WASHINGTON — A children’s podcast appearance turned into a candid moment of presidential self-reflection on Friday when President Donald Trump, reading a picture book about the hobbies and pastimes of past commanders-in-chief, paused to contemplate a historical record he has no interest in breaking — the title of heaviest president in American history, a distinction that has belonged to William Howard Taft for more than a century.
The moment came during Trump’s appearance on “Storytime with the Second Lady,” the children’s podcast hosted by Second Lady Usha Vance and posted online on July 4, 2026. The president read “Presidents Play!,” a children’s book from the White House Historical Association that features illustrations of presidents enjoying sports and using the White House grounds for recreation. As Trump worked through the book’s pages, he offered running commentary on each former president — their hobbies, their character, and their place in history — before arriving at a passage that hit a little closer to home.
Reading about President William Taft and his custom of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at baseball games, Trump took the opportunity to editorialize. “He was a large man, very large,” Trump said of the 27th president. “And he loved baseball. He’d go to baseball games, loved the hot dogs at the baseball games.”
Then came the punchline. “He was our heaviest president,” Trump said. “And I have to be careful, cuz I don’t want to supersede his record. And a thing like that would be possible if I allowed it to happen.”
At his inauguration in 1909, Taft stood 6 feet 2 inches and weighed 354 pounds, the heaviest president in American history. In 1905, while serving as Secretary of War, Taft had already weighed 314 pounds — a body mass index of 40, which today would indicate someone who is severely obese. At a staggering 340 pounds and a Body Mass Index of 42.3, William Howard Taft wasn’t just the heaviest president in U.S. history — he was also dubbed the “first celebrity weight-loss patient” by researchers who studied his correspondence with a British physician.
The legend of Taft’s size has never fully faded from the American consciousness. Stories of the 27th president getting stuck in the White House bathtub — though often disputed by historians — have followed him through the centuries. His love of baseball, and specifically the hot dogs consumed at games, was well documented. Taft is also credited with starting the tradition of presidents throwing out the ceremonial first pitch, which Trump referenced directly during the reading.
The broader passage in the book was a tour through the recreational habits of American presidents — from Abraham Lincoln’s horseback riding, to John F. Kennedy’s sailing, to Dwight Eisenhower’s beloved golf game — but it was the Taft section that pulled Trump into an unusually candid moment of self-awareness. He made no attempt to deflect the implied comparison.
Trump’s remark was particularly notable given his own documented weight history. The White House released a report from Trump’s physician in late May 2026 showing that the president had gained 14 pounds since a physical exam in April 2025, weighing in at 238 pounds — near the threshold of clinical obesity. The report’s physician noted that preventive counseling was provided, including guidance on diet and a recommendation for increased physical activity and continued weight loss.
Trump’s physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, found Trump to have “strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and overall physical function” and declared him “fully fit to carry out all duties of the Commander-in-Chief and Head of State.” Despite the positive overall assessment, the weight trajectory drew attention — and Trump, on the children’s podcast, appeared to acknowledge it with characteristic candor and humor.
After the Taft joke landed, Trump pivoted directly to a message for the young audience watching at home. Turning to Usha Vance, he said: “For all of you out there watching, keep yourself in good shape, right? Like you — you’re in such good shape.”
The moment neatly encapsulated Trump’s approach throughout the podcast episode: informative in substance, but delivered with the kind of off-the-cuff self-deprecation that has defined his public persona. He had spent the previous several minutes walking through a gallery of presidential pastimes — Lyndon Johnson’s toughness, Ronald Reagan’s fitness, Bill Clinton’s jogging track, Gerald Ford’s football career at Michigan — before the Taft section brought him back to the present.
Although Taft weighed over 300 pounds during his presidency in 1909, he later implemented a fitness and dietary regimen that helped him lose almost 100 pounds before his death due to cardiovascular disease in 1930. The historical echo was not lost on Trump’s spontaneous aside — a president grappling publicly with weight, looking back at a predecessor whose own battle with it defined much of his legacy.
Trump’s Taft remark, tucked into a children’s book reading on Independence Day, was a rare instance of the president joking about his own physical condition without prompting. The context — a book about presidential hobbies, a Fourth of July audience of children, a podcast devoted to reading — made the aside all the more unexpected, and all the more memorable.