If Joe Biden wants a Diet Coke while he’s working in the Oval Office, he will apparently have to get it himself.
As The Week reported, the new president appears to have removed a prominent feature in the working space for predecessor Donald Trump — a button that Trump reportedly had installed to have a Diet Coke brought to him whenever he pressed it. Reports indicated that Trump was a fan of the caffeinated drink, consuming several daily and even putting a little red button on his desk that would summon a butler to bring him the drink on a silver platter.
But pictures from Biden’s first full day in office showed that the button apparently disappeared as the outgoing president moved out of Washington, D.C., to his new permanent home in Florida. Once located directly next to Trump’s telephone, the button was now gone as the images showed.
President Biden has removed the Diet Coke button. When @ShippersUnbound and I interviewed Donald Trump in 2019, we became fascinated by what the little red button did. Eventually Trump pressed it, and a butler swiftly brought in a Diet Coke on a silver platter. It’s gone now. pic.twitter.com/rFzhPaHYjk
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) January 21, 2021
Previous reports indicated that he was a big fan of the beverage, drinking a large amount throughout the day. In 2017, the New York Times (via Slate ) published a story about his everyday life inside the White House, including not only his eating and drinking habits but also his love of television.
“Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted, marinating in the no-holds-barred wars of cable news and eager to fire back,” the report noted.
It added that Trump drank as many as 12 Diet Cokes each day while he worked and watched mostly cable news programs. As Slate reported, Trump would deny that he was engrossed with television, later telling reporters that the story was a fabrication and saying he actually spent the majority of his time reading.
“People with fake sources—you know, fake reporters, fake sources,” he said. “But I don’t get to watch much television, primarily because of documents. I’m reading documents a lot.”
Aside from apparently taking away the beverage button, Biden has made a number of changes from the previous administration — which includes a series of executive orders that have reversed or ended many of his predecessor’s more controversial policies. As CBS News reported, one of those included rejoining the Paris climate accord. He is expected to sign a number of others in the coming weeks and months, including revoking a measure put in place by Trump that banned military service by transgender Americans.
