Did Trump’s Love of McDonald’s Help Fry Democracy?
When the account of this dangerous period in U.S. history is written, historians should pick over the remains on the man-boy’s plate
Has Donald Trump’s diet played a part in undoing our democracy by robbing it of vital nutrition, rendering it flabby and depressed with frequent bouts of acid reflux?
America’s top toddler/tyrant often boasts of his love for fast food. Accounts (including a published one by his son-in-law) vary, but it appears that Trump’s go-to order at McDonald’s may be as supersized as two Big Macs and two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, with or without fries. His beverage to wash all that down? Chocolate. Shaken, not stirred. Or maybe a Diet Coke, one of the reported dozen he drinks each day.
One doesn’t want to imagine what such a bolus of processed food matter does to a person, but we know Trump’s intestines would be working overtime sending an onslaught of salt, sugar, and fat to the liver and kidneys, organs tasked to help mop up such a Trump-induced mess, like so many Capitol police.
Two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish, a shake, maybe some fries: not such a happy meal — but one that obviously makes him quite happy. Why does he do it? As a germophobe, Trump reportedly considers McDonald’s to be very clean. And as a wannabe dictator (e.g., inciting a deadly insurrection, demanding we terminate “all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”, calling on supporters to protest that he might actually be charged for one or more of the crimes he’s committed during a life of crime), suggesting there will be death and destruction if he is charged, and, more recently, threatening witnesses, prosecutors, and judges), he apparently fears he might be poisoned by having others regularly cooking for him.
Remember how Trump greeted workers at the McDonald’s in East Palestine, Ohio, at the end of his cynical campaign stop there after the train derailment disaster, saying, among some really bizarre things (“Have a great time!”), that he knew the menu better than they did? It was a rare statement coming from Trump’s mouth, in that it was likely accurate, although, characteristically, it was off-kilter, insensitive, boastful, self-serving, and rude. But no doubt he thought it was funny and charming.
How does such a diet make him feel physically and mentally? Could a junk diet make the behavior of a person with an already dangerous personality even worse? Could the insurrections that he himself regularly calls for in his gut lead him to “mobster-request” (er, “aspirationally request”) more acts of violence against people he feels threatened by?
It almost goes without saying: yeah. But let’s, um, chew on it a bit.
Recently, I re-watched the 2004 Oscar-nominated documentary “Super Size Me,” by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who, reading of a lawsuit brought by two teenage girls who claimed that McDonald’s caused their obesity, wondered what the marketing of fast food was doing to us as people, and as a nation.
If you saw the film, you’ll likely recall that Spurlock determined to eat nothing but a McDonald’s diet for a month, three meals a day. He chose McDonald’s but made it clear that the film was about all types of fast food (the documentary opens with school children singing a ditty about McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut).
Before embarking on his experiment, Spurlock consulted with doctors, a dietician, and a physical trainer to get a baseline on his physical state and to monitor the effects of his McDiet. There was some backlash at the time, and the filmmaker later admitted to being dependent on alcohol. (Others worked assiduously to refute Spurlock’s claims, as noted in this excellent video by Kiana Docherty, who posts about her own battles with food and weight.)
But the bloat, confusion, fatigue, loss of sex drive, and general unsteadiness Spurlock began to experience would seem to fit, even if we don’t consider Trump’s long-rumored abuse of medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Imagine ingesting a heavy McDonald’s meal before a rally or, say, a debate, even without a snort of that amphetamine-based concentration booster. One might expect a virtual McFlurry of verbiage and odd behavior — as we all witnessed in his debate performances, like stalking your opponent or jabbering and goading until being begged, by moderators, to comport yourself like an adult and finally, by the other candidate, to shut your pie hole.
Just the sugar rush from the constant ingestion of such food, leading to “a range of memory and cognitive impairments,” would be enough to result in Trump’s signature overlong, often incoherent rambles at MAGA rallies and crazed, multi-part, all-caps “truths” on his social media platform.
Trump loves fast food so fervently he’s evangelical about it, beaming while sharing “hamberders” and other brightly packaged comestibles full of high-fructose corn syrup with champion college athletes. He’s also lovin’ it because his trips to McDonald’s make him appear to be a regular, workin’ guy, though he’s not ordering off any dollar menu (he did, however, shill for it, with the Big N’ Tasty, in 2002).
Experts in the growing field of nutritional psychiatry say that a balanced nutritional diet is good for the gut biome and actually protects the brain, by helping remove cell waste and limiting inflammation caused by free radicals.
So, what of a terrible diet, one full of fats and sugar? As Eva Selhub, MD, contributing editor of the Harvard Health Blog, writes: “Put simply, what you eat directly affects the structure and function of your brain and, ultimately, your mood.”
No wonder Spurlock felt and looked like shit and began to behave erratically. What he experienced with his all-McDiet was bad enough for his doctors to beg him to stop.
Philosophers from ancient times have said much the same about the connection of body and mind. Juvenal wrote, Sit mens sana in corpore sano (“A healthy mind in a healthy body”). Buddha said, “To keep the body in good health is a duty…otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.”
Rebutting those ancient eggheads, McDonald’s says, “Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.”
So, if the stories about his standard order at McDonald’s are true, what does that really mean in terms of what he’s ingesting?
A look at a McDonald’s menu online provides the numbers. I might quibble with their description of the Big Mac® as “mouthwatering perfection,” but I’ll accept that each is packed with 550 calories. The “wild-caught” Filet-O-Fish® comes to 390 calories. A medium chocolate shake delivers 650 calories. The nutrition calculator (sans the Benjamin Franklin and Henry David Thoreau quotes on maintaining a proper diet that McDonald’s lawyers in 2002 seriously implied would be common knowledge among teens) made it easy to total the Trumpian order: 2530 calories; 115 grams of fat (146% DV); 113 grams of sugar, including 88 grams of “added sugar” (177% of DV); 3490 mg sodium (151% DV); and more dietary cholesterol than is recommended for a day — all at one meal.
No wonder Donald frequently complains of weakly flushing toilets, which he obviously doesn’t use only for incriminating documents. Now that wastewater is being regularly monitored for viruses and other pathogens, do the technicians at the water filtration plant in Palm Beach County, which serves Mar-a-Lago, occasionally see their board light up? One imagines alarms sounding. (If you think Trump only lies, foments violence, and never gives back anything to his country, you’re ignoring his donations of some impressive biosolids.)
No wonder Donald frequently complains of weakly flushing toilets.
Does any of this matter? Would Trump’s eating a salad for lunch every day or switching to a Mediterranean diet make a difference in his behavior?
Almost certainly not, because as many professionals (and Trump’s own niece Mary, herself a psychologist) have attested time and again, Mr. Trump has, well, loads of issues.
Professionals in health care and psychiatry have variously viewed him as a malignant narcissist, a sociopath, and even a psychopath. (On that last, just think back to his bizarre behavior at the start of the COVID crisis, wanting to keep the public uninformed and allowing his know-nothing-but-grifting son-in-law to push the states to fend for themselves for PPE and testing.)
Labels aside, psychiatrists with expertise in criminal behavior early on saw that Trump is clearly dangerous. An expert on malignant narcissism wrote that Trump “causes severe distress rather than experiencing it” and that to label him as mentally ill is an insult to the mentally ill, nearly all of whom behave better than he does.
Though he is reasonably tall, Trump apparently lies about his height and appears to suffer from short man syndrome (and small hand syndrome?), as he is best known for his aggressiveness, endless need for attention, lies about his wealth, sexual predation, and admiration of so-called strongmen. This Napoleon Complex also leads him to narcissism, an utter lack of empathy for others, and childish fantasies of being godlike and all-powerful (“I am your retribution”).
Who can forget his longtime Superman fantasy or that NFT digital playing cards grift?
That behavior, so unusual to see in an adult, makes me think of the murderous emperor (aptly named in this context) Commodus, who created a cult of personality, boasted endlessly of his physical prowess, and had statues of himself as Hercules erected all over Rome.
Speaking of a cult of personality, David Koresh reportedly had a lot of rules around food for his followers. To kick off his 2024 campaign, Trump chose Waco, Texas, explicitly to remind his followers of the government’s standoff with Koresh and the Branch Davidians 30 years ago. It reminds the rest of us that Trump, too, wants to be a cult leader and that Koresh preyed on young girls. You might say that he “groomed” them to be his very young wives.
Others have spoken of Trump’s arrested development, which fits nicely with his lack of gustatory development. I mean, who consumes an expensive steak well done — and then douses it with ketchup?
A child, all growed up. That’s who.
All of which begs the question: Do other despots — Orban, Bolsonaro, Putin, Xi, DeSantis — also eat poorly? If DeSantis ate more fruits and vegetables, would he stop banning books or threatening to “start slitting throats”? Would he have the mental wherewithal to reconsider his choice of footwear?
In the end — as fun as it is to delve into this — all one can say is that by consuming such a diet Trump ensures that he will be the worst possible version of his lying, disloyal, ever-grifting, violence-fomenting, even-cheat-at-golf, always-do-Putin’s-bidding self.
Oh, why does he lie about being 6’3” when he’s more of an Obama-like 6’1”? Reportedly, so he will appear to be less obese per his body mass index. And, of course, because of…Obama.
There is also something darkly amusing in the idea that an American icon of business like McDonald’s would have had a small (yellow-gloved clown’s) hand in the country’s dissolution by its regular feeding of The Mc-Donald.
Unlike Trump’s boxy business suits, that’s fitting.
For decades, the fast-food giant resisted raising pay for its workers, portraying itself as a business staffed by teens working while attending high school — remember their campaign “America’s Best First Job”? (My wife would always retort: “And America’s Worst Last Job.”) The McDonald’s Corporation spent mega bucks to lobby in Washington to keep wages low while assiduously building up that dollar menu, doing its part in further dividing the haves from the have-nots.
Another parallel: Ronald McDonald lives in a fictional world, McDonaldland, populated by various cartoonish characters like Mayor McCheese, the Hamburgler, and Grimace. Doesn’t the Hamberder of Mar-a-Lago also live in a fantasy world, MAGA-land, populated by cartoonish (and unsavory) characters, like Mayor McSleaze, My Pillowman, the ever-shuffling Happy Meal Gang of Mc-Attorneys, and a slew of traitorous minions called the Fifth-Takers?
By the way, I’m not a snob about fast food; my wife and I eat McDonald’s. Amusing ourselves, we refer to the basket of fries we sometimes order as the trough of fries. Unlike Trump, though, we’re splitting our order and we severely limit our visits.
Trump treats fast food much like he treats the American flag — he nearly humps it. And then “truths,” as I suppose one would after desecrating the symbol of our country, about death and destruction for his enemies.
Is it mean or unfair to talk of Commodus’s — er, Trump’s — crappy diet making him into an even more unstable, mad autocrat?
So long as Republicans continue to make an issue of President Biden’s age and mental acuity, I would say that Trump’s diet is definitely, well, on the table (except, of course, when it ends up on the wall).
