News Beat
Trump’s Christmas Eve calls with children asking about Santa’s whereabouts are steeped in partisan politics
Ah, Christmas: a time of peace, joy, goodwill to all men, and falsely insisting for the umpteenth time that you won the 2020 presidential election.
That is according to President Donald Trump, who could not resist peppering his festive presidential phone calls with children and service members on Christmas Eve with his trademark partisan score-settling.
“Pennsylvania’s great. We won Pennsylvania, actually, three times,” the president wrongly claimed while chatting with a five-year-old boy calling from the Keystone State to check on Santa’s location according to NORAD. (Fact check: Trump lost Pennsylvania in 2020.)
“Oklahoma was very good to me in the election. So I love Oklahoma,” he told a four-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy in Sapulpa.
“The country is doing well! We saved our country,” he insisted on a call with a family living near Tacoma in Washington state.
A separate call with service members was marred by technical difficulties, causing the audio and video to drop out entirely.
“I think that’s the enemy doing it,” Trump joked, before his aides began sharply hustling journalists out of the room.
Later, the president issued an even more bracing Christmas message on his social network Truth Social. “Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly,” he raged.
“We are respected again, perhaps like never before. God Bless America!!! President DJT.”
U.S. presidents traditionally answer calls from various children on Christmas Eve as they telephone in to get an update from NORAD about the current location of Santa. (Fact check: Santa is invisible to radar, and cannot be tracked by any known U.S. government technology.)
“We track Santa all over the world. We want to make sure that Santa is being good,” Trump told a four-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy in Oklahoma. “We want to make sure that he’s not infiltrating — that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.”
But, he added, “we found out that Santa is good. Santa loves you. Santa loves Oklahoma, like I do… don’t ever leave Oklahoma, okay?”
“Okay, I’ll try!” said the children’s mother, sounding a little unsure.
In another exchange, Trump complimented Spencer, 10, from Washington state on wanting a Kindle for Christmas. “Oh wow, that’s pretty good,” said Trump. “You must be a high I.Q. person. We need more high I.Q. people in the country.”
On the call with a family in Pennsylvania, the mother prompted her child: “We love President Trump, right?” “Yeah!” the child declared. Trump was happy, telling them: “I bet your mom voted properly!”
Then there was the child who said she didn’t want Santa to bring him coal. “You mean, clean, beautiful coal?” Trump said, with a big grin and mock incredulity. “I had to do that, I’m sorry. Coal is clean and beautiful! Please remember that at all costs.”
Trump had already delivered another Christmas message on Truth Social earlier that day, in which he ranted about late-night talk show hosts that he hates before bellowing: “MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!”
Regarding his Christmas calls with the kids, MAGA supporters enjoyed the jokes, but left-leaning social media users were less than impressed. “Little kid just wants to hear about Santa and Trump wants to talk about himself again,” said journalist Ron Filipowski on Bluesky.
Other users on Bluesky and X called him a “goon”, “a malignant narcissist”, “an unstable person”, and “not right in the head”, while a spokesperson for California governor and Trump arch-critic Gavin Newsom declared: “We hope Santa gives him coal.”
Trump famously came close to giving the game away during a similar event in 2018, when when he asked a young girl: “Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at seven, it’s marginal, right?”
