Andre Rush has cooked for four presidents. He’s a retired Army Master Sergeant with 24-inch biceps who went viral in 2018 when a photo of him prepping food on the White House lawn made the rounds on Twitter. The man has served in combat zones, survived being in the Pentagon gym during the September 11 attacks, and starred in a Gordon Ramsay–produced TV show about rescuing failing restaurants. He’s not someone who gets rattled easily.
But when Rush sat down with Politico’s West Wing Playbook to talk about his years in the White House kitchen, he was blunt about one thing: Donald Trump was the hardest president he ever had to feed. Not because Trump was rude or demanding in the way you might expect. The problem was simpler and, for a trained chef, more frustrating — the man just didn’t want to eat anything interesting.
Trump’s Diet Is Exactly What You Think It Is
If you’ve followed the Trump diet saga over the years, nothing Rush said will shock you. The burgers, the well-done steaks, the fast food — all confirmed. But hearing it from the guy who actually had to work with it every day adds a layer of reality that tweets and tabloid headlines can’t capture.
Rush told Politico there was “not a lot of diversity” to Trump’s diet. As a chef, he said, “you want to be able to explore and have more fun, but with him and Melania, it was black and white.” The menu rotation was tight: burgers, taco salads, salmon, meatloaf. That was pretty much the orbit. When you’re a classically trained chef who has competed on Army cooking teams and worked under pressure in some of the most high-stakes kitchens on the planet, being told to make another burger has to sting a little.
The lack of variety wasn’t just about the food itself. It extended to how things were prepared and served. There wasn’t much room for creativity or presentation. Rush described the experience as restrictive — the kind of cooking that leaves you feeling boxed in when your whole career has been about pushing limits.
The Diet Coke Button Was Real
You might remember the story from Trump’s first term about a button on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. Press it, and a butler appears with a Diet Coke on a silver platter. It sounded like satire when it first made the rounds. Rush confirmed it was completely true.
Trump’s Diet Coke habit is legendary at this point. Reports have him drinking up to 12 cans a day. Rush said the man is “known for not drinking water” and has “always been on his soda trip — that’s all he drinks, 24/7.” UFC CEO Dana White has said publicly that he’s never seen Trump drink water. Not once. Ever.
For the kitchen staff, this created a real problem. You can sneak vegetables into a burger patty. You can swap out fries. But you can’t force someone to drink water if they simply refuse. Rush suggested adding flavoring — orange, lime, lemon — to water to make it “go down quicker,” which is the kind of workaround you’d use with a stubborn toddler, not the leader of the free world. But apparently, that’s where they were.
How the Chefs Secretly Made Trump’s Food Healthier
This is where it gets interesting. Rush and the rest of the kitchen team didn’t just accept the burger-and-Diet-Coke reality. They fought back — quietly. Rush used the word “manipulate” to describe what they did, which sounds sneaky because it kind of was.
The strategy was subtle substitution. If Trump ordered a burger, Rush might mix turkey into the ground beef to cut the fat content. If he wanted bacon, they’d use beef bacon instead of pork — crispier, less fat. Regular fries became sweet potato fries or vegetable fries with a homemade dipping sauce. Rush would also put “a couple little extra things on a plate, even if it’s not asked for,” just to see if Trump would try them.
But you couldn’t just storm in and overhaul the whole plate. Rush was clear about that. “You have to be political on that,” he said. “You can’t just go in hard charging.” The key was getting to know Trump’s preferences deeply enough to understand where you could push and where you couldn’t. Once you had that read, you could start making small adjustments without triggering resistance.
Trump Apparently Does Try to Eat Healthy — Sometimes
Rush pushed back on the idea that Trump is purely a junk food machine. He said Trump “does try to eat healthy, but people don’t get to see that part of it. They just see the part that we want to show on social media.” He also noted that Trump doesn’t really snack — he’s apparently too busy working to graze throughout the day.
Rush also pointed out something that often gets lost in the Trump diet conversation: Bill Clinton ate just as many burgers. Clinton’s love of McDonald’s and junk food was well-documented during his presidency, but it doesn’t get the same level of ongoing attention. Whether that’s because Clinton eventually adopted a plant-based diet after his heart surgery or because the internet wasn’t around to meme his eating habits in the ’90s is anyone’s guess.
Trump’s breakfast habits are sparse. According to the book “Let Trump Be Trump” by former campaign officials Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, he basically skips breakfast or grabs a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin or a plate of bacon and eggs. His regular dinner rotation — shrimp cocktail, well-done steak with ketchup, meatloaf — hasn’t changed much in decades.
The Well-Done Steak With Ketchup Thing Still Haunts Foodies
If there’s one Trump food fact that lives rent-free in people’s heads, it’s the steak. Well-done. Smothered in ketchup. When this detail hit the internet years ago, food people lost their minds. The late Anthony Bourdain called it “a window into his soul” and said it physically hurt him.
During his first term, Trump was a regular at BLT Prime, a steakhouse inside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. It was reportedly the only restaurant he visited in the entire city over the course of four years. The servers knew his order by heart: shrimp cocktail, then a well-done steak. Every time. For four years.
He’s also a known pizza guy, but with a twist. In a 2010 interview, Trump said he scrapes the toppings off and never eats the dough. So he eats deconstructed pizza. Make of that what you will.
RFK Jr. Called Trump’s Travel Diet “Poison”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has been surprisingly open about his boss’s eating habits. In an interview on The Joe Polish Show, Kennedy described the food on Trump’s campaign plane as “just poison.” He said your choices were “KFC or Big Macs” and “that’s when you’re lucky.” The rest he called “kind of inedible.”
Kennedy did add context, though. He said Trump eats “really good food” when he’s at Mar-a-Lago or the White House and only turns to fast food while traveling. The reason? Trump trusts big chain restaurants not to make him sick on the road. It’s a germaphobe logic that actually tracks with what we know about Trump’s well-documented fear of being poisoned or getting food-borne illness.
Kennedy also said — with apparent amazement — that despite the diet, Trump has “the constitution of a deity” and joked that he doesn’t know how the man is still alive. He cited Dr. Oz saying Trump has the highest testosterone level he’s ever seen for someone over 70. Whether you find that reassuring or terrifying probably depends on your politics.
Obama Was the Easiest President to Cook For
Rush didn’t just talk about Trump. He compared all four presidents he cooked for, and Barack Obama came out on top as the easiest by far. The reason was the White House garden that Michelle Obama had installed on the South Lawn. The Obamas wanted their meals to feature ingredients from that garden whenever possible, which gave the kitchen staff a steady supply of fresh produce and — more importantly — creative freedom.
Rush said he “lights up” talking about the Obama years. When a president is open to trying new things and actively wants fresh, interesting food, that’s a chef’s dream. You can experiment, build menus around what’s in season, and actually use your training. Compare that to the Trump years, where the daily challenge was figuring out how to sneak turkey into a beef patty without getting caught, and you can see why Rush ranked them the way he did.
Rush’s Advice for the Next White House Chef
Now that Trump is back for a second term at 78 years old, Rush had some advice for whoever is running the kitchen this time around. His main point: don’t just read a briefing sheet and think you know what the president wants. “Get to know him a lot deeper than what a piece of paper says,” Rush said. “Get to his psyche so you can understand why he eats what he eats.”
Rush pointed out that a lot of what Trump won’t eat comes down to unfamiliarity, not genuine dislike. He’s never been exposed to certain foods, so he defaults to what he knows. The trick, according to Rush, is building enough trust that you can start introducing things gradually. It’s less about cooking and more about understanding people — which, honestly, is probably good advice for any kitchen, not just the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Rush also noted that Trump’s age this time around — eight years older than when he first took office — means the stakes are higher. “His food habits should change,” Rush said. He’s not saying they will. But the chefs now have a job that’s part cooking, part nutrition counseling, and part psychology. No pressure.
