FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump concludes an onstage interview with moderator Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, during a youth forum titled Generation Next, at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
Although President Donald Trump is known for consuming copious amounts of Diet Coke and food from McDonald's, one thing he doesn't consume is alcohol. Trump points to his late brother Fred Trump Jr.'s battle with alcoholism as a key factor in his disdain for alcohol.
Trump, who was raised Presbyterian in Queens, is not an evangelical. But far-right white evangelicals are among his most ardent supporters. And according to reporting by journalist J. Oliver Conroy in The Guardian, the influence of evangelical "Christian nationalists" may be driving a teetotaler trend in the MAGA movement.
Although many Catholics and Mainline Protestants believe that moderate alcohol consumption is OK, alcohol is considered a sin in quite a few fundamentalist evangelical churches.
"Perhaps this is another manifestation of the cult of personality around Donald Trump, a Diet Coke enthusiast," Conroy reports in an article published on October 9. "Maybe the rising tide of Christian nationalism has revived an old-fashioned Protestant temperance. Or perhaps red-blooded right-wingers, eager to 'Make America Healthy Again,' are eschewing beer, barbecues and bourbon to become the sort of smoothie-drinking health nuts they might once have mocked."
Conroy continues, "Prominent right-wing or right-adjacent abstainers include Trump himself, whose older brother died of alcoholism-related heart attack; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spoken about his own substance problems; Tucker Carlson, a recovering alcoholic; and the activist Charlie Kirk for health reasons. (Vice President) JD Vance drinks, but his predecessor Mike Pence, a devout born-again Christian, did not. Joe Rogan, the podcaster and gym-bro whisperer who endorsed Trump in 2024, quit drinking this year for health reasons."
According to "War Room" host Steve Bannon, many of his Gen-Z employees are teetotalers.
Bannon told The Guardian, "None of my core team (of colleagues) under 30 drinks."
According to Gen-Xer and former Fox News host Carlson, 2025's young Republicans are way more health-conscious than their counterparts of the past.
Carlson told The Guardian, "I'm just from a different world. When I was 25, the health question was 'filter or non-filter?' And I always went with non-filter."
Read J. Oliver Conroy's full article for The Guardian at this link.