From Diet Coke To Paper Briefings: The Outdated Habits Of Donald Trump

President Donald Trump is like a vintage car — it still runs, but spare parts are in short supply and it doesn't offer any 21st century features. As Trump raises pandemonium during his second presidential term, some have pointed out that there once was a time he wasn't as rambunctious. In fact, he used to have a temperament one could almost call humble, believe it or not.

In the '80s, Trump told CBS News he wasn't sure if a reality TV show detailing his life would be to the American public's liking. "If I were portrayed on television, I hope I'd come across as somewhat of a nice gentleman,"  he said at the time. "But I don't know, necessarily, that that particular series would do very well." He's clearly since abandoned that stance, as well as his self-professed aversion to media attention, but while he might have thrown caution and morals to the wind, the president has held on tight to several outdated '80s traditions.

By 2006, Trump was famous for his show, "The Apprentice," and fellow real estate aficionado Tom Griffin told biographer Michael D'Antonio for his book, "Never Enough," how the real estate tycoon had turned into a full-time actor — even off-screen — recalling how, during a business meeting, he realized, "It was Donald Trump playing Donald Trump." Not much has changed since, really. When paying close attention to old interviews, the real Trump shows his colors. His thoughts and ideas from the '80s have followed him all the way to the White House. In 1987, Trump told CNN (via NPR) that the U.S. was the laughing stock of the world and that America didn't have "free trade." Sounds familiar? These aren't the only '80's ghosts that have continued to accompany the divisive politician, however.

If you have to do a double-take every time you see an old snap of Donald Trump, you're not the only one. Yes, his hair still looks almost exactly the same (although there's definitely less of it now), and his dress code hasn't changed one bit. '80s combover? Check. Sensible suit? Double-check. Truly, Trump's hair transformation is stunning in the sense that over the decades, it hasn't changed much at all. Critics have noted that the president seems oblivious to the fact that his hair, which he's very self-aware of, is a glaring testimony to the fact that he's stuck in the past. The same goes for his suits.

Trump still resembles a working-class man from the '80s, and this is perhaps intentional, given the voters he wants to attract. He might be rich and powerful, but he sticks out like a sore thumb among his peers. Before Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk's bromance breakup made headlines, the latter never showed up to the Oval Office in a suit. Like most modern-day billionaires, Musk favors jeans and T-shirts. Trump? Not so much.

Even when Trump goes golfing, you won't catch him in jeans. And when the president presented with some serious hat hair in December 2024 after getting back from the golf course, Fox News host Harris Faulkner was so shocked by the change in the politician's hairstyle that she called his hat hair "the winds of winning" (via the Independent). She added, "They have blown back his 'do, and he is leaning into the victory." No one was surprised that this new 'do was a one-time occurrence; Trump is nothing if not a man of habit.

It might be safe to say that Donald Trump has been more loyal to Diet Coke than all three of his wives. The president has been a staunch consumer of the popular drink since it first became popular in — you guessed it — the '80s. In fact, Trump is so obsessed with the drink, he had a button installed on the Resolute desk to let staffers know when to bring him the soft drink. Trump brought back this bizarre Oval Office feature from his first term the moment his second term commenced.

Back in 2017, the New York Times reported that Trump's typical daily diet consists of a whopping 12 cans of Diet Coke a day, among some other unhealthy food choices. Confounded reporters who interviewed the president during his first term initially thought the red button on his desk might have some macabre function. Instead, when Trump pressed it during the interview, a staffer entered the Oval Office to deliver a Diet Coke — on a silver platter, no less. In retrospect, the only surprising thing about this incident was that the platter wasn't gold.

Forget Netflix and chill. In Donald Trump's world, cable TV is still his go-to place to get his daily dose of entertainment and news. While many other former presidents were happy to steer clear of too much cable news, Trump watched it excessively during his first term, often taking to X to voice his opinions about what was being said on air. He'd start his mornings off with "Fox & Friends," but didn't just tune into this news network — the array of West Wing televisions were always displaying a few cable news networks at a time: Fox (of course), Fox Business, CNN, and MSNBC.

One of the reasons for Trump's obsession with cable news? He loved seeing himself make an appearance, former House speaker Newt Gingrich told The Florida Times-Union. "He is very attuned to the fact that cable networks have 24 hours a day that they need to fill — and if you're interesting, you are gold," Gingrich said. Trump's obsession with cable news saw him watching a steady five hours of television on average every day during his first presidency, which was on par for his age bracket — if you were an ordinary American citizen, not the president of the United States, who is supposed to have far better (and way more important) things to do.

Trump's habit of turning on the TV as soon as he opens his eyes in the morning is one he's had for decades, according to Marc Fisher, who co-authored "Trump Revealed." Fisher told Politico that Trump used to make a habit of being photographed with gorgeous women, then heading home to the television to see what the media was saying about it.

While most folks (even in older generations) have taken to using note-taking apps on their phones whenever they need to remember something, Donald Trump is still a pen and paper kind of guy, and this outdated habit has gotten him into quite a bit of trouble after his first term ended. Those who kept up with the news are likely aware that Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence was raided by the FBI after the president ignored subpoenas to hand over the classified documents he had stored at the resort. It has been reported that some of these classified documents contained scribbles from the president himself.

An unflattering story about Trump clogging up the White House plumbing by flushing documents down the toilet also made headlines after his bumpy exit from the White House in 2021. In 2022, photographs of notes at the bottom of a toilet bowl, written in the president's hand, went viral. CNN contributor Maggie Haberman is the one who first stirred this pot after addressing the whole toilet-clogging saga in her book, "Confidence Man." Trump's spokesperson accused Haberman of false reporting. And yet, the photographs speak for themselves. If the president had opted to type his notes, he'd at least have had some plausible deniability.

Donald Trump is still lovin' it. And by "it" we are, of course, referring to the president's favorite fast food restaurant, McDonald's. The fast food chain exploded in the '80s, and the president is yet to grow tired of its menu. His fondness of the franchise remains somewhat of a mystery, but the fact that his name is technically part of it may or may not have something to do with it.

Word has it that Trump's paranoia and germaphobia has something to do with his preference for fast food. In "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," Michael Wolff claims that the president is terrified of getting poisoned and believes that randomly showing up at a McDonald's or other fast-food establishment will prevent this from happening. The politician was once photographed eating KFC with a knife and fork (whatever happened to finger-lickin' good?) on one of his private airplanes, and his favorite order from McDonald's includes two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, two Big Macs, and a chocolate milkshake (usually small). 

The president refers to the latter as a "chocolate malted," according to Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie's book, "Let Trump Be Trump." Apparently, this was what the president called milkshakes as a child, and he never dropped the term. Another reason Mickey D's remains Trump's all-time favorite is because he believes fast-food restaurants implement superior hygiene practices, given that a slip-up can deal a massive blow to their big reputations, unlike smaller, private establishments.

In 2025, Donald Trump made the '80s great again when he started raging a tariff war, a move Minnesota Governor and former vice presidential nominee Tim Walz told MSNBC (via HuffPost) is straight out of an '80s playbook, calling the president's techniques obsolete. "It's like Trump is stuck in the '80s. His music, his clothing, his thinking," Walz said, explaining that Trump seems to have very little understanding of how tariffs actually work and how to implement them strategically. "He doesn't fundamentally understand trade," Walz asserted. "The biggest myth in this country is that Donald Trump knows anything about business," the governor added before accusing the president of steering the American economy off a cliff.

Political commentator Chris Cillizza echoed Walz's sentiments on his YouTube channel, noting that Trump's world views were formed in the '80s, and the president hasn't evolved with the times. Instead, he appears to be trying to take America back a few decades. "I think with tariffs, what Trump is trying to do in a lot of ways is put the genie back in the bottle," Cillizza argued, explaining that Trump is seemingly attempting to recreate the economic growth of the '80s; a futile attempt given the economic interdependence and globalization that has occurred since. "It's an attempt to return to a time that I'm not sure can be recreated," Cillizza said.

All Donald Trump wants is for Time magazine to love him as much as he loves it. As political commentator Chris Cillizza pointed out on his YouTube channel, the outlet was one of the most prestigious during the '80s, and Trump's obsession with being on its cover has been the butt of many a joke. It seems that one of the things that's always been on Trump's wishlist was to be named Time's person of the year. This didn't happen until 2016 after he shocked the world with his presidential win.

The magazine's lack of reciprocation towards Trump's affection was a sore spot for the politician for many years, so much so that he had a fake Time cover made to hang at his golf clubs, which praised his reality TV show, "The Apprentice." He also bad-mouthed the magazine on a few occasions out of spite. "I knew last year that @TIME Magazine lost all credibility when they didn't include me in their Top 100..." the president wrote in a disgruntled 2012 tweet. He complained again in 2013, writing, "The Time Magazine list of the 100 Most Influential People is a joke and stunt of a magazine that will, like Newsweek, soon be dead. Bad list!"

He quickly changed his tune when he made the cover in 2015, however. Suddenly, Time wasn't that bad after all, and Trump called it "a great honor" to be featured. Of course, he was thrilled when he finally got that prestigious 2016 nod, and again when he was named person of the year in 2024.

Donald Trump might not be big on technology, but he still has the attention span of a social media addict — at least, that's what the people who have worked with him say. Trump has made headlines for the way he handles the President's Daily Brief (PDB) on more than one occasion. In 2018, it was made known that staff had to go to extremes to get him to pay attention to it, adding visual aids to the brief to keep the president engaged, who is known to avoid reading like the plague. At times, he preferred to have someone read the brief aloud rather than having to go to the trouble of reading it himself.

The creative way in which Trump's staff had to present the President's Daily Brief wasn't the only change that occurred when the controversial politician first made the White House his home. During former President Barack Obama's tenure, the daily brief went digital, with the president catching up on important topics on his iPad. Not Trump. Instead, things went back to how they used to be — paper briefings (with all those engagement-friendly visual aids, of course). And that was on the days Trump actually read them.

He made waves when he told Fox News during his first term that he finds the daily brief boring and instead opts to get it once a week while his staff receive it daily. "You know, I'm, like, a smart person. I don't have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day," Trump said (via PBS). Fast forward to 2025, and Trump seemed to be ignoring the PDB altogether, having only read 12 by the time he was four months into his presidency.

Donald Trump might have an aversion to reading, but as far as the actual news is concerned (especially if there's a chance he or someone he knows will be in it), he still prefers a good old printed newspaper as opposed to getting the latest from his Google News feed. The only scrolling the president did during his first term was on X. "He's an analog guy," a Trump advisor told Axios in 2017. The manner in which Trump crafts his social media posts should therefore come as no surprise — the president himself told the outlet that he often didn't type his tweets himself, that he dictated them to staff instead (imagining Trump telling staffers which words to put in all caps is rather amusing).

Trump is reportedly as addicted to newspapers as he is cable news. "He would literally sit on Air Force One for, like, 12 hours and go through stacks of newspapers" a former senior administration official told Politico in 2019. "It was amazing how religious he was about his newspapers." The president's papers of choice? The Washington Post, the New York Times, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal. When he sees something he finds interesting, or wants to respond to, Trump tears out the page, writes some notes in the margins, and lets his staff handle the rest. He also had the habit of sending people signed copies of newspapers if there was a story in there about them that he approved or if someone wrote something he enjoyed reading. One White House insider added, "He's not a fan of the New York Times or the Washington Post but he never misses a day reading them."

Donald Trump has let his technophobia show on a few occasions, and as of 2024, he still didn't have an email address. Given how set the president is in his ways, one can assume that this might very well still be the case. Trump doesn't touch a computer — the closest he gets to using modern technology is his cellphone. But lo and behold: In 2023, the president finally started texting. It was such a news-worthy occurrence that even the New York Times rushed to let the world know, the headline reading, "OMG. Trump Has Started Texting." OMG indeed.

Trump's lack of a digital footprint has served him well, especially while he was under investigation for the January 6 insurrection. There was no digital trail to follow, no concrete way to discern what the president was thinking or communicating on that day, or who he was communicating it to. His son, Donald Trump Jr., said during his testimony in front of the January 6 Committee that the politician "doesn't text."

Of course, Trump has proclaimed himself to be a tech genius regardless, once bragging that, when it comes to technology, he's more knowledgeable than any of his peers. This from the man who calls an iPad "the flat one," according to former ABC White House reporter Tara Palmeri. Trump took to X in 2019 to write that plane accidents are increasing because they "are becoming far too complex to fly." He also believes that wind turbines are an ineffective way of generating electricity. "When the wind stops blowing, that's the end of your electric," he once said during a speech (via People). It appears the president is also unfamiliar with an age-old technology called batteries.