Time to head over to our master list of Republican presidential diet tips and add another dose of too-good-to-be-true advice (wildly optimistic tax plans are to presidential campaigns as wildly optimistic diet tips are to celebrity magazines). Donald Trump bragged to People last week that he’s lost 15 pounds on the campaign trail. He then shared his diet secret.
“I have lost weight because my events are so exciting,” he explains.*
It appears that Trump is powered by exhilaration-driven photosynthesis, in which his body converts the cheers and media attention created by his many utterances of “big, beautiful door” and “haters and losers” into chemical energy.
“When I’m done I don’t want to eat,” he adds. “But I could see how it could go the other way for some people. That’s only because their events are boring.” One assumes he is speaking about certain low-energy presidential candidates who have not figured out how to replace meals with delicious applause and filling adrenaline rushes and have been forced to renounce refined carbs instead.
“One of the reasons is I have big crowds and they’re very exciting stops,” Trump said. “And when you speak and you really are going at it, you tend to … I never thought about it, but speaking is almost a form of exercise.”
This year’s batch of presidential candidates aren’t the first Republicans to offer weight-loss tips — President William Howard Taft was asked about his diet all the time. After he left the White House, the New York Times asked him, “How did you manage to to reduce your weight so appreciably?” He responded, “By consulting a regular physician and not a quack.”
* This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. No doctor has yet recommended eating “the cheers of thousands of people who would like to deport every immigrant in the United States” for lunch as a weight-loss program.
