Former President Donald Trump used a call button in the Oval Office to order Diet Cokes from staff.
President Joe Biden initially moved the button off the Resolute desk during his first day in office.
But it appears the call button — which has been around for decades — is back.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
President Joe Biden has brought back a call button former President Donald Trump used to order Diet Cokes while sitting in the Oval Office after briefly removing it from the Resolute desk.
Photos from Monday show the call box sitting next to Biden’s phones, in the same place Trump placed the box when he would sit at there.
The call box was not seen in pictures of Biden on his first day in office last week.
Trump used the wooden call box throughout his entire presidency, and first showed it off in 2017 interviews with The Associated Press and the Financial Times, during which he told reporters: “Everyone does get a little nervous when I press that button.”
The call box has been around for decades and other recent presidents have also been pictured in the White House with it, including Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
Video: How Will Legacy Of Trump Administration Impact Republican Party? (CBS Dallas)
How Will Legacy Of Trump Administration Impact Republican Party?
UP NEXT
It can be used to call White House staff, Secret Service Agents, and other officials, but Trump appeared to have told his staff that if he pressed the button, he wanted a Diet Coke.
It’s unclear if Biden has a specific use for the button, or if it will be used more generally.
Like presidents before him, Biden also changed a number of decorations upon entering the Oval Office.
Biden replaced a portrait of President Andrew Jackson with a portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and opted to feature a number of progressives and activists through the room, including Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the labor leader and civil-rights activist Cesar Chavez.
He also chose to display portraits of Benjamin Franklin, President Thomas Jefferson, and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.
China ratcheted up activity in Taiwan airspace on Sunday by flying 15 fighter jets between mainland Taiwan and the Pratas Islands in the South China Sea, a report said.
Reuters, which cited Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, reported that the jets included six J-10 fighters, two SU-30s and other military planes. A day earlier, China flew eight bombers and four fighters into the same airspace, the report said.
The show of force was seen by some observers as a remarkable step by Beijing during the first week of President Biden’s term in office. Nikkei Asia reported that it is not uncommon for China to send aircraft into the region, but it is rare for the country to send more than 10 at once, and for two consecutive days.
Ned Price, a spokesman from the U.S. State Department, said Washington “notes with concern the pattern of ongoing PRC [People’s Republic of China] attempts to intimidate its neighbors, including Taiwan.”
“We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure against Taiwan and instead engage in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected representatives,” he said in the statement.
The Reuters report said that Taiwan’s air force responded to the incursion. Taiwan considers itself a sovereign state. Beijing’s move was aimed at pressuring the government of President Tsai Ing-wen into caving to its demand that she recognize Taiwan as a part of Chinese territory.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier team entered the South China Sea on Sunday to exercise “freedom of the seas,” and the Biden administration has said its commitment to Taiwan is “rock-solid,” the Reuters report said.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Antony Blinken, Biden’s choice to be secretary of state, pledged to repair damage done to the State Department and America’s image abroad over the past four years while continuing a tougher approach to China.
Hsiao Bi-him, Taiwan’s de-facto ambassador to the U.S., was also invited to Biden’s inauguration, which the BBC reported is a sign of the new White House’s commitment.
China imposed sanctions Wednesday on more than two dozen former Trump administration officials, including outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, just as Biden was sworn into office.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., argued on Sunday that sanctions against former Trump administration officials are a “dangerous” and “insidious escalation of China’s effort to influence American policy.”
Fox News’ Talia Kaplan and the Associated Press contributed to this report
Donald Trump was at his Florida resort on Saturday, beginning post-presidency life while Joe Biden settled into the White House. But in Washington and beyond, the chaos of the 45th president’s final days in office continued to throw out damaging aftershocks.
In yet another earth-shaking report, the New York Times said Trump plotted with an official at the Department of Justice to fire the acting attorney general, then force Georgia Republicans to overturn his defeat in that state.
Former acting US defense secretary Christopher Miller, meanwhile, made an extraordinary admission, telling Vanity Fair that when he took the job in November, he had three goals: “No military coup, no major war and no troops in the street.”
The former special forces officer added: “The ‘no troops in the street’ thing changed dramatically about 14.30 [on 6 January]. So that one’s off [the list].”
That was the day a mob incited by Trump smashed its way into the US Capitol, in some cases allegedly looking for lawmakers to kidnap or kill. More than 100 arrests have been made over the riot, which also saw Trump impeached a second time.
A deal between Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate, announced on Friday night, means Trump’s second trial will begin in the week of 8 February. If convicted, a prospect unlikely given his grip on his party but not impossible given statements by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, Trump will most likely be barred from running for office again.
The president’s persistent and possibly illegal efforts to overturn his loss to Biden in Georgia had been widely reported. Had he been successful, he would not have gained enough electoral votes to overturn his overall defeat.
On the day Trump’s supporters broke into the Capitol, leaving five people dead, 147 Republicans in the House and Senate lodged objections to electoral college results. That attempt to overturn the election also failed.
The law enforcement and Pentagon response to the Capitol riot has been questioned, regarding the ease with which security was breached and the time it took to get the national guard to the scene. One Capitol police officer died after confronting the rioters. Another gained national fame after leading attackers away from where lawmakers hid.
“We had meetings upon meetings,” Miller told Vanity Fair. “We were monitoring it. And we’re just like, ‘Please, God, please, God.’ Then the damn TV pops up and everybody converges on my office: [Joint Chiefs of Staff] chairman [Gen Mark Milley], Secretary of the Army [Ryan] McCarthy, the crew just converges.
“We had already decided we’re going to need to activate the national guard, and that’s where the fog and friction comes in.”
Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist installed as Miller’s chief of staff – and accused of obstructing the Biden transition – said: “The DC mayor finally said, ‘OK, I need more.’ Then the Capitol police … a federal agency and the Secret Service made the request … and we did it. And then we just went to work.”
Miller called accusations the Pentagon was slow to respond “complete horseshit” and said: “I gotta tell you, I cannot wait to go to the Hill and have those conversations with senators and representatives … I know when something doesn’t smell right, and I know when we’re covering our asses. Been there. I know for an absolute fact that historians are going to look … at the actions that we did on that day and go, ‘Those people had their game together.’”
By the time of the inauguration, two weeks later, 25,000 guard members were in the capital, an unprecedented display which put central Washington on lockdown. Troops also guarded state capitols against pro-Trump protests and plots that did not transpire.
As the Capitol riot failed to overturn the election, so, according to the Times, Trump’s alleged plot against acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen did not work out either.
The report detailed “stunned silence” among DoJ leaders as they were told of moves by Trump and “unassuming lawyer” Jeffrey Clark to “cast doubt on the election results and bolster … legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians”.
Rosen took over as acting attorney general after the resignation of William Barr, who was widely seen as a Trump crony but who crossed the president by saying there was no evidence of the election fraud he baselessly alleged, claims which were repeatedly thrown out of court.
Melania Trump leaves Donald Trump alone in front of the cameras – video
Georgia Republicans including Governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger – the recipient of a wheedling and bullying call from Trump – also refused to accede to the president’s demands.
According to the Times, DoJ leaders decided that if Rosen was fired and replaced by Clark, they would resign en masse.
“For some,” the paper reported, “the plan brought to mind the so-called Saturday Night Massacre of the Nixon era, where Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy resigned rather than carry out the president’s order to fire the special prosecutor investigating him.”
Nixon resigned before he could be impeached over the Watergate scandal. After the Capitol attack, Trump refused to resign. Vice-President Mike Pence refused to invoke the 25th amendment, which provides for the removal of a president deemed unfit for office.
Out of office, Trump is vulnerable to investigations at federal and state levels. On Friday, a Washington Examiner reporter found him “at his regular table in the grill room of the Trump international golf club” in West Palm Beach.
“We’ll do something, but not just yet,” the president reportedly said, his first comment since leaving the White House, before an aide “swooped in and swiftly, but politely, ended the interaction”.
Ezra Cohen, another Trump appointee at the Pentagon, told Vanity Fair: “The president threw us under the bus. And when I say ‘us,’ I don’t mean only us political appointees or only us Republicans. He threw America under the bus. He caused a lot of damage to the fabric of this country.”
