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Longtime friend opens up about Trump
02:47 - Source: CNN

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Tom Barrack and Chris Christie said they ate meatloaf at the White House with Trump

"The meatloaf is incredible," Tom Barrack said Tuesday

Washington CNN  — 

The White House kitchen can produce most anything, but it looks like President Donald Trump keeps running back to an old favorite: meatloaf.

Tom Barrack, a longtime confidant of Trump, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront” Tuesday that he ate meatloaf with the President, days after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he had to do the same.

Barrack met with Trump at the White House earlier in the day and said the President loves the White House kitchen’s meatloaf, a dish whose ingredients could be prepared into any number of things that are not a rectangular slab of fully baked ground meat.

“By the way, his favorite dish was meatloaf. The lunch was terrific,” Barrack said. “The meatloaf is incredible.”

CNN has reached out to the White House for an explanation as to why the meatloaf is so good.

Christie ate with Trump at the White House on February 14, and afterward, he described the experience while hosting a radio show, saying the President made him eat the meatloaf.

“This is what it’s like to be with Trump. … He says, ‘there’s the menu, you guys order whatever you want,’ and then he says, ‘Chris, you and I are going to have the meatloaf,’” Christie said. “The meatloaf was good.”

Trump doesn’t seem to be a new convert to the dish. He and his wife, Melania, appeared on Martha Stewart’s show in 2005, where they all prepared a meatloaf sandwich. He said at the time that a meatloaf sandwich was his favorite kind of sandwich.

Trump’s culinary preferences aside, Burnett also asked Barrack about the perceived “chaos” inside the White House that has appeared to define the first month of his administration.

“You think it’s being run this way purposely?” Burnett asked, to which Barrack replied, “This is Donald Trump being Donald Trump.”

“So he wants the chaos?”

“Absolutely,” Barrack said. “He is the best instinctive manager that I’ve ever seen.”

He continued: “His staff understands that. In other words, they’re not at odds with each other. They’re giving various points of view.”