Ex-White House Chef Reveals Which President Was the 'Hardest' to Cook For: "There Was Not a Lot..."

President-elect Donald Trump's love for junk food is not hidden. “If it’s vegetables he doesn't want to see them. He's a red-blooded meat-eating American,” his ex-butler Tony Senecal told Inside Edition in an exclusive in 2016. Though Trump has been expected to make healthier dietary choices as he prepares to return to the White House for a second term in January, former White House chef Andre Rush told Politico that cooking for the president-elect was the 'hardest' since he and his wife, Melania Trump, have very particular tastes in food. 

“The hardest was Trump. There was not a lot of diversity to it. As a chef, you want to be able to explore and have more fun. With him and [Melania], it was black and white.” Melania prefers more organic and Donald swears by his daily fill of McDonald's meals, "He’s known for not drinking water. He’s always been on his soda trip. That’s all he drinks, 24/7. He’s been living off it and says, 'It hasn’t hurt me yet.' But that’s a cliche we all go through until it hurts you," Rush said while dishing out Trump's obsession with Coke. Additionally, he verified the White House rumor that the Republican leader had a button that would summon someone to bring him a Diet Coke. 

Rush went on to say that if he ever cooked for the President-elect again, he would 'manipulate' him into choosing healthier meal options. "Let’s say he wants a burger. Instead of doing full grounds, I’ll go half and half with turkey and put a little bit more [flavor] profiles inside of it. If he wants bacon on it, instead of pork, I’d use beef bacon, which is more crispy and more healthy. I’d make sweet potato fries or battered fries made out of vegetables with a homemade dipping sauce. There are a couple of different ways I would manipulate his diet." The chef also noted that cooking for Barack Obama was the 'easiest' because "they had the garden and wanted to get everything from the garden."

When it comes to Donald's eating habits, his love for junk food is well documented. “It was pretty much 'Tony, bring me a cheeseburger. And don't forget the ketchup,’ Donald's ex-butler recalled. As per The New York Times, Donald favors See's Candies, Diet Coke, spaghetti, Caesar salads, burgers, and meatloaf. He also avoids alcohol, tea, and coffee. 

Russ Schriefer, a Republican strategist, stated that Donald also represented the average American when it came to dietary habits: “There’s nothing more American and more of-the-people than fast food." Schriefer added, “It is the peculiarity of the brand that he’s able to be on his multimillion-dollar jet with the gold and black branding and colors, and at the same time eat KFC — and what makes it perfect is he does it all with a knife and fork while reading The Wall Street Journal.” According to reports, the Republican leader even proposed eliminating state dinners to cut costs. “We should be eating a hamburger on a conference table, and we should make better deals with China and others and forget the state dinners,” he said.

Donald, who values cleanliness and is also a known germophobe, prefers fast food since it promises a certain level of hygiene. “One bad hamburger, you can destroy McDonald’s. One bad hamburger, you take Wendy’s and all these other places and they’re out of business,” he said during the CNN town hall debate in 2016. “I’m a very clean person. I like cleanliness, and I think you’re better off going there than maybe someplace that you have no idea where the food’s coming from. It’s a certain standard.”