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Since the start of his second term, President Donald Trump has been busy triggering constitutional crises, setting due process and other basic rights on fire, rocking the U.S. economy with a trade war based on horrifically bad math, wielding the Justice Department and other agencies to target his political enemies, and bringing a level of lawlessness and corruption to the federal government not seen since, well, maybe ever — all while his lieutenants work around to clock to grant him the authoritarian powers of a mad “king.”
He has also, in the words of one White House official, been consuming “an insane amount of candy — just so much candy.”
It is fairly common knowledge that Trump is such an avid guzzler of Diet Coke that he had a “Diet Coke button” installed on the Resolute Desk in the White House’s Oval Office. Something many of his voters and biggest fans might not even know about their favorite “dictator” on “day one” is that Trump — according to various current and former administration officials and campaign aides, as well as other informal advisers and friends — is a longtime, self-described “candy addict.”
During both of his administrations and on his presidential campaigns, seven sources attest, Trump has ensured that there is plenty of candy surrounding him. In his two presidencies, he has had aides keep bowls, or baskets, filled with different types of candy — Tootsie Rolls, Reese’s, caramels, Life Savers, M&Ms, Starburst, Hershey’s, Mars bars, Milky Ways, the works — around the West Wing. At times, there’s a bowl or basket of candy right outside the Oval Office, and he’ll summon close aides to bring it into the Oval whenever he has a craving.
The president, who describes himself as a lifelong teetotaler, at times jokingly refers to his candy as “my alcohol,” according to three of the sources. In summoning the candy during his two different stints in the White House, Trump has been known to shout things like, “Bring me the alcohol!” or “Gimme the alcohol.”
For years, certain top aides assumed the rotating role of, in the words of two sources close to Trump, the “candy people,” so that Trump can have fast, easy access to his treats. As president, Trump has made a point of making light of his candy habit, while unwrapping and snacking on sweets, to senior administration officials and other allies during any number of high-stakes policy meetings, including some that involved discussing potential bombing targets and military response plans or Covid-19 death tolls, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter say.
Some of these current and former Trump officials say that the president also sometimes stress-eats his candy. One former senior adviser recalls Trump eating an “unusually big” amount of candy during his monthslong crusade to overturn the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Joe Biden.
“He eats a ton of candy,” another former senior Trump aide summarizes.
On March 10, weeks before Trump launched a massive new trade war on his so-called “Liberation Day,” the president met in the Oval Office with Art Laffer, a famous Reaganite economist who’s been an informal adviser and friend to Trump for years. Laffer says it was an hourlong sit-down to discuss economic policy and a wide range of other topics.
Laffer tells Rolling Stone that upon arriving in the Oval Office, as they were each sitting down at the Resolute desk, the president asked him: “Do you like Tootsie Rolls?” At this time, Trump was brandishing what Laffer calls a “big candy basket.”
“It had a lot of stuff. He was digging in it,” he recounts. “He threw me two Tootsie Rolls, flipped them right across the desk.”
Trump also asked, “Oh, do you like Milk Duds?” before slipping the economist a “tiny box of Milk Duds.” Laffer says that later in the meeting, he “somehow” ended up with “some caramels,” though he can’t be sure if or when the president slid those his way. “He was eating candy, too, of course,” he says. “It was very charming.”
“He says to me: ‘You know, there are some people who are addicted to alcohol. But I’m addicted to candy.’ I said to him — jokingly — that ‘I’m addicted to both!’”
The president chuckled in response, Laffer notes.
Reached for comment on Wednesday, the Trump White House’s staff was not amused — or were they?
“While President Trump is working tirelessly every day to work on behalf of the American people to make America great again, there are fake news outlets like Rolling Stone that seem more interested in peddling falsehoods and fabricating stories. That’s why nobody reads them anymore and they are rated lower than Candy Corn,” says Steven Cheung, Trump’s White House communications director.
Trump — who now leads an international movement of right-wing authoritarianism — and his sweet tooth have been alluded to in past testimonials.
For instance, in January 2018, The Washington Post reported on how then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) acted as “Trump’s fixer, friend, and candy man,” and had noticed that “when the president reached for a handful of Starbursts … the president was careful to pluck out and eat two flavors: cherry and strawberry.”
The Post adds that days after picking up on Trump’s preference, McCarthy — eager to suck up — “bought a plentiful supply of Starbursts and asked a staffer to sort through the pile, placing only those two flavors in a jar. McCarthy made sure his name was on the side of the gift, which was delivered to a grinning Trump, according to a White House official.”
Not everybody in the upper ranks of the second Trump administration, though, feels the same way about candy as the president does. Last month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services, told Trump during a televised Cabinet meeting that he was working on barring food-stamp recipients from using their benefits to buy candy.
