President Donald Trump briefly took issue with a child who said she does not want Santa Claus to bring her coal for Christmas.
Trump took calls from children across the country on Christmas Eve, telling them the whereabouts of Santa, according to NORAD. The president also asked the children what they would like for Christmas.
After telling Amelia from Kansas that Old Saint Nick is in Sweden, Trump asked the girl what she wanted for Christmas, prompting this exchange:
TRUMP: What would you like Santa to bring?
AMELIA: Uh, not coal.
TRUMP: Not coal. No, you don’t want– well coal is– you mean clean, beautiful coal. [laughing] I had to do that, I’m sorry. No, coal is clean and beautiful, please remember that at all costs. But you don’t want clean, beautiful coal, right?
AMELIA: No.
TRUMP: What would you like?
AMELIA: Barbie [unintelligible].
TRUMP: Barbie, ok. We’ll you’ll get that, I’m sure. What else? Anything else?
AMELIA: Uh, clothes.
TRUMP: Clothes. Good. That’s good.
AMELIA: And candy.
TRUMP: Candy. Well, candy is good. Candy is good. Do you eat candy? Do you eat much candy?
AMELIA: Uh, not all the time.
TRUMP: Well, you just eat as much as you want. Be healthy, ok? But Santa’s gonna be there in about five hours. He’s leaving Sweden right now. He’s taking care of Sweden, leaving right now, ok?
AMELIA: Ok.
TRUMP: And he’s gonna have beautiful presents, and say hello to your mom and dad, ok, honey?
AMELIA: Ok.
Dating back to his first term, Trump has falsely claimed that there is such a thing as “clean coal” that can burn without negative environmental effects.
On another call, Trump told a five-year-old boy in Pennsylvania that the state is “great.”
“Pennsylvania’s great,” Trump told him. “We won Pennsylvania, actually, three times. We won Pennsylvania. We won it in a landslide, so I love Pennsylvania.”
The president won Pennsylvania in two of the three general elections from 2016 to 2024.
In 2018, Trump famously took a Christmas Eve call from a seven-year-old and asked, “Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at seven it’s marginal, right?”
Watch above via C-SPAN.
