The McDonald’s Impact Summit at the Westin Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 17, 2025, was a room full of franchise operators and executives expecting a friendly speech. What they got was a customer complaint. President Donald Trump told the company its most famous fish sandwich needs more sauce, and he did not sugarcoat it. “I like the fish. I like it. You could do a little bit more tartar sauce, so please,” he said, adding that he hates having to ask for extra. Not the Big Mac. Not the Quarter Pounder. The Filet-O-Fish is the one he called out by name.
That is the sentimental favorite. The actual order, the one that gets loaded onto the plane, is a stack: a Filet-O-Fish, a Quarter Pounder, a Big Mac, hot fries, and an orange soda. And according to the man who watched him eat it, two of those sandwiches did not stay separate.
The Frankenstein Sandwich On Trump Force One
Republican National Committee chair Joe Gruters described the scene on the “Chambers, Changes & Conversations” podcast in October 2025, recalling what he saw while traveling with Trump during the 2024 campaign. “He had hot fries waiting for him from McDonald’s. Then he had a Filet-O-Fish, a Quarter Pounder, and a Big Mac, and I think he combined two of them,” Gruters said.
He never said which two. That is the part fast food obsessives have been chewing on ever since. Quarter Pounder patty slid into a Big Mac? Fish fillet stacked onto beef? Gruters left it hanging.
Gruters also said he saw Trump drinking orange soda, though he did not say which one. McDonald’s typically pours Fanta orange and also sells HI-C Orange Lavaburst, so take your pick.
Gruters did not pretend he kept up. He said he tried two of the sandwiches himself and was “sick as a dog” for 24 hours. He called the whole experience unique, then suggested McDonald’s ought to be paying Trump.
Why The Filet-O-Fish Keeps Showing Up
Almost every documented version of this order, going back nearly a decade, has a Filet-O-Fish in it. The sandwich itself is almost aggressively plain: a square of wild-caught Alaska pollock in breadcrumb batter, half a slice of American cheese, tartar sauce, steamed bun. That half slice of cheese is not a mistake or a cost cut, it is how the sandwich has been built since it went national in 1965.
Which explains the sauce request. There is not a lot going on in a Filet-O-Fish besides tartar, so a thin swipe of it reads as dry. Anybody who has ordered one at 9 p.m. and found a sad smear on the bun knows exactly what he was complaining about in that ballroom.
The 2017 Version: Two Big Macs, Two Fish, And A Malted
The original leak of the order came from inside the campaign. In the 2017 book “Let Trump Be Trump,” former aides David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski wrote that the order was two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish and a chocolate malted.
They also summed up the in-flight menu in a line that has followed him around ever since: “On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and Diet Coke.”
Four sandwiches and a malted is a dare.
Then The Order Got Smaller
In his 2022 memoir “Breaking History,” son-in-law Jared Kushner put a leaner version in print: a Big Mac, a Filet-O-Fish, fries and a vanilla shake, the order that told him Trump was recovering from COVID-19 in 2020. Same two sandwiches, half the count, different shake flavor, plus fries that the 2017 lineup never mentioned.
Line the three versions up and the pattern is obvious. The Big Mac and the Filet-O-Fish are the constant. Everything else moves around: how many, what the drink is, whether fries show up. If you want the real “Trump order,” it is one beef sandwich and one fish sandwich eaten together, and the rest is negotiable.
The Quarter Pounder is the newer addition, showing up in Gruters’ account of the 2024 campaign plane. Three sandwiches, two of them welded together, with fries waiting hot on arrival.
The 30 Minutes He Will Not Let Anyone Forget
On Oct. 20, 2024, Trump put on an apron and worked the fry station at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, dropping baskets into the oil and scooping fries into boxes behind the counter. The photos went everywhere.
A year later he was still working the bit. “I’m honored to stand before you as the very first former McDonald’s fry cook ever to become President of the United States,” he told the summit crowd. “And I actually was there for about 30 minutes, and that was 30 minutes longer than Kamala was there, despite her job at McDonald’s.”
He also thanked the McDonald’s employee who, he said, tipped off his campaign that then-Vice President Kamala Harris never worked for the chain.
The loyalty pitch came next. “I’m also one of your all-time most loyal customers,” he said, telling the room that other politicians fly around on campaign planes stocked with expensive catering while on his plane “we served only McDonald’s almost every time.” He thanked the company for cutting prices on its most popular items.
The Big Mac He Talked RFK Jr. Into
In November 2024, on “The Joe Polish Show,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of Trump’s diet, “The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad,” and compared some of it to “poison.”
At the summit, Trump told the room he got the Health and Human Services secretary to eat a Big Mac during the campaign and that “he loved it,” joking that Kennedy did not want that publicized.
There is a photo from after the 2024 election of Trump eating McDonald’s aboard the plane with Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and Kennedy, House Speaker Mike Johnson standing beside them. In front of Trump: a Big Mac, a Filet-O-Fish, fries, and what looks like a bottle of orange Fanta off to the side. Same two sandwiches. Always the same two sandwiches.
The Menu Brag And The Other Weird Rules
During a 2023 stop in East Palestine, Ohio, Trump stood at a McDonald’s counter and told the cashiers: “So, I know this menu better than you do. I probably know it better than anybody in here.” He then said he would buy food for everyone in the restaurant and for the local fire and police departments.
Politico reported that in the White House he liked his Quarter Pounder with cheese with extra ketchup and no pickles. On a Quarter Pounder, the pickle is half the point.
The rest of the fast food habits are their own category. He has been photographed eating KFC with a knife and fork. He starred in a 1995 Pizza Hut commercial for stuffed crust and has said he scrapes the toppings off and never eats the dough. His Oval Office has a Diet Coke button, and he was reported to drink about 12 a day. In 2021 he called for a boycott of Coca-Cola over its criticism of Georgia’s voting law, then was photographed days later with what appeared to be a Diet Coke on his desk.
Why He Picks The Golden Arches Over A Nice Restaurant
Trump has explained the preference himself, and it is not about flavor. He told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in 2016 that he likes knowing what he is getting. “I think you’re better off going there than maybe someplace that you have no idea where the food’s coming from,” he said. “It’s a certain standard.”
In the same answer he explained why a chain cannot afford to get it wrong: “One bad hamburger, you take Wendy’s and all these other places and they’re out of business.” Whatever you think of the man, that is a real argument. A national chain has more to lose from a bad sandwich than a one-off place does.
Is The Order Actually Worth Copying?
Three sandwiches and a tray of fries is not a lunch, it is a party platter for one. Skip that part. But the two-sandwich core is better than it sounds, and the fish sandwich with extra tartar is the single most useful thing in this whole story. Ask for it at the counter, not in the app, and you will get an actual spoonful instead of a streak.
On price, a Big Mac, a Whopper and a Wendy’s Dave’s Single sit close together on most menus, though prices vary by location. The Whopper is the bigger sandwich and Wendy’s wins on beef with its fresh, never frozen square patties. McDonald’s edge is the app deals, which is where the real price difference lives.
Our verdict: the president is right about one thing and wrong about another. He is right that the Filet-O-Fish is underrated and needs more tartar sauce. He is wrong to pull the pickles off a Quarter Pounder. And whatever two sandwiches he welded together on that plane, somebody should make Joe Gruters tell us which ones.
