Bill Clinton is vegan. His recycled cookie recipe is not.

Bill Clinton
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In the cutthroat world of political baking, would-be First Gentleman Bill Clinton has made a misstep.

The former president was asked to participate in Family Circle' s 2016 Presidential Cookie Poll (formerly the First Lady Cookie Contest), a cookie recipe competition for the spouses of presidential candidates which has run every election since 1992. He agreed to face off against Melania Trump, but his cookie recipe submission has come under fire.

For starters, it's not original. Bill submitted the exact same recipe then-First Lady Hillary Clinton used to win the 1992 and 1998 contests. But the real offense is that this is a recipe Clinton himself can't taste test: He has been vegan since 2010, and the cookies are made with eggs.

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Trump submitted a star-shaped sugar cookie recipe which, unlike her convention speech, steered well clear of First Lady Michelle Obama's contribution from 2012. You can view both recipes here and cast your vote on Facebook.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.