On Christmas Eve, President Donald Trump engaged with children calling in to share the gifts they were most excited about. He playfully warned against letting a “bad Santa” slip into the country and even suggested that a stocking filled with coal might not be such a bad thing after all.
While spending the holidays at their Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump joined children calling in to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which keeps a festive watch on Santa’s journey around the world.
“We want to make sure that Santa is being good. Santa’s a very good person,” Trump told children ages 4 and 10 in Oklahoma. “We want to make sure that he’s not infiltrated, that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.”
Trump has a history of using the holiday season to take aim at his political opponents. In 2024, he posted, “Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics.” During his first term, he went online early on Dec. 24, 2017, targeting a top FBI official he considered biased against him, as well as the news media. Right after finishing his Christmas Eve calls on Wednesday, he doubled down on the same message, tweeting: “Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly.”
Despite the pointed post, Trump appeared cheerful while chatting with children, even noting that he “could do this all day long,” though he acknowledged needing to return to more urgent issues, such as efforts to curb the conflict in Russia’s war with Ukraine.
In one exchange, an 8-year-old from North Carolina asked whether Santa might be upset if no one left out cookies for him. Trump said he doubted Santa would be angry, adding, “But I think he’ll be very disappointed.”
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He then leaned into a light hearted joke, saying, “You know, Santa’s — he tends to be a little bit on the cherubic side. You know what cherubic means? A little on the heavy side.” With a grin, he added, “I think Santa would like some cookies.”
The president and first lady Melania Trump sat next to each other, splitting roughly a dozen calls. At one moment, as Melania spoke on the phone and Trump waited to be patched through to his next caller, he remarked on how completely tuned out she was from him: “She’s able to focus totally, without listening.”
During another call, an 8-year-old girl from Kansas was asked what she hoped Santa would bring her. Her answer was quick: “Uh, not coal.”
“You mean clean, beautiful coal?” Trump shot back, leaning into a familiar campaign line he has often used while talking up domestic coal.
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“I had to do that, I’m sorry,” the president said with a laugh, prompting the first lady — still on her own call — to glance over and smile.
“Coal is clean and beautiful. Please remember that, at all costs,” Trump continued, before adding, “But you don’t want clean, beautiful coal, right?”
“No,” saying she was hoping instead for a Barbie doll, clothes and candy.