Donald Trump’s eating habits are well known. He loves well-done steaks with ketchup; he presses a red button in the Oval Office when he wants a butler to bring in Coke; when he launched missiles on Syria, he told the Chinese president over “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen.”
Now an upcoming book by Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and ex-top aide David Bossie, Let Trump Be Trump, reveals just how much fast food the president-to-be ate during his campaign.
As Trump strutted his stuff in his signature campaign rallies across the country, his team was hard at work ensuring that fast food arrived at his plane at the perfect time for his departure, according to an advance copy of the book obtained by The Washington Post (paywall). “The orchestrating and timing of Mr. Trump’s meals was as important as any other aspect of his march to the presidency,” the authors write, according to the Post.
The meals themselves were reportedly of heroic proportions. One McDonald’s chow-down involved “two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted.” McDonald’s was apparently just one of the “four major food groups” on “Trump Force One”; the remaining three were pizza, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Diet Coke.
To supplement these, the plane was stocked with potato chips, pretzels, Vienna Fingers, and Oreos. There were many packets of the latter because “Trump, a renowned germaphobe, would not eat from a previously opened package,” the Post reports.
A letter from Trump’s personal doctor released in Sept. 2016 revealed (paywall) he is nearly obese, but said overall he is in “excellent physical health.” In a television interview on “The Dr. Oz Show” at the time, Trump said that he wanted to lose 15 to 20 pounds, but his lifestyle means he struggles to lose weight. “When you’re running for president, I think you have an obligation to be healthy. I just don’t think you can do the work if you’re not healthy. I don’t think you can represent the country properly if you’re not a healthy person,” said Trump, who is 71.
The Washington Post report highlights a number of other unusual details from Lewandowski and Bossie’s new book. Trump reportedly had Hope Hicks, his then-press secretary and current communications chief, steam his suits while he wore them, insisting that she bring a steamer wherever they traveled. He would shout, “‘Get the machine!’” the authors write, according to the Post. “And Hope would take out the steamer and start steaming Mr. Trump’s suit, while he was wearing it! She’d steam the jacket first and then sit in a chair in front of him and steam his pants.”
