Lincoln's last turd
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Lincoln's last turd refers to a purported piece of human waste attributed by a closed Pennsylvania museum of 1800s circus-freak-show artifacts to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, on the theory that Lincoln defecated in the Ford's Theatre men's room on the evening of April 14, 1865, immediately before he was shot. The artifact was auctioned for $5,000 following the museum's liquidation and later proved by DNA analysis to be of more recent origin. John Kiriakou is publicly associated with the artifact as a failed bidder; his telling of the story on the Julian Dorey Podcast in early 2025 (episodes 278 and 279) is the anecdote that, recirculated in early 2026, made him an internet meme figure.

The museum

The artifact was displayed in a shadow box, mounted on a wall, in a museum of 1800s circus-freak-show items. In his original telling Kiriakou places the museum in Baltimore and dates his visit to the summer of 2009, when he had his sons with him for the season; he describes a run-down, dirty building that smelled of the owner's cat, its collection running to a mummified nine-foot woman billed as "the Amazon" and a jackalope. Roughly six months later he read in the Washington Post that it was closing.

Kiriakou's tellings disagree about where the museum stood and when it closed. The account above puts it in Baltimore and the auction shortly after mid-2010; a later telling places the museum in Pennsylvania and its closure around mid-2024. The discrepancy is unresolved between his own two versions and is recorded here rather than reconciled. The accompanying card read:

> When he arrived at Ford's Theatre he had to drop a deuce. So before he got seated he went to the men's room and he dropped a deuce in the chamber pot, and then he went back to watch the play, and he got shot. So he had the presence of mind for the sickness.

The auction

Approximately six months before the auction, Kiriakou, a collector of Lincoln material, read in the Washington Post that the museum was closing and would liquidate its collection. He told his wife of his intention to bid. "My wife and I actually have strong disagreements about this."

Kiriakou bid up to $1,200 at the auction. The artifact ultimately sold for $5,000 to a different buyer.

His wife's objection, in the original telling, was not squeamishness but connoisseurship: she argued the artifact had no provenance, that its presence in a sideshow museum established nothing, and Kiriakou's reply was "I know what provenance is." He describes the object itself as air-dried and pinned into its shadow box, with a kernel of rice protruding from it, which he took as corroboration, Lincoln having eaten chicken and rice as his last meal: "I could plant the rice in there if I wanted to." The Washington Post sent Joby Warrick to cover the sale, which the paper reported as having drawn "spirited bidding", Warrick had been one of the first reporters to interview Kiriakou, in 2007, and the two knew each other well enough that Kiriakou's reaction on reading the byline was "Joby, we can't be bidding against each other."

DNA analysis

The successful buyer subsequently submitted the artifact to a laboratory for DNA analysis. The analysis identified microscopic fragments of a NECCO wafer in the sample. NECCO wafers were not commercially manufactured until 1880, fifteen years after Lincoln's assassination, ruling out a presidential provenance. "That is one of my better stories."

In a separate telling, Kiriakou describes the sale as an eBay auction rather than an in-person one, and gives the confectionery detail slightly differently: the buyer's DNA test found candy ingredients Kiriakou identifies as "Necco" wafers, an item he says was manufactured in Pittsburgh and not produced until 1868, still after Lincoln's 1865 death, and still proof the artifact was a fake.

Cultural afterlife

The anecdote was originally told by Kiriakou on The Julian Dorey Podcast episodes 278 and 279, recorded approximately a year before its viral resurfacing. By early 2026 a clip in which Kiriakou recounts the story, "yeah, I was trying to buy Lincoln's last turd", had achieved approximately 15 million views. Black Twitter audiences in particular adopted Kiriakou as a recurring subject. "Yo, this John crazy. Yo, this shit out here just saying straight cat, but it's real."

The Lincoln's-last-turd anecdote is, alongside Kiriakou's commentary on rectal feeding with hummus, one of the two stories most responsible for his current public identity as an internet meme figure.

Conan O'Brien, fellow Lincoln collector

Kiriakou says comedian Conan O'Brien is a major Lincoln memorabilia collector, regularly outbidding others at auction. His first big-ticket purchase, per Kiriakou, was a presidential pardon Lincoln had issued to a deserter, Lincoln reportedly stayed up at night by candlelight pardoning deserters on the theory that no man should lose his life for cowardice, and such pardons now generally sell for between $12,000 and $20,000. O'Brien keeps his framed and hanging in his bedroom, telling an interviewer he wanted it to be the first thing he saw every morning because of how much he loved and respected Lincoln.

Kiriakou's own verdict on the outcome was that losing had been a mercy, "I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't get it", a sentiment Dorey rendered as Darwinism operating on whoever had paid $5,000 for an anonymous stranger's excrement.

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Abraham Lincoln collection
- Hummus
