Ever since Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States last Wednesday, he has been reversing various things that his predecessor had done. One among them is the removal of a red button that was there on the President’s desk in the White House.
The Oval Office in the White House has a huge table where the President sits. When Trump was President he had placed a small red button on the Oval Office desk.
On Thursday morning, British journalist Tom Newton Dunn shared pictures of Biden and former President Donald Trump sitting behind their desks, noting one significant difference. Back in 2019, Tom Newton, the chief political commentator on Times Radio, and Tim Shipman, the political section editor at the Sunday Times, were surprised to see a little red button when they had gone to interview Trump. When asked about it, Trump pressed that button, and immediately, an employee brought Diet Coke on a silver platter. According to media reports, he consumes 12 cans of diet coke daily.
Cliff Sims, a former White House aide, has written an autobiography, Team of Vipers. In it, he describes how Trump used to deceive all those who came to see him with this red button. “He told them it was a button to activate nuclear weapons and he would immediately press it. Guests who arrived would then be bewildered, while an employee brought in a glass cup filled with Diet Coke on a silver platter. Trump would then burst out laughing.”
But it wasn’t just a Trump thing. The red button was there even during the time of Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
Wasn't just a trump thing. pic.twitter.com/aA6K4bnAV7
— jospf (@cncnntus) January 21, 2021
Richard Branson in his autobiography notes that Obama had explained to him about the red button as something that was earlier used for emergencies. “Now I use them for ordering tea for my guests”.