ketchup — and now we have this Hitchcockian image of post-apocalyptic, freshly hurled ketchup slowly dripping down White House walls onto shards of shattered porcelain. If you can picture this in black and white, all the better.

Ketchup. Is there a better allegory for the Trump presidency? Widely beloved and widely hated, it wants desperately above its station, to be accepted in places that it doesn’t belong, like hot dogs and scrambled eggs.

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Even as it relies on commoners for its popularity, it resents its common status, wanting to be more — a hollandaise, perhaps, or maybe a mornay. It wants to be praised like a bolognese, but it’s just ketchup, scorned  by liberal dijon, which dances in all the best vinaigrettes and laughs at lowly ketchup behind its back.

It deeply resents that it will never get what it wants, and reddens with rage as it sees the elite sauces gathering all the love, even as it knows that it’s not and will never be crème fleurette. Heck, it’s not even mayonnaise.

Those born before the advent of the squirt bottle might not know that ketchup was also maddening for its inability to flow smoothly from a glass vessel. You would thump on the bottom of the bottle with the palm of your hand for about five minutes with no result until something gave way and you wound up with a quart of fluid on a handful of fries.

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Ketchup, ketchup in a bottle,

First none will come out, then a lot’ll.

As a matter of fact, a highly valued skill in the 1970s was the ability to intuit when the ketchup dam was about to break and flip the bottle upright before the flood, after only the first dollop had hit the burger.

Ketchup was also more political than people knew. When Republicans worried that John Kerry, who was opposing George W. Bush in the 2004 election, might benefit from ketchup sales (it’s complicated and I can explain, but it’s a long story and not that interesting, so you’re better off just taking my word for it) they started a new brand of ketchup called W, which, surprisingly, managed to stay in business for 10 years.

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But Hutchinson left out a key detail that the J6 commission inexplicably failed to pursue: What was the ketchup on? Was the White House chef standing there in the door shouting, “Hey watch yourself Mac, them Quarter Pounders ain’t cheap.” If it was just meatloaf, a reported Trump fave, then OK. But I wonder if the truth wasn't so terrible that the public wouldn’t be able to handle it — like ketchup on a well-done steak.

That would kind of fit with this growing image we’re getting of the former president as America’s own King Richard III — “I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days.”

What Shakespeare couldn’t do with Trump as he sits brooding at Mar-a-Lago watching his own kin testifying against him. “Forsooth, I hardly knew that daughter.”

And, from Lady Cheney, the line I will remember forever, the line you never thought you would ever hear in connection with the American presidency: “Was this the only time you knew of the president to throw dishes?”

No, Hutchinson replied, citing a hail of flying crockery and tablecloths yanked in anger from beneath the setting, breaking an untold number of pieces of White House china. Sure. That’s just the way you would expect ketchup to behave.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Ketchup seems to feature prominently in the GOP