President Donald Trump thinks diet sodas are good for him, and that they prevent cancer, Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz told Donald Trump Jr. on his "Triggered" podcast.
"Bobby [Kennedy] and I usually run the meetings together," said Oz in a clip shared to X by TMZ. "So [Trump will] first start off with, you know, candy bars, that little candy jar he'll call it. He'll hit the red button, and in comes the diet soda pop, which is — your dad argues that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass if you pour it on grass, so therefore it must kill cancer cells inside the body."
At this, Trump Jr. started laughing, a confused look on his face.
"We were on Air Force One the other day, and I walk in there because he wants to talk about something, and he's got an orange soft drink on his desk," said Oz.
"Fanta, he drinks Fanta," chimed in Trump Jr.
"That's right," said Oz. "He's got a Fanta on the desk, and I say, are you kidding me? So he starts to, like, sheepishly grin, he goes, you know, this stuff's good for me. Kills cancer cells. And then he tells me, it's fresh-squeezed, so how bad could it be for you?" (Fanta is soda with orange flavoring and is not "fresh-squeezed" from anything.)
"But then, maybe he's onto something, because I know a lot of guys pushing 80," laughed Trump Jr.
There is a significant difference between a substance being toxic to cancer when cancer cells are submerged in it outside of the body, and a substance being able to treat or prevent cancer when taken into the body without also being toxic to healthy tissue and organs. Moreover, studies have broadly suggested that sugar-sweetened beverages actually increase rates of cancer, although a cancer link for artificial sweeteners used in diet sodas is much less conclusive.
This is not the first time Trump has speculated that a substance's toxicity might make it a good medicine. Famously, he asked during the height of the COVID pandemic whether, if bleach and disinfectant are so good at killing germs on household surfaces, people could just inject them into their bodies.