’Twas the night before Christmas at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Here’s what happened.
With Melania in her heels and the president in his tie, the first couple settled down to give Christmas cheer a try.
PALM BEACH, Fla. — ’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the villa, the president assured children that Santa wasn’t a guerrilla.
“Santa’s a very good person,” President Donald Trump said on Christmas Eve, during the annual presidential ritual of helping excited little ones track Santa Claus’ location. “We want to make sure he’s not infiltrated — that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.”
This wasn’t exactly what Jasper, 10, from Oklahoma, had wanted to know when he dialed the NORAD Santa Tracker on Wednesday afternoon. He had called to find out where St. Nick and his reindeer were on their nightlong journey circumnavigating the globe, which the hotline “tracks” with the aid of top U.S. military technology.
But out of the phone Jasper rang came a clatter. It was none other than Trump! Nothing was the matter.
The president played along, disclosing Santa’s location, which at that moment, he said, was in the Czech Republic. But first, he offered a few choice observations about Jasper’s own.
“Santa loves Oklahoma like I do,” Trump said. “You know, Oklahoma was very good to me in the election, so I love Oklahoma. Don’t ever leave Oklahoma, OK?”
“OK,” Jasper replied haltingly. “I’ll try.”
Such was Christmas Eve at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Palm Beach. He had spent the morning at his golf course in West Palm Beach, just across the lagoon, and by the afternoon, he was sitting in a gilded chair before a gilded Christmas tree in his gilded living room, the first lady at his side.
With Melania in her heels and Trump in his tie, the first couple settled down to give Christmas cheer a try. The president took his calls over speakerphone; the first lady took hers murmuring softly into a receiver held closely to her ear: “She’s able to focus totally without listening to this,” Trump said.
Jasper’s 4-year-old sister, Anastasia, told Trump she wanted a dollhouse for Christmas.
“I think we can work that out,” Trump replied. “I think Santa’s gonna bring you the most beautiful dollhouse you’ve ever seen.” (Whether the dollhouse would be subject to his administration’s tariffs, Trump didn’t say. He has been much clearer about dolls, saying earlier this year while imposing global tariffs that young girls would be “very happy” with just “two or three or four or five.”)
Next was Savannah, 8, from North Carolina, who wanted to know if Santa would be mad if she didn’t leave out cookies for him. The president cocked his head and smirked. “This is getting good!” he told reporters.
“I think he won’t get mad, but I think he’ll be very disappointed,” he counseled Savannah. “You know, Santa’s — he tends to be a little bit on the cherubic side. Do you know what cherubic means? A little on the heavy side. I think Santa would like some cookies.”
Amelia, 8, from Kansas, told Trump she wasn’t sure what she wanted for Christmas. “Not coal,” she said.
“Not coal, no, you don’t want coal,” the president agreed. Then he caught himself. “Well, you mean clean, beautiful coal.” He turned to the media. “I had to do that, I’m sorry,” he said.
“Coal is clean and beautiful,” he told Amelia. “Please remember that, at all costs.”
Next up came a 5-year-old who proudly informed the president she was from Pennsylvania.
“Pennsylvania’s great,” Trump said. “We won Pennsylvania — actually, three times,” he continued. (He did not.)
“This is America,” he said to reporters at one point between calls. The president did not explain what he meant by this.
His last call was with a pair of sisters, ages 6 and 10, from Tacoma, Wash. One of them told Trump she would like a pinball machine for Christmas.
“Pinball machine? That’s great.” Trump said. “You know Elton John?” If she did, she did not say. Nor did she point out that The Who, not Elton John, first released “Pinball Wizard.”
“He did ‘Pinball Wizard,’” the president continued. “We’ll have to send you a copy of ‘Pinball Wizard.’”
Trump didn’t take any questions from reporters, though there were many questions to ask unrelated to Santa’s whereabouts. What about the latest tranche of the Epstein files, which include wide-ranging references to the president? Or the Supreme Court decision that thwarts his planned National Guard deployment in Chicago? Is Nicolás Maduro on the naughty or nice list?
Not today — not on Christmas Eve. Couples were arriving in suits and ball gowns; the aroma of roasting meat wafted through the halls. The club’s celebrations were about to begin, and the president was in the holiday spirit. “Show them the festivities,” he instructed his staff, “and then send them home for Christmas dinner.”
Around 7 p.m., reporters were escorted into the Mar-a-Lago ballroom to take in the teeming dessert platters and his guests’ holiday finest. Trump sat at a table near the center of the room with his wife and father-in-law, cordoned off from his fellow revelers with a velvet rope.
Two minutes later, the media were whisked away. But we all heard him Truth, ere he retired for the night: “Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly.”