Beautiful Virgin Islands

Thursday, Sep 03, 2026

Inside Biden’s Oval Office: no more Trump ‘Diet Coke button’

Inside Biden’s Oval Office: no more Trump ‘Diet Coke button’

All presidents tweak the Oval Office decor at the start of their terms to reflect their personal tastes and to telegraph broader messages to the public.

A button former president Donald Trump used to order Diet Cokes while sitting at the Resolute Desk in the White House has apparently been moved since President Joe Biden took office.

Trump first showed off the wooden call box in 2017 interviews with the Associated Press and the Financial Times. He showed reporters that with a push of a red button, a White House butler would bring him a glass of soda in the Oval Office.

In the years after, Trump was pictured regularly with the rectangular wooden box on the desk, right next to his phones.


US President Joe Biden at the Resolute Desk.


The call button is not new and isn’t only used for ordering fizzy drinks – President Barack Obama was once pictured with it on a table during a lunch with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

But Biden appears to have moved the call button off his desk.

Instead, photos of his desk on Biden’s first day of office show two phones, a coffee cup, a set of pens. It’s unclear where the call button went.


Presidents almost always redesign the Oval Office upon taking office, and the call button wasn’t the only thing Biden changed.

Biden replaced a portrait of President Andrew Jackson with a portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and opted to feature a number of progressives and activists through the room, including Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jnr, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, and labour leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez.

He also chose to display portraits of Benjamin Franklin, President Thomas Jefferson, and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.


A bust of Mexican-American labour leader Cesar Chavez with Biden family photos in the Oval Office.


The most visually striking change is Biden’s choice of a deep blue rug, with the presidential seal in the middle, that was last used by President Bill Clinton, to replace a light coloured rug laid down by Trump. Biden is also using Clinton’s deep gold draperies.

Biden is keeping the Resolute desk, so named because it was built using oak from the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute.


Portraits in the Oval Office.


The White House maintains a vast collection of furniture, paintings and other artefacts that they can choose from. Presidents are also allowed to borrow items from the Smithsonian and other museums.

The White House curator oversees everything, and the makeover is carried out in the hours after the outgoing president leaves the mansion and before the new president arrives.

Biden also replaced a row of military service flags Trump used to decorate the office with a single American flag and a flag with the presidential seal, both positioned behind his desk.

He also chose a tufted, dark brown leather chair instead of keeping the reddish brown desk chair Trump used.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
TSA Unveils Major Airport-Security Overhaul as It Drops Gold+ Privatization Plan
CIA Chief Warned Russia Against Attacking NATO in Secret Moscow Mission
Raheem Sterling Charged With Dangerous Driving After Lamborghini Crash
The Secret Dolly Parton Kept Until Her Death: "She Was Much Sicker Than She Let On"
Glacier Collapse, Not Earthquake, Triggered Deadly Nepal-Tibet Flood
Turnbull Warns AUKUS Could Leave Australia Without Promised Nuclear Submarines
California Billionaires Pour More Than $150 Million Into Fight Over Proposed Wealth Tax
German Broadcaster Goes Dark to Warn AfD Could End Its Saxony-Anhalt Service
Badenoch Plans Major Shadow Cabinet Reshuffle as Tories Struggle in Third Place
Prime Minister Andy Burnham to Give Ukraine Classified Storm Shadow Blueprints for Domestic Missile Production
UK Graduate Job Vacancies Plunge 45% to Lowest Levels on Record
Iranian Hackers Shut Down British Power Plant for Four Days in Landmark Cyber Attack
Novak Djokovic Reveals Relentless Self-Doubt and Rejects Retirement in New Documentary
Trump Imposes 50% Tariffs on Canadian Goods After Bilateral Trade Talks Collapse
Australia Combines Indigenous Fire Knowledge With Satellite Tech to Combat Catastrophic Wildfires
Father and Son Jailed in Scotland Over £900,000 Airport Cannabis Smuggling Operation
UK Fraud Reports Surge Sevenfold as Criminals Exploit QR Codes in Parking Meters and Phishing Emails
Brighton Thrash Aston Villa in Four-Goal Opening Half as Manchester City Trail Bournemouth
Erin Patterson Appeals Triple Murder Convictions After Hotel Mixed Sequestered Jury With Prosecution
The rise and fall of Hui Ka Yan, China’s richest man
Woke: Britain Considers Plain Packaging for Cigars as Specialist Shops Warn of Industry Collapse
Britain's Public-Service Productivity Remains Below 2019 as £80 Billion Output Gap Fuels WFH Debate
Mandelson Epstein Case in Jeopardy as U.S. Files Stay Out of Reach
Prince Harry and Six Others Ordered to Pay £9.5 Million After High Court Defeat
Petrol Bombs Set Luxury Cars Alight Outside Birmingham Wedding as Police Hunt Three Men
Bitcoin Surges Toward $80,000 as Short Squeeze and ETF Inflows Ignite Crypto Rally
Twenty-Nine US States Take Meta to Trial Over Alleged Child Addiction on Instagram and Facebook
Former Scottish National Party Executive Peter Murrell Jailed for Five Years Over £400,000 Embezzlement
Moderna and Merck's Personalized Cancer Vaccine Succeeds in Historic Late-Stage Melanoma Trial
Prince Harry and Meghan to Move Back to Britain With Their Children
England and Wales Have Fewer Than 1,800 Prison Places Left for Men
Suspected People Smuggler Arrested After Investigation Identified Him
Children's Doctors Warn That Vaping Can Lead Young People to Smoking
Hundreds of Thousands of Students Receive GCSE and Vocational Results Across England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Here Is What Can Never Happen in Your Country: Taiwan Is Giving Money to All Its People Because It Collected Too Much Tax
UK Inflation Rises to 2.9% as Energy Bills Jump
UK Issues New Conduct Guide for Asylum Seekers on Consent and Respect
A Sleepless Night on Wall Street: Nasdaq to Begin Nearly Round-the-Clock Trading
"The First in the World": 69-Year-Old Protested Artificial Intelligence—and Went to Jail
Ukraine's Ousted Defence Minister Calls for Wartime Presidential Election
China’s Lifelike AI Humans Move From Livestreams Into Real-World Service Roles
Sarah Ferguson Reportedly Retreats to Late Ex-Boyfriend's Swiss Chalet
Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez Sign Prenup Protecting Their Separate Fortunes
Thieves Steal Antonello da Messina Renaissance Masterpieces From Sicilian Museum
Better.com Founder Who Fired 900 Employees on Zoom Is Ousted as CEO
Italian Speed Camera Issues Nearly 32,000 Fines in 10 Weeks, Worth More Than €3 Million
AI Manager at San Francisco Store Recommends Firing Human Employee
Google Launches Pixel 11 With Gemini AI at the Center of Its Hardware Strategy
Reform UK Unveils Plan to Cut Welfare Spending by More Than £50 Billion a Year
Prime Minister Andy Burnham Praised Extinction Rebellion for Doing a 'Great Service'
×