President Donald Trump complimented a “beautiful” and “cute”-sounding 8-year-old girl, whom he also called “honey,” during a Christmas Eve phone call.
Trump, 79, was taking calls from children throughout the country who were asking about Santa Claus, as is tradition. While the president was in Mar-a-Lago over the holiday period, back in Washington, D.C., the Department of Justice was frantically trying to complete its delayed and widely criticized release of its files about dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a former friend of Trump’s.
Seated beside the first lady, Trump was put on the phone with Anna, an 8-year-old from North Carolina.
“Hi, how are you doing? OK?” Trump asked.
“Yes, how about you?” the youngster replied.
“I’m fine,” he said. “You sound so beautiful and cute.”
Trump then asked how old she was, even though the phone operator for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) had given the president that information beforehand.
“I’m 8,” she answered.
“Wow. So smart. You sound so smart,” he responded. “So, do you have a question for Santa, or do you want to know anything about Santa?”
When the girl asked if Santa would get mad if she didn’t leave out milk and cookies, Trump didn’t immediately answer, then asked her to repeat herself. He then replied that Santa would not be mad, but he would be disappointed.
“Santa tends to be a little on the cherubic side,” he told Anna. “You know what ‘cherubic’ means? A little on the heavy side.”
Trump later concluded the call by calling the little girl “honey” and complimenting North Carolina, a state he won in last year’s presidential election. He did the same during calls with children from Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.
Many X users said Trump’s comments didn’t come across well, given that his Department of Justice is nearly a week late in delivering all of the files it was compelled to release relating to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Some told the president to “read the room,” while others blacked out Trump’s face—a reference to the redactions of some influential figures in the Epstein files.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
The legal deadline for the Justice Department to release its files on Epstein was last Friday, but more than “a million” documents have yet to be released, the DOJ said Thursday. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the process would take weeks, and the DOJ has asked lawyers to work through the holiday to help get them released as quickly as possible.
As for the files that have been released, the DOJ has been criticized by Epstein’s victims for being overly selective in its “abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation.”
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie agreed.
“DOJ did break the law by making illegal redactions and by missing the deadline,” Massie wrote on X. “By the way, who’s controlling the DOJ X account on Christmas Eve and using words like ‘dope’ to refer to reporters?”
Axios reported that the White House has indeed swooped in to handle the department’s messaging on the social media platform. The result: a more combative approach.
