The White House has brought back the famous Diet Coke button so that President Trump can order his drink of choice easily from the Oval Office.
The red button, which is hidden in a wooden box and was used by Trump during his first term, was again spotted on the Resolute Desk after he was sworn in as the 47th president Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Oval Office, where presidents meet with foreign heads of state, congressional leaders and deliver the presidential address, is an area of the White House often personalized to reflect the values and goals of the incoming commander in chief.
‘We’re going to be going over to the beautiful Oval Office, one of the great offices in history, even if it wasn’t beautiful, it’s the Oval Office, but it is beautiful, and we love the Oval Office,’ Trump said at the Capitol One Arena on Monday following the inauguration ceremony at the Capitol. ‘Wars start and then there. Everything starts and ends at the Oval Office.’ Trump has a well-known affinity for Diet Coke and has repeatedly shared that he does not drink alcohol given his brother, Fred Trump Jr., died from complications of alcoholism in the early 1980s. On Monday, the Journal noted that a portrait of George Washington was now hanging over the fireplace in the Oval Office, and portraits of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were on each side.
Biden had removed military flags for each service branch from the Oval Office four years ago, and Trump’s team had them reinstated there on Monday.
When he was sworn in as president in 2021, Biden had a bust of Winston Churchill removed from the Oval Office. Churchill’s bust was returned on Monday and spotted in the same place it was four years ago on a table near the fireplace.
Trump and Biden both displayed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Oval Office, and it remained there Monday at the start of Trump’s second term, according to the Journal.
The Oval Office also has new silver eagle figures on the fireplace mantel as of Monday.
Like he had during his first term, Trump again has a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. The one from four years ago was on loan from the U.S. Naval Academy, while the one added on Monday is from the White House art collection, the Journal reported, citing a White House aide. Trump has resonated with Jackson, whose populist, anti-establishment movement landed him in the White House despite critics of the time.
Trump kept Biden’s addition of a Benjamin Franklin portrait, which the Democrat initially chose to represent a focus on science.
