President Donald Trump injected some politics into this year’s Christmas Eve phone calls with children from across the country, touching on topics like energy production and the 2020 election.
Fielding calls as part of the U.S. military’s annual NORAD Tracks Santa event, Trump asked one caller what she wanted for Christmas.
“Not coal,” said the caller, an 8-year-old girl.
Trump jokingly corrected her by saying, “You mean clean, beautiful coal.”
“Sorry, I had to do that. I’m sorry,” he added. “No, coal is clean and beautiful. Please remember that at all costs. But you don’t want clean, beautiful coal, right? What would you like?”
Trump has long promoted himself as an ally of the coal industry. In April, he signed an executive order designed to bolster the U.S. coal industry by loosening regulations around mining, leasing and exports of what’s considered the dirtiest fossil fuel.
And in a twist on the old adage of Santa watching kids to see whether they’re naughty or nice, Trump told a caller from Oklahoma that the U.S. government is keeping an eye on Santa. NORAD — the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S.-Canadian operation — has tracked Santa Claus every year since the 1950s.
“We track Santa all over the world. We want to make sure that Santa is being good,” Trump said. “We want to make sure he’s not infiltrated, that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.”
“Santa loves Oklahoma like I do,” he added. “You know, Oklahoma was very good to me in the election. So I love Oklahoma. Don’t ever leave Oklahoma, OK?”
Speaking with a child from Pennsylvania, Trump revisited the 2020 election by falsely claiming he beat former President Joe Biden there.
“I know Pennsylvania is great. We won Pennsylvania, actually, three times,” Trump said, later adding, “I bet your mom voted properly.”
Trump kept the conversation focused on the holidays and free of politics with some callers, without a repeat of his remarks in 2018 when he asked a 7-year-old girl whether she “still” believed in Santa Claus, saying that at her age, “it’s marginal, right?”
After an 8-year-old girl from North Carolina asked Trump on Wednesday whether Santa will get mad “if we don’t leave him cookies,” he told her, “I think he won’t get mad, but I think he’ll be very disappointed.”
“You know Santa, he tends to be a little bit on the cherubic side. You know what ‘cherubic’ means? A little on the heavy side,” Trump said. “I think Santa would like some cookies.”
After the event, which was followed by calls with U.S. service members, Trump put the focus back on politics in a holiday message he delivered on 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 wrote before he highlighted a list of accomplishments in his first term, some exaggerated. “We are respected again, perhaps like never before. God Bless America!!!”
Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner contributed.
