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The 9 obsessions Donald Trump just can’t quit
From show tunes to steam power, these are the president’s most persistent preoccupations
President Donald Trump is inarguably a man of deep passions. He has expressed these as issues of great — and occasionally even national — importance. While that framing is not universally shared, particularly among the president’s many detractors, Trump’s penchant for publicly invoking both his reliable bugbears and darlings offers valuable insight into the inner life of America’s logorrheic leader. Here are nine obsessions Donald Trump just can’t quit.
Atomic bombs
Trump has “displayed a keen interest in the utility of atomic weapons for decades,” said the BBC. The fixation is part of a “political worldview that has long since solidified into firm beliefs for the septuagenarian,” in which the focus on atomic bombs reflects a “certain strain of Cold War arms-race enthusiasm and diplomatic brinkmanship.”
The “threat — and promise — of nuclear weapons” has been a “thread through both” Trump administrations, said Barron’s. Atomic weaponry has “been on his mind since the ’80s,” said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, to the outlet. “He wants to solve this issue.”
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“For decades,” Trump has been “publicly obsessed with bloodlines” as part of a “stated belief that genetics are the best predictor of a person’s success,” said The New York Times. He has regularly “spoken favorably about the racehorse analogy” of selective human breeding, which has been “embraced by white supremacists for decades,” said the Los Angeles Times.
Trump’s “observations on genetics” are not “only an expression of racism,” said New York magazine. The interest also reveals “one of his deepest obsessions” and in part explains the “bizarre passivity” that “characterized his response” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gold
It’s “no secret” that Trump “really, really likes gold,” said Marie Claire. His Manhattan penthouse has “enough gold and marble to remind anyone of Versailles,” while his private jet has “gold-plated seat belt buckles and bathroom fixtures.” Trump’s Oval Office resembles a “Middle Eastern bazaar crossed with an opulent Cracker Barrel” in which “thick, gold frames line the walls; gold vases and ice buckets adorn the fireplace mantel; gold stars form a circle on the ceiling; and gold appliqués fill any gaps,” said The Atlantic. The president’s “brand” is “synonymous with over-the-top golden opulence, so Trump's version of the Oval is very on-brand,” said NPR’s Tamara Keith on “All Things Considered.”
Florsheim shoes
After “searching for something that would feel better after a day on the job,” Trump this past spring “settled on Florsheim” leather oxford shoes, coming to like them so much that “he started dispensing them,” said The Wall Street Journal. The president has “grown fond of guessing people’s shoe sizes in front of them” before tasking an aide to order them a pair, said The Daily Beast.
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“I have fun with it,” said Trump when asked by Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade about reports detailing the footwear focus in a March 2026 interview. “Sneakers are wonderful, but I don’t want my Cabinet members wearing sneakers,” he continued, “so I’ll get them a pair of shoes” as a “gift from Donald Trump.”
Sharks
When it comes to ranking living creatures, “Sharks are last” on the president’s list — “other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!” Trump said on X in 2013, years before he assumed the most powerful office on Earth. Trump is “obsessed with sharks,” said the president’s infamous paramour Stormy Daniels to InTouch. “I hope all the sharks die,” Daniels claims Trump, an obsessive “Shark Week” watcher, told her. Although Trump’s shark obsession may be “funny on the surface,” the animals are “essentially a physical distillation of what Trump hates the most,” said Slate: “Power in the hands of anyone but him, existential uncertainty, nature.”
Show tunes
A GOP push to make “theater kid” and its iterations a “curious little term of abuse on the right” has “just one wrinkle,” said Erik Forrest Jackson at The Atlantic: Trump himself is an “inveterate theater kid,” of which Jackson has “unique firsthand confirmation,” having conducted a 2004 interview with him about Broadway, in which “the man gushed.”
In the memoirs of former Trump Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, she noted that the president’s “handlers designated an unnamed White House official known as the ‘Music Man’ to play him his favorite show tunes” selected to “pull him from the brink of rage,” said The New York Times. “My favorite Broadway show is ‘Evita’ by Andrew Lloyd Webber, starring Patti LuPone,” said Trump in 2004’s “Think Like a Billionaire.” The president “saw it six times, mostly with Ivana.”
Steam-powered catapults
Trump has “returned again and again to the concept of steam power,” said The Atlantic. In “nearly a decade of loudly complaining,” Trump has lamented that naval aircraft carriers use “electromagnetic systems to launch fighter jets instead of steam-powered catapults,” said The Guardian. He has even instructed the Pentagon to “redesign a new aircraft carrier to replace the modern system with the old-fashioned catapults he prefers.”
Per The Guardian, Trump has publicly regaled listeners with a story about demanding steam catapults “with variations, every year since 2017.” One possible explanation for his fixation is the fact that the president “just really loves ‘Top Gun’” and “doesn’t think fighter jets look anywhere near as cool when they take off from Ford-class carriers,” said New York Magazine. Trump has even “made this link himself,” including during a 2022 rally. “It’s a beautiful thing to watch the steam, and the plane gets thrown out there,” Trump said. “Those pilots are the greatest, ‘Top Gun,’ right? They’re the greatest pilots. And they get thrown into the ocean and they just take off, and it’s beautiful to watch.”
William McKinley
Since declaring in a 2018 X post that “I am a Tariff Man,” Trump’s “veneration” for President William McKinley — who also referred to himself as such — “has only grown,” said The New Yorker. But Trump’s “admiration” for McKinley “seems deeper than just tariffs,” said NPR’s Asma Khalid on “All Things Considered.” McKinley, too, “realigned and consolidated the power of the Republican Party for decades,” and Trump has also hailed McKinley’s work “expanding America’s footprint around the globe.”
Trump additionally “honored” his predecessor by “undoing an Obama-era change” to rename Alaska’s Mount Denali back to Mount McKinley, said U.S. News & World Report. But for all his presidential enthusiasm, said The New Yorker, Trump’s “McKinleyism is not deeply informed.”
Windmills
Trump has “harbored a strange vendetta” against wind turbines “ever since” Scottish authorities “installed a wind project within sight of his golf course in Aberdeenshire more than a decade ago,” said The Daily Beast. Since then, Trump has “repeatedly shared claims” turbines “cause cancer, kill birds and whales, and destroy property values.” Trump has also directed “frequent criticism” toward “European countries’ reliance on wind energy,” suggesting they “aren’t worth the investment and have destroyed views in Scotland,” said E&E News
Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.
