You probably assume you know what Donald Trump eats. Big Macs, well-done steaks drowned in ketchup, buckets of KFC — the man has never exactly been shy about his fast food habits. But when it comes to dessert, the 45th and 47th president of the United States has a preference that’s genuinely surprising. It’s not chocolate. It’s not vanilla. It’s not cookies and cream or cookie dough or any of the flavors that dominate American freezer aisles. Trump’s favorite ice cream flavor is cherry vanilla. And that’s just the beginning of a sweets obsession that involves a personal candy bowl in the Oval Office, a Starburst sorting operation run by a congressman, and a slice of chocolate cake that accidentally became part of military history.
Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream Is His Ride or Die
Trump told US Weekly back in 2010 that cherry vanilla ice cream was his favorite dessert. That wasn’t a throwaway comment — the man put it on his inauguration menu in 2017. After being sworn in as the 45th president, approximately 200 guests sat down in Statuary Hall to a three-course lunch that ended with chocolate soufflé and cherry vanilla ice cream, paired with Korbel champagne. When you choose a flavor for the meal that kicks off your presidency, you’re making a statement.
Here’s what makes this odd: cherry vanilla isn’t even close to a popular ice cream flavor. According to the International Dairy Foods Association, chocolate chip consistently ranks in the top 10 most popular flavors in the country. Plain cherry comes in at number 16. Cherry vanilla? It doesn’t even make the list. It’s such a niche pick that only a handful of major brands even bother to manufacture it — Blue Bell, Häagen-Dazs, Safeway’s Signature Select, and Mayfield Creamery. Mayfield actually calls their version “Whitehouse,” which feels almost too on the nose.
The Two-Scoop Situation Was Real
If you were online during Trump’s first term, you probably remember the two-scoop story. It sounded like a joke or an exaggeration. It was neither. During a TIME Magazine profile dinner at the White House, every guest at the table was served one scoop of ice cream with their dessert. Trump got two scoops. This wasn’t a one-time thing, either. It became a running theme at White House dinners — the president always received that extra scoop. Whether you find that charming or obnoxious probably says more about your politics than anything else, but the fact remains: White House staff had standing instructions on the ice cream protocol.
For what it’s worth, Trump isn’t the only recent president with an ice cream fixation. Joe Biden once opened a speech by saying, “My name is Joe Biden and I love ice cream,” claiming he eats more of it than three other people combined. Biden’s go-to is chocolate chip, and the White House stocked Häagen-Dazs vanilla chocolate chip specifically for him. He was also a regular at Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, where he’d get waffle cones loaded with flavors like chocolate with peanut butter flecks. Two very different men. Both apparently governed on ice cream.
The Mar-a-Lago Chocolate Cake That Made International News
Cherry vanilla ice cream might be Trump’s stated favorite, but there’s another dessert that became famous for entirely different reasons: the chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago. In April 2017, Trump sat down to dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort. Over dessert, Trump authorized a military strike — 59 Tomahawk missiles aimed at a Syrian airstrip in response to a chemical weapons attack.
In a Fox Business interview afterward, Trump described the moment in a way that left people genuinely confused about his priorities. “We had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen,” he said. “And President Xi was enjoying it.” He then described telling Xi about the missile strike mid-dessert. “And he was eating his cake. And he was silent.” Trump was so focused on describing the cake that he initially said the missiles hit Iraq before correcting himself to Syria. The “beautiful chocolate cake” line became one of the most memed moments of his first term.
That cake, by the way, has been on the Mar-a-Lago menu since at least 2015. It’s a seven-layer chocolate cake created by former pastry chef Cedric Barberet. A slice comes with four dots of vanilla sauce, a scoop of dark chocolate sorbet, and a diamond of white chocolate stamped with the word TRUMP. Mar-a-Lago’s initiation fee is $200,000 — double what it was before Trump took office the first time — with a yearly fee of $14,000 on top of that. So yes, it’s expensive cake.
He Literally Has a Candy Bowl in the Oval Office
The ice cream and cake stories are well known. What’s less talked about is that Donald Trump is, by his own admission, a candy addict. During both of his administrations, Trump has kept bowls and baskets of candy scattered around the West Wing. The contents read like the checkout aisle at a gas station: Tootsie Rolls, Starburst, Hershey’s Miniatures, Laffy Taffy, Reese’s, M&Ms, caramels, Life Savers, Mars bars, and Milky Ways.
Sometimes the candy lives just outside the Oval Office, and Trump will summon aides to bring it in whenever the mood strikes. Because he doesn’t drink alcohol — he calls himself a lifelong teetotaler — he jokingly refers to candy as “my alcohol” or “my poison.” When he wants the bowl, he’s been heard shouting things like “Bring me the alcohol” or “Bring me the poison” to his staff. Journalist Michael Wolff described this habit in his book about the 2024 campaign, noting that the White House is basically filled with candy, all kept well stocked at all times.
The Kevin McCarthy Starburst Jar
This might be the single strangest detail in the entire Trump dessert saga. In January 2018, The Washington Post reported that Kevin McCarthy — then the House Majority Leader — noticed something during meetings with the president. When Trump reached into his candy stash for Starbursts, he was careful to pick out only two flavors: cherry and strawberry. The red and pink ones.
Days later, McCarthy bought a bunch of Starburst packages and had a staffer sort through every single one, pulling out only the cherry and strawberry pieces. He put them in a jar with his name on the side and had it delivered to Trump. The president was reportedly grinning when he received it. Say what you will about the political implications of a congressman hand-sorting candy to win favor with the president, but the move apparently worked. McCarthy went on to become Speaker of the House.
He Threw Starburst at Angela Merkel
Trump’s candy habit has occasionally crossed into the realm of international diplomacy. At the 2018 G7 summit, Trump reportedly tossed two pieces of Starburst candy across the table to then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel with the words, “Don’t say I never give you anything.” This happened during a period of tense trade negotiations between the U.S. and Europe. Whether it was meant as a joke, a power move, or just a guy sharing his snacks is genuinely hard to say. Knowing what we know about his candy consumption, it might have been all three.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the Starburst preference in May 2025 during a Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day event. When a child asked about Trump’s daily candy intake, Leavitt characterized it as “a good amount” and confirmed that pink Starburst and Tootsie Rolls are his go-to picks. She also shared that he enjoys ice cream sundaes with chocolate sauce and toppings, hamburgers and fries from McDonald’s, and “a big, beautiful steak.”
Tossing Tootsie Rolls Across the Resolute Desk
On March 10, 2025, just weeks before launching a massive trade war, Trump sat down in the Oval Office with Art Laffer, the famous Reagan-era economist. Before they could get into policy, Trump grabbed a big candy basket from the Resolute desk and asked Laffer, “Do you like Tootsie Rolls?” He then flipped two of them across the desk. Next came a tiny box of Milk Duds. By the end of the meeting, Laffer said he’d somehow ended up with a handful of caramels too. Seven sources across both administrations have confirmed that Trump ensures candy is always within reach, whether he’s in casual meetings or overseeing high-stakes military operations.
There’s an Ice Cream Parlor in Trump Tower
If you needed more proof that Trump takes sweets seriously, he has his own ice cream shop. Trump Sweets is located in the Trump Tower atrium in Manhattan and sells cookies, cupcakes, popcorn, and ice cream in 24 flavors — cherry vanilla among them, naturally. You can get it by the cone, cup, shake, or sundae.
The Yelp reviews are not exactly glowing. The shop sits at 2.5 stars, with reviewers split on whether the ice cream is any good, especially given the prices. But one very enthusiastic reviewer singled out the cherry vanilla as the one flavor worth trying. So at least there’s that — one person on the internet agrees with the president’s taste.
Oreos on Air Force One
Trump’s sweet tooth extends to packaged snacks as well. Air Force One was routinely stocked with multiple packages of Oreos during his presidency. The reason wasn’t just preference — it was connected to Trump’s well-documented fear of germs and food contamination. Sealed, factory-packaged cookies from a major brand are about as tamper-proof as food gets. This is the same logic behind his love of fast food in general. Trump has said he believes chains like McDonald’s and KFC are safer because the food is mass-produced and nobody in the kitchen knows who’s about to order it. The germ thing and the candy thing feed into each other — he wants sweets, but he wants them sealed.
Cherry vanilla ice cream, a seven-layer chocolate cake stamped with his name, a Starburst-sorting operation, and a candy bowl he calls “the poison.” Whether you voted for the man or not, his dessert habits are objectively one of the weirder footnotes of the modern presidency.
