The Diet Coke Button, Unfortunately, Rules

No one is happy about admitting this

We did it. We made it to inauguration day, which shouldn’t be a huge deal but let’s be honest, it felt a little touch and go for a while there. The Biden-Harris administration’s to-do list is a mile long, but they’ve already started making changes. We’re gonna skip over Biden firing three Trump appointees who are the embodiment of evil, reinstating DACA protections, and rejoining the Paris climate accord and move right on to the stuff that really matters, which is the news that President Biden has removed the Diet Coke button.

“What is the Diet Coke button” you ask?

Well, first of all, apparently this is not actual “news” and was covered at the very beginning of Trump’s presidency. I have no memory of that whatsoever, though, either because I just never saw any of the coverage or because the subsequent four year onslaught of absolute fucking hell that ensued took priority in my brain. In any case, I’m definitely not the only one who has just now been made aware of the Diet Coke button.

The Diet Coke button is (or rather, was) a discreet red button atop an inconspicuous wooden box that sat on the Oval Office desk, and when President Trump pressed said button a butler would arrive swiftly with a glass filled with Diet Coke on a silver platter.

If someone had told me four years ago that that’s a sentence I would someday type I probably would have responded, “Is it crack?? Are you smoking crack?? Because it sounds like you’re smoking crack.”

You probably have questions. I have questions. Who was assigned to the Diet Coke button? Did they have other duties or was that their exclusive post? What was the hiring process like? Was there a special, Diet-Coke-Only mini fridge? Just how extensive is the therapy they’re for sure now going through after spending years delivering Diet Coke to Donald Trump and reflecting on the life choices that led them there during every walk to the Oval Office? I would watch the shit out of a 3-part doc-series solely about the people who manned the Diet Coke button for four years, but we’re probably not going to get one so we don’t have many answers, but we do have one undeniable fact. I hate that I’m going to say this.

Sigh.

The Diet Coke button rules.

I’m not happy about it, but it rules. Personally I hate Diet Coke, but the fact that there was an official button on a goddamn wood-finish box that could summon essentially a Diet Coke genie is, unfortunately, cool as fuck. Like that is some Scrooge McDuck shit. That is what middle schooler career fantasies are made of. That’s the American dream, baby. I understand now how people get addicted to power, because this is fucking tight.

The only thing as indisputably true as the Diet Coke button kicks ass is that anyone who agrees that the Diet Coke button kicks ass, myself included, should never be in charge of the country.