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The Trump team has again been hit by ‘plagiarism’ allegations with a celebrity pastry chef claiming that the spectacular nine-tier cake that the new president and Vice President Mike Pence cut into with a sword was a rip off of Barack Obama’s inauguration cake from 2013.
For pastry chef Duff Goldman, Trump’s inaugural cake seemed a little too familiar -- because it looked almost exactly like the one he had made years earlier for Obama’s second inauguration as president.
The Food Network personality posted a side-by-side comparison of two cakes on his Twitter account.
On the left, Goldman wrote in the caption, was the cake he had created for the ‘Commander-in-Chief’ inaugural ball in 2013.
The one on the right was the cake that had just appeared at Trump’s ‘Salute to Our Armed Services’ ball, the chef tweeted with the pictures of the two cakes.
It appeared nearly identical to Goldman’s cake from four years ago, right down to the colours, the patriotic bunting, and the placement of several small silver stars and seals.
“I didn’t make it,” Goldman wrote about Trump’s cake, adding a suspicious thinking-face emoji at the end.
Tiffany MacIsaac, owner of Washington’s Buttercream Bakeshop, stepped forward to say she had been the one to create the much-talked-about cake for Trump’s inauguration festivities.
She said the order came in while she was out of town, and that the client had brought in a photo of the cake from Obama’s inauguration asking her to re-create it.
“They came to us a couple of weeks ago, which is pretty last minute, and said ‘We have a photo that we would like to replicate’,” MacIsaac told The Washington Post.
Her bakery tried to encourage the client to use the photo as “inspiration”, as they do with many others, she said.
“They said, ‘Nope, they want this exact cake. It’s perfect.’ And we said, great,” MacIsaac said.
As is customary with many of her creations, MacIsaac posted a photo of the re-created cake on Instagram the day after the event.
“Obviously, my intention was definitely not to upset him in any way,” MacIsaac said of Goldman, whom she does not know personally.
“I just wish that it had not been presented the way that it was,” she said.
Goldman, who founded Charm City Cakes in Baltimore and Los Angeles, is known for his show stopping cake creations.
Later Saturday, Goldman posted to Twitter again, with an apparent change of heart.
“Remembering a fantastic cake I made is awesome and the chef that re-created it for @POTUS Trump did a fantastic job,” he tweeted. “Group hug, y’all.”
Allegations of plagiarism are not new in Trump’s nascent administration. US president’s spouse, Melania Trump, was accused of lifting a portion of her speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention from one Michelle Obama gave at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.