Des Moines — About 20 minutes before he is set to introduce Marco Rubio at a rally in Des Moines, Senator Chuck Grassley is drinking his first Red Bull.
“I hate it. I’ll never buy one,” Grassley, 82, tells National Review during an interview.
He’d picked one up after he saw his finance director, Anne Roth, drinking one.
“Well she was getting it. I asked her if it had alcohol in it because I don’t drink alcohol,” Grassley says.
“At first I thought he was asking if I was drinking on the job. I was like, ‘no!’” Roth laughed.
“I’ve heard of Red Bull,” Grassley says, “but I didn’t know what it was.”
The senator’s carbonated beverage of choice is Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry soda.
The “first Red Bull ever will be the last one,” Grassley says. “It is awful stuff.”