On the campaign trail, at a televised CNN town hall, he explained to Anderson Cooper that he enjoyed “a fish delight,” referring to the Filet-o-Fish. In the nineties and early two-thousands, he filmed commercials for Pizza Hut and McDonald’s. Trump’s affinity for fast food has been well documented since the earliest days of his public life. By the time America’s greatest collegiate football players arrived, in their navy blazers and Sunday shoes, to pick up porcelain plates and work their way through this cardboard buffet, the French fries would have grown cold and mealy, the burger buns soggy, the precise half slice of American cheese on each Filet-o-Fish sandwich hardened to a tough, flavorless rectangle of yellow. There is a particular awfulness to McDonald’s or Burger King once it’s gone cold. Then came the photo shoot: Trump, centered beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, flinging his arms out behind this table of quick-serve abundance, in a gesture that’s equal parts ownership and invitation. One imagines those poor sandwiches steaming limply inside their cardboard boxes on the drive to the White House, and during the fuss over arranging them on their silver platters (with sauces sorted by type and piled high in silver gravy boats) and properly lighting the gilded candelabra. Trump’s bulk order, on the other hand, was a dinner fighting against the odds. But the culinary pleasures are real: fried chicken, famously, only gets more delicious as it cools down, and, if you hire In-N-Out and Shake Shack to do the catering at your event, they show up in person and sling their burgers fresh. There is, at many of these occasions, an element of class-based pantomime-for guests invited to eat fast-food burgers in a designer dress, it’s the fast food that is presented as a novelty, not the couture.

No less glittery an event than the Vanity Fair Oscar party has served In-N-Out burgers to its throngs of the gorgeous and powerful. Shake Shack-catered weddings are all over Pinterest. A few dozen wings and thighs from Popeyes or a Chick-fil-A nugget tray make for a festive dinner-party centerpiece. So it was something of a surprise-a small, mild surprise, like a sudden itch on the sole of your foot-when, on Monday night, the photos began to roll out of Trump grinning behind a mahogany dining table arranged with silver trays bearing stacked boxes of Filet-o-Fishes and Quarter Pounders, and McNuggets, and a few dozen of something in paper wrappers from Wendy’s, and piles of anonymous-looking salads, and a couple of pizzas, and Burger King fries that some hapless aides had decanted into paper cups bearing the Presidential seal.įar be it from me to defend any of Trump’s choices, but serving a meal of fast food at a fancy gathering is not inherently a bad idea. So we’ll see what happens.” As with so many Trump promises, it could have been just a gust of wind.

And I would think that’s their favorite food. “I think we’re going to serve McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, with some pizza,” Donald Trump told the press in an interview on Monday morning, discussing the White House’s planned banquet that night for the Clemson University Tigers, in celebration of their victory in this year’s N.C.A.A.

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