WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump marked Christmas Eve by quizzing children calling in about what presents they were excited about receiving, while promising to not let a “bad Santa” infiltrate the country and even suggesting that a stocking full of coal may not be so bad.

Vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the president and first lady Melania Trump participated in the tradition of talking to youngsters dialing into the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which playfully tracks Santa’s progress around the globe.

“We want to make sure that Santa is being good. Santa’s a very good person,” Trump said while speaking to kids 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.”

He didn’t elaborate.

Trump has often marked Christmases past with criticisms of his political enemies, including in 2024, when he posted, “Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics.” During his first term, Trump wrote online early on Dec. 24, 2017, targeting a top FBI official he believed was biased against him, as well as the news media.

But Trump was in a jovial mood this time. He even said, I “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 contributed from Washington.

Will Weissert, The Associated Press