Donald Trump spotted with ‘Coke bottle’ two days after urging fans to boycott it
Former President Donald Trump was spotted with what appeared to be a Diet Coke bottle on his desk – just two days after urging his followers to boycott the soft drink for opposing Georgia’s new voting law.
The bottle that looked like Diet Coke, also known as Coca-Cola Light, sat obscured behind Trump’s landline phone as he smiled for a photo at his desk in Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s former senior White House adviser Stephen Miller tweeted the photo with himself standing beside the 45th president and the caption, ‘Just had a terrific meeting with President Trump!’
Trump had the apparent Coke bottle within reach only a couple days after calling for boycotts of Coca-Cola and other companies that have criticized Georgia’s newly signed voting law.
‘Boycott Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS, and Merck’, Trump said in a statement Saturday. ‘Don’t go back to their products until they relent. We can play the game better than them’.
The law signed on March 25 made various changes to elections in the state including requiring photo ID for voting absentee, limiting ballot dropbox access and expanding early voting days. While Republicans contend that the law was needed to restore confidence in elections, Democrats claim it restricts voter access particularly for people of color.
Coca-Cola chairman and CEO James Quincey last Wednesday called Georgia’s law ‘unacceptable’ and ‘wrong’.
‘It’s a step backwards and it does not promote principles we have stood for in Georgia around broad access to voting, around voter convenience, about ensuring election integrity’, Quincey said during CNBC’s Power Lunch.
The former president’s critics slammed him for calling for a Coke boycott while possibly continuing to enjoy the soda himself.
‘Trump sending out a demand for his followers to boycott Coke then getting caught trying to hide a bottle in a picture with his favorite vampire is so on brand it’s like an “Inception” level of layers of Trump brand’, tweeted Fred Wellman, executive director of the Trump-opposing Lincoln Project.
While president, Trump had a red button to summon staff to bring him a Diet Coke and drank a dozen of them daily, The New York Times reported.
Despite his love for Coke, Trump has made some bizarre statements about the drink.
In 2012, he tweeted, ‘I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke’, and, ‘The Coca Cola company is not happy with me—that’s okay, I’ll still keep drinking that garbage’.
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