The Weirdest Things Donald Trump Has Been Caught Eating

Donald Trump may be a risk-taker in many ways, but not when it comes to his food choices. In fact, his eating preferences somewhat resemble those of a fairly picky kindergartner. What his menu lacks in variety or quality, it makes up for in quantity — at his 2019 medical exam, Politico relates that Trump, weighing in at 243 pounds at a height of 6 foot 3 inches, technically crossed the threshold into obesity.

Former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson spoke with The New York Times about his time as Trump's doctor. He said he'd tried to help the president lose a little weight, about 10 or 15 pounds, but had ultimately failed to achieve this goal. What was interesting, though, were the techniques he used: trying to "mak[e] the ice cream less accessible" and "putting cauliflower into the mashed potatoes." Ha! How many parents of fussy toddlers have tried that trick? So, obviously Trump's no fan of veggies, while he and his opposite number Joe Biden seem to share a passion for high-calorie frozen treats. (And yet Biden stays so slim! How fair is that?)

Despite being no fan of exotic eats, our POTUS does have a few food habits that most would find a bit odd. We're pleased to present, for your consideration (as narrator Rod Serling once introduced an episode of the Twilight Zone), the following list of interesting Trump meals.

Trump likes pizza — there's nothing strange about that. In fact, what kind of weirdo doesn't eat pizza? It's the way he eats his pizza that tends towards the bizarre. For one thing, according to a video Trump released (via HuffPost), his preferred method involves eating it with a knife and fork. He says eating it this way is "very comfortable," and also says it allows him to remove the top of the pizza so he can just eat sauce, cheese, and toppings. The way he puts it, he does this for health reasons, saying, "I like to not eat the crust so we can keep the weight down at least as good as possible." Well, every little bit counts.

What makes this habit of his even odder, though, is the fact that in his long-ago pre-presidential days he was the first spokesperson for Pizza Hut's newly-introduced stuffed crust pizza along with his first wife, Ivana (via YouTube). So did he actually enjoy crust back in the day? 

One thing about Trump that really makes the foodies freak out is the way he eats his steak. It really burns their bavettes the way he asks for his steaks well-done — as his long-time Mar-a-Lago butler told The New York Times, a Trump-approved steak "would rock on the plate, it was so well done." Quelle horreur! Most chefs say you should never order a steak cooked anything above a medium 135 degrees (well-done isn't done until it hits 155). Well-done steaks tend to be dry, tough, and lacking in flavor.

Just as well in the case of Trump's steaks, really. Any subtle nuances of flavor would be lost on his plate, drowned beneath his steak condiment of choice. No, not A-1 or even Heinz 57. A waiter at the Trump International Hotel's steakhouse BLT Prime described a typical Trump order (via Town & Country): "The President ordered a well-done steak. An aged New York strip. He ate it with catsup as he always does." Wow, really? Might as well be a Dollar Tree ribeye under all that gunk instead of a badly-used $55 cut of meat. Still, Trump's server must have managed to serve that dubious meal with a straight face, as he did pocket a nice $100 tip.

Even when Trump travels abroad, he manages not to delve too deeply into local cuisine, instead preferring to eat his typical meal of steak. Washingtonian lists 10 different countries around the world where Trump has been served some variant on steak: the UK, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, France, Singapore, Argentina, and Vietnam.

Only a few of these dishes ventured into anything slightly exotic — in Israel he ate beef tenderloin with foie gras and red curry (Israeli celebrity chef Moshe Segev said Trump's meat was cooked "like a rock!"), in the Philippines he had tenderloin marinated in soy-calamansi, in France he had filet of beef with foie brioche, soufflé potato, and truffle sauce, and in Argentina, he ate grilled sirloin with red onions, goat ricotta, and dates. Ok, so it's not exactly balut — heck, it's not even sushi. But we're talking about Trump here, and taking a "polite bite" of goat cheese ricotta is about as adventurous as he is willing to get.

Trump is also a big burger fan. What is a little weird is the way he orders his burger at the 21 Club, a restaurant at which Bloomberg says he has a regular table. The restaurant is famous for its "21" Burger, which is said to have been the nation's first gourmet hamburger when it was introduced back in the 1940s. The burger comes with not only the typical pickles and tomato offered by any fast-food joint, but also grilled onions (a cut above raw ones), a special "21" sauce (made of ketchup and Colman's mustard, according to Medium), and a choice of cheeses including blue and cheddar. You can, of course, get these burgers cooked to order, as well, instead of fresh from the warming tray as is customary further down the food chain. So how does Trump order his burger? Cooked to a crisp, of course, and topped with that most mundane of cheeses, American, so as to better approximate a non-gourmet, fast-food burger.

In fact, Politico reveals that Trump even tried to have the White House replicate the McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Somehow, the trained chefs' version did not live up to Trump's expectations, so one of his bodyguards had to make a Mickey D's run to satisfy that particular presidential craving.

A 2019 tweet from Motoko Rich, The New York Times Tokyo bureau chief, revealed the menu for the imperial banquet Trump attended in May of that year. In addition to steak, the president was also served consomme, sole meunière, salad, and fruit, but the pièce de résistance was "ice cream in the Mt. Fuji shape." Sadly, there were no pictures, as we'd have dearly loved to see this ice cream mountain.

One Twitter user, incredulous, responded "Are you... serious?" Another one — a doctor, no less — wrote, "I know someone who will want two Mt. Fuji's..." It would seem that there's one physician, at least, who sees the futility in trying to hide the ice cream from our POTUS.

There's nothing unusual about drinking Diet Coke, not even on a daily basis, although it may not be as healthy as you'd hope. What is a bit over the top, though, is drinking a dozen Diet Cokes each and every day, which The New York Times says is a Trump habit. While it's commendable that Trump drinks no alcohol, and according to a Q&A he did for Us Weekly, he also avoids coffee and tea, still, 12 Diet Cokes is a whole lot of artificial sweetener, and that can't be good.

One fun fact about Trump's Diet Cokes is the way he gets them. According to Time, in the Oval Office there is a box with a little red button sitting right on the desk, Instead of launching nuclear missiles, however, pushing this red button summons... a butler bearing a Diet Coke for the president. That has to be the most dramatic soft drink delivery ever.

So Trump likes McDonald's food. So what? So do billions and billions of other burger eaters, if the signs are to be believed. It's just that his go-to order is somewhat excessive. According to Let Trump Be Trump by former campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, Trump would always order "two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted" (via Quartz).

Each Big Mac has 550 calories, according to McDonald's nutrition calculator, while Filet-O-Fish have 380 calories apiece. McDonald's has no "malteds," but that's just Trump-speak for a shake. A large chocolate one (Trump seems like a "supersize me" kind of guy) comes in at 840 calories. It all adds up to 2,700 calories, well over a full day's worth of calories for a man of his age, size and level of activity (the Mayo Clinic calorie calculator says he'd need just 2050 calories to maintain his weight; less than that if he would like to drop a few pounds).

As Lewandowski and Bossie, reveal, though, "he never ate the bread," which subtracts a total of 720 calories. Considered alongside the fact that this mammoth meal would often be his only one of the day — well, he's not doing so bad, after all. A bit quirky, perhaps, to get all your daily calories from one late-night drive-thru run, but hey, Donald does Donald.