Presidents have said a lot of strange things into a microphone, but here is a new one for the history books. While sitting in the Oval Office reading a children’s book about sports, President Donald Trump looked at a picture of William Howard Taft and admitted, out loud, that he might one day beat him for the title of heaviest man to ever hold the job.
It happened during a taping of Second Lady Usha Vance’s podcast, and yes, it was aimed at kids. The whole thing is real, it is on video, and it is exactly as odd as it sounds.
The line that got everyone talking
The book was called “Presidents Play,” published by the White House Historical Association, and it walks through the sports and hobbies of past commanders in chief. When Trump got to Taft, he did not hold back. “He was a large man, very large,” Trump said. “He loved baseball. He’d go to baseball games, loved the hot dogs at the baseball games. He was our heaviest president.”
Then came the part nobody prompted him to say. “And I have to be careful because I don’t want to supersede his record. And a thing like that would be possible if I allowed it to happen.” He followed it up with a quick note to the young viewers: “For all of you out there watching, keep yourself in good shape.”
Nobody asked him to compare himself to Taft. He volunteered it. The unprompted comparison is what made the clip travel so fast once the video went up.
Who was Taft, and how big are we talking
William Howard Taft served as the 27th president from 1909 to 1913, and his size became part of American folklore. He stood about 6 feet tall and weighed 243 pounds when he left college. By the time he was in office, he reportedly topped 330 pounds. Cartoonists had a field day with him. There is even a long-running legend that he once got stuck in a White House bathtub, which is why an oversized tub was later installed.
So how close is Trump, really? At 6 feet 3 inches, Trump weighed 238 pounds at his most recent physical. That is nowhere near Taft’s 330 pounds, so “careful” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Still, the comparison to Taft is what made the whole thing land, mostly because Trump brought it up himself while a children’s book sat open in his lap.
The rest of the podcast was just as weird
The Taft moment got the headlines, but the whole episode was a string of off-the-cuff riffs. The taping happened in mid-June in the Oval Office, decorated for the occasion with a bald eagle stuffed animal, tables built from stacks of oversized books, and a globe made out of Legos. Trump told Vance he planned to make the episode “mandatory” viewing for his 11 grandchildren.
When he hit a picture of Bill Clinton running on a jogging track, Trump admitted he had only recently learned the White House grounds even had one. “I don’t think I’ll ever do that. I don’t see myself doing that,” he said. On a picture of Abraham Lincoln riding a horse, he mused, “I’d like to ride horses too,” before adding, “but when you fall off a horse, I’ve seen too many bad things happen.”
He shared a fun fact about Franklin Roosevelt, noting that the current White House press briefing room used to be an indoor swimming pool. And on Gerald Ford, who built the outdoor pool, Trump got personal again: “I don’t get to use it. I don’t know if I look good in a bathing suit. I haven’t had a bathing suit in a long time.” He also worked in a plug for the giant ballroom he is building on the grounds. When Vance asked if he reads for fun, he answered that he mostly reads newspapers, then added, “I usually read stories about myself.”
He could not help taking a couple of jabs, either. On Richard Nixon: “he got himself into trouble.” On Barack Obama’s basketball skills: “I tend to doubt” he was any good. JFK got called the “second most good-looking president,” and you can guess who he thinks holds the top spot. JD Vance later called the whole thing “great” and “one of my favorite episodes so far” on social media. You can watch the full breakdown of his running commentary if you want the whole tour.
Why the timing matters
Here is the backdrop that makes a self-aware Taft joke land differently. Just weeks before the podcast dropped, there was a whole news cycle about weight loss drugs and whether Trump had gotten his hands on one. A report claimed that a request had been made in April for a 79-year-old man to access an experimental Eli Lilly drug through the FDA’s “compassionate use” program. The age lined up neatly with Trump’s, so reporters asked the obvious question.
The White House shut it down hard. They flatly denied that Trump was the patient and called the report inaccurate. It is not the first time the subject has come up, either. Trump has referred to GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic as the “fat shot” in public. He told the New York Times back in January that he had never taken the “fat drug” but “probably should.”
So when the sitting president cracks a joke about beating Taft’s record, it does not exist in a vacuum. His weight has been one of the most talked-about topics of his second term, and he clearly knows it.
The actual numbers
Let’s put the figures on the table, because the numbers are the story here. Trump’s May 2026 physical listed him at 238 pounds, which is 14 pounds more than his previous checkup. At 6 feet 3 inches, that puts his body mass index at 29.7. The number to know is 30, which is the line where the charts flip from “overweight” to “obese.” He is, as one outlet put it, within a whisker of that cutoff number.
BMI is a blunt tool. It ignores muscle mass, body type, and how weight is distributed, and plenty of experts roll their eyes at reading too much into one figure. But it is still the shorthand most people use, and the 14-pound jump is what turned a historical curiosity about Taft into a live talking point about the guy currently in the Oval Office.
The gap between Trump and Taft is still enormous. Trump would have to gain roughly 90 more pounds to actually “supersede” the record, so the title is safe for now. The interesting part is not the math. It is that Trump, of all people, decided to name the record and joke about chasing it while reading to children.
A guy who knows what people say about him
Trump has always had a knack for saying the thing his critics are already whispering, then owning it before they can use it against him. He is famous for loving fast food, especially McDonald’s. In April, he reportedly had a full spread delivered to the White House by ordering a DoorDash driver straight to the Oval Office. That image, the president getting takeout dropped off at the most famous address in the country, is the kind of thing his fans love and his critics point to.
That is part of why the weight thing splits so cleanly down political lines. To his supporters, a president who likes hot dogs and burgers is a regular guy who eats what they eat. To his opponents, it is shorthand for something else entirely. Taft got mocked in newspaper cartoons more than a century ago. Trump gets it in memes and cable segments. Same joke, new century.
The whole episode was pitched as a childhood literacy project, a way to get kids reading. Instead, the clip that spread everywhere was an 80-year-old president joking that he might one day out-weigh a man who allegedly got stuck in a bathtub. The bathing suit line alone would have carried the news cycle on a slow day.
If nothing else, it is a reminder that Trump reads the room, even when the room is a nursery-style podcast set with a Lego globe and a stuffed eagle. He knew exactly what people would say about the Taft picture. So he said it first. Whether that counts as honesty, humor, or just good instincts, it worked. Everyone is talking about it, which is usually the whole point.