President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Coca-Cola would switch from using high-fructose corn syrup to real cane sugar in its drinks. The president made his announcement on Truth Social, but people online were skeptical that Trump was telling the truth, and with good reason. Trump lies constantly.
“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” Trump wrote Wednesday. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”
A spokesperson for Coca-Cola acknowledged the president’s statement in an email to Gizmodo but didn’t exactly confirm Trump’s claims, instead using the kind language you deploy when you’re trying not to contradict the most powerful person in the world but have no intention of completely revamping your product line.
“We appreciate President Trump’s enthusiasm for our iconic Coca‑Cola brand. More details on new innovative offerings within our Coca‑Cola product range will be shared soon,” a Coca-Cola spokesperson said in a statement.
Coca-Cola also defended the use of high-fructose corn syrup in a tweet Wednesday on X. “The name sounds complex, but high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—which we use to sweeten some of our beverages—is actually just a sweetener made from corn. It’s safe; it has about the same number of calories per serving as table sugar and is metabolized in a similar way by your body,” the company wrote.
The use of high-fructose corn syrup is controversial, though the FDA has previously said it found evidence that it’s more dangerous than cane sugar. Coca-Cola noted that other organizations have asserted this as well, even if the consumption of sugary drinks in any form can lead to a host of serious health problems.
“The American Medical Association has confirmed that HFCS is no more likely to contribute to obesity than table sugar or other full-calorie sweeteners,” the company continued. “Please be assured that Coca-Cola brand soft drinks do not contain any harmful substances. All Coca-Cola brand products are wholesome beverages manufactured in compliance with the federal law governing food safety and labeling, the laws of all the states, and the laws of over 200 countries throughout the world where they are sold.”
Why would Trump declare that Coke was changing its product if that wasn’t the case? There are, of course, a few possibilities. One is that Trump just enjoys lying and feeling powerful. And Trump knows that the so-called Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement is a newly important part of his base since he brought on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Trump often tries to will his own version of reality into existence by simply declaring things through posts on Truth Social. Trump frequently tries this tactic with trade deals, for instance.
President Trump also knows that right-wing media will just parrot his declarations as fact, as Fox News did when its X account proclaimed Trump “celebrates a new win for the ‘MAHA’ movement” and insisted “@CocaCola announces it’s switching from artificial flavoring to real cane sugar.” Again, Coke announced no such thing. It was just Trump.
But some people believe it may be part of a coordinated plan to distract the public from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Epstein died in a New York jail during Trump’s first term, and the entire MAGA movement has been clamoring to see the so-called Epstein files. Trump has failed to deliver that for his base, even claiming that anyone who still cared about Epstein was involved in a “hoax,” calling them his “past supporters.”
Democrats have pounced on the controversy, suggesting that Trump’s announcement about Coke was just a new way to distract his followers. California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote a joking response to Trump’s post on Wednesday: “Oh thank god! I’ve totally forgotten about the Epstein files now!”
The other option: Trump is just losing his mind and doesn’t know what he’s saying. Support for that theory came this week when Trump told a bizarre story about his uncle, the late John Trump, who was a professor at MIT. The president insisted that his uncle had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, and that he had discussions about this before John Trump died in 1985. The problem is that the public didn’t know the Unabomber’s identity until he was arrested in 1996, and Kaczynski never went to MIT.
Sometimes it’s really hard to tell when Trump is intentionally lying. It’s entirely possible that the 79-year-old’s brain is just melting.
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