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Alex Wong / Getty Images
President Trump appears in the Oval Office with the owner and members of Washington Capitals in 2019. The wooden box with the red button on the desk in the center of the image is there for the president to order a coke.
For four years there was a red button in a small wooden box on President Trump’s desk, right next to a group of telephones.
But contrary to populist belief, it was not to order a nuclear strike. No. It was to order a Diet Coke.
This was confirmed by several journalists over the years, including political correspondent Tom Newton Dunn of Radio times, who said on Twitter that he was once fascinated by it during an interview. “Eventually Trump pressed him, and a butler quickly brought out a Diet Coke on a silver platter.”
But the same journalist reported this week that the box with its red button is conspicuously absent from incoming President Joe Biden’s desk. Presumably you have more important things in mind. Or maybe you just don’t like Coca-Cola.
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Meanwhile, more than 45,000 people have retweeted the post in the last 24 hours and more than 7,000 have commented. Many of them wondered why he couldn’t just have a mini fridge and get out of his seat and find his own coke when he needed it.
Evan Vucci / AP
President Joe Biden sits at the desk for the first time last week; the box is conspicuously absent.
And another tweeter said: “At least one other person is employed for this. What are you going to do now?
Then of course it was pointed out that other former presidents have had the same button. We found a photo from 2016, and sure enough, the box is on President Obama’s desk in the Oval Office.
It is believed to go back even further, to the Clinton administration.
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
President Obama also had the red button hand, just in case.
There was a “mine is bigger than yours” button swap with North Korea a year after Trump took office. On January 3, 2018, he tweeted: “North Korean leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from your exhausted, food-hungry regimen inform you that I have a Nuclear Button too, but it is much bigger and more powerful than yours, and my Button works?
But in case you are concerned that the wrong button was pressed by mistake (“Oh no, I thought you were calling a bottle of cocaine!”), There is no nuclear strike button. But the president carries an aluminum briefcase everywhere, which has a manual with instructions on “how to order a nuclear attack.”
