Trump's 'explosive' fast-food populism
On Monday, President Donald Trump reversed his predecessor's plastic-straw removal policy. Credit: AP/Joshua A. Bickel
The MAGA cheerleading in the first three weeks of President Donald Trump’s comeback term adds up to a single rah-rah message proclaiming that he’s serving us like never before.
Any politician would love such a mantra. Purely as Republican advertising, it’s especially upbeat and useful for Trump right now as he pushes hard to expand his own power in Washington on several fronts.
The president has been spewing a blizzard of eye-catching orders, photo ops, tariffs, press releases and foreign demands. It’s a full-scale government public-relations offensive. But, we’re months away from knowing what’s priority, what’s posturing, and exactly what’s acceptable to the courts and Congress.
The self-generated spotlight won’t stray from Trump at this early moment. But we can judge the most resounding and positive of his public-relations performances.
First place must go — so far — to the straw edict. On Monday, he signed an executive order directing federal agencies to stop purchasing paper straws and ensure they aren’t provided in government buildings.
It is a tasty nugget for Trump that this reverses a plastic-straw removal policy imposed by his predecessor, Joe Biden, who saw it as a step to help halt plastic pollution and the potentially harmful, microscopic "nanoparticles" spread on land and sea. Politically, this isn’t some radical belief: India, China, and the European Union are banning single-use plastics including cups and straws.
Trump has long enjoyed tweaking environmental activists, as with his oft-repeated "wind-generators-kill-whales-and-cause-cancer" canard. But this time, unlike others, Trump actually has facts for an effective case against the plastic straw’s rival, the paper straw — many of which can leach potentially toxic "forever chemicals" into the environment.
But that argument isn’t the sole reason for the president’s latest show of fast-food populism.
For one thing, he regularly consumes the stuff. Trump's presentation as he signed the order in the Oval Office on Monday displayed the factually sloppy style that alienates detractors but amuses fans.
Before signing, Trump said paper-straw dissatisfaction was "number-one trending for three days or something ..." His nominee for commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, stood to one side, laughing.
"We’re going back to plastic straws," Trump said. "These things don’t work. I’ve had them many times and on occasion they break, they explode." He didn't explain the explosive properties of paper but added: "If something’s hot, they don’t last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation."
Trump not only famously consumes fast food but acts as a pitch man for the industry generally and one company in particular.
Remember him mocking opponent Kamala Harris for saying she once worked in a McDonald’s? That was on Oct. 20, when Trump donned an apron and "served" customers at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania.
The next month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — now Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary — was indoctrinated into the ad-hoc fast-food club on the "Trump Force One" campaign plane. He posed with a tray full of McDonald’s food in front of him and what appeared to be a napkin wrapping for plastic utensils. Kennedy has called his new boss' fast-food diet "poison."
Still described as an environmentalist in 2023, Kennedy complained Biden didn’t do enough to fight disposable plastics.
Performative exhibitions, rather than policy, are the show business of the nation’s capital. Trump’s plastic-straw revival has won him a happy meal of clicks, eyeballs and publicity.
Of course, he could just sip his beverage from a cup.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.