WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – On Christmas Eve, President Donald Trump engaged with children by asking about the gifts they were anticipating, while lightheartedly vowing to keep a “bad Santa” from entering the country and humorously suggesting that receiving coal might not be entirely undesirable.

While enjoying a holiday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the president, alongside First Lady Melania Trump, embraced the tradition of conversing with young callers to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. This organization whimsically monitors Santa’s journey across the world.

“We want to ensure that Santa remains good. Santa is a very good person,” Trump remarked to children, aged 4 and 10, calling from Oklahoma. “We need to make sure there’s no infiltration of a bad Santa into our country.”

He did not provide further details on this statement.

In previous Christmases, Trump has often used the occasion to critique his political adversaries. In 2024, he infamously wished “Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics.” During his presidency in 2017, he took to social media on Dec. 24 to criticize an FBI official he perceived as biased and to express his discontent with the media.

After concluding Wednesday’s Christmas Eve interactions, Trump revisited his familiar refrain, posting: “Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but they are failing badly.”

But Trump was in a jovial mood while talking with the kids. He even said at one point that he “could do this all day long” but likely would have to get back to more pressing matters like efforts to quell the fighting in Russia’s war with Ukraine.

When an 8-year-old from North Carolina, asked if Santa would be mad if no one leaves cookies out for him, Trump said he didn’t think so, “But I think he’ll be very disappointed.”

“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,” Trump joked. “I think Santa would like some cookies.”

The president and first lady Melania Trump sat side-by-side and took about a dozen calls between them. At one point, while his wife was on the phone and Trump was waiting to be connected to another call, he noted how little attention she was paying to him: “She’s able to focus totally, without listening.”

Asked by an 8-year-old girl in Kansas what she’d like Santa to bring, the answer came back, “Uh, not coal.”

“You mean clean, beautiful coal?” Trump replied, evoking a favored campaign slogan he’s long used when promising to revive domestic coal production.

“I had to do that, I’m sorry,” the president added, laughing and even causing the first lady, who was on a separate call, to turn toward him and grin.

“Coal is clean and beautiful. Please remember that, at all costs,” Trump said. “But you don’t want clean, beautiful coal, right?”

“No,” the caller responded, saying she’d prefer a Barbie doll, clothes and candy.

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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed.