DIETCOKE
Press the button
DIETCOKE
Press the button
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Midway through an Associated Press interview about his first hundred days, the president reached over and pressed a small red button on the Resolute Desk. No launch, no scrambling aides — a butler walked in with a Diet Coke on a silver tray. He had offered the reporter one first, without breaking off his answer.
Time ↗A Financial Times journalist sitting opposite the desk kept being drawn to the little red button on its wooden box, and eventually asked outright whether it was the nuclear one. It was not. Drinks were ordered instead, and the president observed that people do tend to get nervous whenever he reaches for it.
The Hill ↗A New York Times account of the president's daily routine described him watching cable news, talking to whoever was in the room, and using the button to summon lunch or another of the twelve Diet Cokes he was reported to get through each day. The figure has followed him ever since.
Reported by the NYT ↗In a memoir published in 2019, a former White House staffer described the button being pressed for effect in front of visitors, who would exchange looks and wait for something terrible to happen. Then a steward would come in with a glass of Diet Coke on a silver platter, and the president would laugh.
Deccan Herald ↗On the new administration's first full day, a British journalist who had interviewed Trump in 2019 posted a photograph of the desk covered in executive orders — and no wooden box. The button had been removed as part of the routine redecoration. For four years the desk summoned nothing.
Global News ↗Hours after the inauguration, aides gave the Wall Street Journal access to the redecorated Oval Office. The reporter found the button already reinstalled and, as she put it, ready to go. Asked about it that evening, the president pointed out he had only just arrived — his people had come in ahead of him.
The National Desk ↗Coca-Cola marked the occasion with a one-off commemorative bottle carrying the president's name, the White House and the date of the inauguration. A small number went to the White House and to inaugural events. None went on shelves.
Fox 7 Austin ↗The president's 19-year-old granddaughter posted a White House vlog to her 1.5 million YouTube subscribers, walking her audience through the Oval Office and stopping at the Resolute Desk to show the Diet Coke button. It confirmed for a new audience a detail that had been circulating online as rumour.
Irish Star ↗Photographed at the White House Correspondents' Dinner holding an outsized glass of Diet Coke — days after the health secretary had gone on a podcast to describe the president's diet in distinctly unflattering terms, singling out the soda by name. The glass did not appear to have been reduced in size.
Irish Star ↗