Donald Trump Will Eat Steak with Ketchup Overseas

From Town & Country

Donald Trump loves to talk about food.

When he spoke to a Fox Business reporter about his decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria, he set the scene by describing what he was eating while at dinner at Mar-a-Lago: "I was sitting at the table. We had finished dinner and we were now having dessert. We had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen. President Xi was enjoying it." (The president mistook Syria for Iraq before being corrected.)

When the president agreed to a televised interview with Lester Holt to discuss his firing of FBI director James Comey, he noted that he and Comey had sat down over a meal. “We had a very nice dinner and at that time, he told me you are not under investigation, which I knew anyway.” (He also called Comey a "showboat" and a "grandstander.")

And while the besieged president may be struggling with many aspects of the presidency, one thing he clearly loves about his new role are the culinary perks. He has a button on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office that, when pushed, summons a butler with a coke. And a recent Time magazine story about life in the White House revealed that he gets extra sauce with his chicken and "two scoops of vanilla ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, instead of the single scoop for everyone else."

Presumably the White House kitchen has also learned to cook Trump's steak the way he likes it. “It would rock on the plate, it was so well done” is how Trump’s butler described his employer’s preference to the New York Times.

Which brings us to the president's first trip abroad. When Trump "sits down for dinner in Saudi Arabia, caterers have ensured that his favorite meal - steak with a side of ketchup - will be offered alongside the traditional local cuisine," the AP reports.

Look, everyone is entitled to their food preferences. We all like what we like. But when you're invited to someone's home turf, don't we all know better than to demand a special meal? Barring food allergies or other exigent circumstances, you eat what's put in front of you and compliment the host. To do otherwise is just bad manners.

It's also small-minded and limited. If we all ate that way, American cuisine would be confined to bland chicken and hamburgers. Which, thank goodness, it's not. "If no one ever was adventurous, non-Japanese Americans would never have made sushi an everyday, familiar item," says Paul Freedman, a Yale professor who specializes in the history of cuisine. "Even spaghetti was dismissed as unfamiliar and un-American around 1900."

Perhaps the commander-in-chief hasn't demanded these special accommodations - they've been offered to him the way foreign leaders are tailoring their speeches to suit this president's un-wonky sensibility. Foreign Policy has reported that NATO leaders have been advised to "limit talks to two to four minutes at a time" so as not to tax Trump's "notoriously short attention span," and the Times reports that embassies in Washington have sent back notes to their governments back home "suggesting how to handle a mercurial, strong-willed leader with no real experience on the world stage, a preference for personal diplomacy and a taste for glitz."

The president may plan to "strongly [protect] American interests," as he tweeted today of his overseas plan. But we'd argue it's not in our nation's best interests to cement our reputations as ugly Americans. Good diplomats - and good guests - are respectful of their hosts and curious about the traditions, cultures, and, yes, cuisines of the places they visit. At home, Trump may prefer his own bed (or the beds at one of his many properties) but when he represents us out in the world, it should be as an adult who tries new foods, listens closely (for as long as his hosts want to speak), and compliments the chef.

If we ask our kids to do it, we should ask the president to do it as well.

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