Biden removes Trump's Diet Coke button from White House desk

New US President Joe Biden only took office on Wednesday but he has already made some changes in the White House's Oval Office. One of them is removing a button from the desk in the office that his predecessor Donald Trump used to order Diet Cokes. 

The device was kept on the Resolute desk by Trump but did not appear in any pictures of Biden’s first day in the White House. Trump first showed off the wooden call box in 2017 interviews with The Associated Press and the Financial Times. 

The former President showed reporters that time that a White House butler would arrive with a Diet Coke for him when he pushed the red button atop a small wooden box. Trump reportedly drank up to 12 cans of Diet Coke per day.

On Thursday, a political commentator with London outlet The Times, Tom Newton Dunn, reported that the new President has already removed the red button in the White House workspace that Trump relied on from early in his tenure.  "When … I interviewed Donald Trump in 2019, we became fascinated by what the little red button did," Newton Dunn wrote, in part, on Twitter. "Eventually Trump pressed it, and a butler swiftly brought in a Diet Coke on a silver platter. It's gone now."

According to AP, presidents have used the button for decades. 

Former White House aide Chris Sims wrote about the button in his 2019 book "Team of Vipers". Sims said that the twice-impeached President would prank visitors by hitting the button and suggesting it was related to the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, reported the Independent.

“Out of nowhere, he’d suddenly press the button,” wrote Sims. “Not sure what to do, guests would look at one another with raised eyebrows. Moments later, a steward would enter the room carrying a glass filled with Diet Coke on a silver platter, and Trump would burst out laughing.”

There is another change Biden has made to his Oval Office, reported NBCDFW. The décor now includes a picture of his late son, Beau Biden, who died in 2015 at age 46 of brain cancer. The image, accompanied by other family photos including one of First Lady Jill Biden, stands just behind the Resolute Desk.