Sorry, The Oval Office 'Diet Coke Button' Predates Trump By Decades
If you've been floating along on a Leslie Knopian cloud of relief ever since Biden's election and the words "Diet Coke button" mean nothing to you, we really hate to ruin this for you, but many people are only now becoming aware of the existence of a red button on the famous Resolute Desk in the Oval Office that former President Trump used to summon a butler carrying a bottle of Diet Coke on a silver tray. He also sometimes let people think it was the button that launches the nukes and scared the hell out of them. Even a broken clock tells a good joke exactly once.
Following Biden's inauguration, the media seems engaged in some kind of Button Watch over whether or not he removed the button, which is all kind of pointless, because the button has a long and mostly uncarbonated history. It might date back as far as President Johnson, who was said to have "had a buzzer installed in the Oval Office'' to warn him when his wife was nearby so she wouldn't catch him banging one of the many groupies he apparently had.
It's not clear if it's the same button, as it would have had to have been pressed by someone outside the Oval Office, but we do know that the button is moveable and has definitely existed since the Bush, Jr. administration when it was simply described as "a call button." That's generally its purpose: It summons an aide for whatever reason the president might need one. That doesn't mean, of course, that any given president didn't assign it a designated and often trivial task, from Johnson's boner to Obama's tea. Yeah, Obama primarily used it to order a cup of tea, so it's hard to chide Trump over a simple difference of choice of caffeinated beverage. Maybe chide him for all the deaths instead.
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Top image: Michael Murphy/Wikimedia Commons, White House/Wikimedia Commons
