By Donald Trump is very clear: Donald Trump doesn't drink.
"I don’t drink beer," Trump told reporters back in October last year, around the time a certain Supreme Court justice was defending his love of beer in a terrifying manner. "I’ve never had a beer. And I’m not saying good or bad, some people like it. I just choose not to do that for a lot of reasons."
In a separate interview at the same time, Trump said: "Whenever they’re looking for something, I’m going to say, 'I never had a glass of alcohol'. Can you imagine, if I had, what a mess I’d be? Would I be the - I'd be the world's worst."
A fair assessment, though that'd be the same of anyone who drank a refreshing glass of pure alcohol. Some have suggested that the difficulties Trump's brother Fred had with alcohol addiction influenced his stated decision not to drink, but now bartenders from around New York have suggested that Trump's teetotalism hasn't been quite as strict as he suggested.
One, named Laraby, says in a new book about Trump's rise, The Method To The Madness, that Trump would come into the New York nightspot Spy with modelling agent John Casablancas and drink beers - "usually Miller Lite or Bud Lite" - over the course of an evening. "He drank his beer out of the bottle," Laraby says in an extract published by Vice. "He would nurse his beer. Even if they were there for hours, he would have three beers at the most."
Michael Ault, who owned Spy Bar and another Manhattan hangout, Chaos, remembers it slightly differently: "He was drinking champagne or vodka, a liquor and not really a beer so much, but I could be wrong on the beer, I just never saw him with one."
Hmm. Trump usually toasts at official dinners with Diet Coke these days, but it did always seem quite extraordinary that he'd managed to go to so many Studio 54 parties without even accidentally ingesting something.
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