The Image That Defines Trump’s Reign of Terror Is … a Subway Sandwich?

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An unlikely folk hero has emerged in Washington this week. Sean Dunn, a blond 37-year-old in a pink button-down and New Balance sneakers, was captured on video Sunday night screaming at some of the federal agents who have begun patrolling the city on Donald Trump’s orders. “Fuck you, fascists!” he yelled. “Shame!”

After following the group across the street, he got right up in the face of a Customs and Border Protection agent and engaged in some vigorous taunting. Then, just as Dunn was turning to leave, he seemed to think better of it. He whipped back around, wound up, and threw his footlong Subway sub at the agent, hitting him square in the chest.

In the days since, as Dunn drew felony charges for assaulting a federal officer and was fired from his job at the Department of Justice, the video has been passed around on social media and group texts across the District of Columbia with unbridled glee. Dunn’s “assault with a deli weapon,” as one Redditor dubbed it, has been celebrated as evidence of the city’s indomitable spirit and as a rousing call to protest the incursion of the National Guard and federal law enforcement under the false pretense of a crime wave.

At a moment when many District residents are seething with rage at the occupying forces taking over their disenfranchised hometown, watching Dunn release his anger via hoagie felt like a gift. All current accounts point to a harmless expression of frustration: an absurd, desperate act of resistance for this absurd, desperate time—perpetrated by a DOJ employee, no less, who looked indistinguishable from all the other bros roaming the nightlife corridor where he staged his revolt.

It’s also a ripe metaphor for everything Trump is doing to D.C. right now. The armed agents chased after Dunn and arrested him not because the sandwich toss was dangerous but because it was defiant. Same with the president’s war on Democratic jurisdictions, which he is eager to subjugate with military force. Cloaked in bogus claims of lawlessness and widespread violence, it’s an effort to seize control from Black mayors, to force his anti-immigrant agenda on cities that have rejected it, and to punish Americans who didn’t vote for him.

There’s a reason you’re allowed to take a turkey club onto an airplane: Sandwiches are not recognized as weapons. Unless you’re allergic to the peanuts in a PB&J, they are utterly harmless portable meals, even when projectile. You can see this quite clearly in the video of the encounter. The sandwich bends in its wrapper under the force of the CBP agent’s bulletproof (and, evidently, sandwichproof) vest. A few bits of lettuce or other toppings fly out; the sandwich is injured. The agent barely even flinches.

Logic-bound minds understand that a hurled sandwich is not a danger. (If a police officer saw one civilian throw a sandwich at another on the street, what’s the likelihood they’d make an immediate arrest?) But by the warped reasoning of law enforcement institutions, any show of disrespect or disobedience is taken as a physical threat. It’s not about preventing actual harm—Dunn bolted away after throwing his sub, seemingly posing no further risk to the CBP agent. It’s about enforcing a punitive power hierarchy that places law enforcement comfort and authority above all else.

In a photo taken of Dunn’s arrest on Sunday night, at least 13 officers crowd around a street corner to apprehend him, a breathtaking show of force against a man who threw a piece of bread. The entire incident is rife with such ludicrous disproportionality. The video still of a submarine sandwich bouncing off a bulletproof vest will be an indelible image of this administration’s response to political opposition. It’s the modern-day version of a row of bayonets facing down an anti-war demonstrator with a chrysanthemum, with an added veneer of 2025 stupidity courtesy of Subway. (Subway did not return a request for comment.)

Dunn seems to recognize that his arrest was ridiculous, particularly amid the rampant citywide crime sprees that the Trump administration insists are afoot. According to the criminal complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, after the officers caught up with Dunn, he told one of them, “I did it. I threw a sandwich.” It begs to be read in a cheeky deadpan.

Until he gets milkshake ducked, Dunn and the fan art he’s inspired will stand in for all the other ways Trump and his agents are cracking down on dissent by claiming that it’s dangerous. There’s no crime emergency in D.C. or in any of the other cities the president is promising to target. His goal isn’t to bring justice to victims or make cities safer; it’s to abuse his perceived enemies and quash dissent.

That’s why those 13 officers weren’t off investigating a murder or carjacking on Sunday night. They were spending their taxpayer-funded time chasing down a man who’d already relinquished his only weapon, which was probably already soggy when he used it.

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