Donald Trump’s appetite for fast food is well documented. He’s discussed his McDonald’s preferences with Anderson Cooper. His disdain for elaborate dinner parties is well known, too. Last night (Jan. 14), as the NCAA college football champions visited the White House, Trump feted the team with a table full of burgers, fries and pizzas brought in from Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Domino’s—paid for by the president, according to press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders
The sight is truly a surreal one. In the same room where French president Emmanuel Macron was served rack of lamb back in April, members of the Clemson University Tigers scarfed fries under an oil painting of Abraham Lincoln, while wait staff in black ties carried around stacks of Big Macs on silver trays.
As much as the feast was keeping with the president’s own tastes, it was also a pragmatic move. The partial federal government shutdown (currently the longest in US history) has many White House staffers, including the executive mansion’s chef, on furlough. That said, the fast-food giants aren’t the only restaurants in the nation’s capital that offer takeout. Sports site SB Nation took the president to task for going with the cheapest option:
You could make these athletes feel like they’re back home in South Carolina by giving them Bojangles. You could welcome them to DC by giving them Five Guys.
Instead, with roughly as much cost and effort as either of those curations would’ve required, you served them a meal they could’ve gotten almost literally anywhere on earth.
Ignore geography, even. Just go for quality. DC has Shake Shack, Popeyes, Chipotle, Checkers, Panda Express, and so on, all of which are vastly superior to a basic McDonald’s sandwich.
This administration is no stranger to surreal photo-ops and an ambivalence toward tradition and formality. Vox notes that even the amount of food Trump has boasted serving has grown over the past few hours. (He started out by saying it was 300 burgers.)
