First lady Melania Trump and President Donald Trump partook in a long-held tradition of helping American children track Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, Wednesday.

President Trump took calls from children across America as he participated in tracking Santa Claus’ movements with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Santa Tracker on Christmas Eve.

After one child told him that they did not want to receive coal for Christmas, Trump went on the defensive to defend a key component of his domestic energy agenda.  

A child in Kansas was asked by Trump what they wanted Santa to bring, to which the child replied ‘Um, not coal.’

‘Not coal, no you don’t want coal — you mean clean, beautiful coal. I had to do that, I’m sorry,’ Trump replied with a smile on his face. 

Energy policy was not the only part of the president’s policy playbook that made it into his Christmas Eve calls with children.

Trump also joked about his immigration agenda on Wednesday afternoon.

Speaking with a sibling duo from Oklahoma, Trump promised that no ‘bad Santas’ were going to get into the United States.

‘We want to make sure that Santa is made good. Santa is a very good person. We want to make sure that he’s not infiltrated yet,’ Trump told the young callers.

‘We’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa. So we found out that Santa is good. Santa loves you,’ the president continued.

‘Santa loves Oklahoma, like I do. You know, Oklahoma was very good to me in the election, so I love Oklahoma,’ Trump continued.

Throughout the slew of conversations, Trump brought up his electoral victories in the states that callers were from, including Pennsylvania, which he ‘won actually, three times.’

Trump’s comments were in line with a Department of Energy post made on X earlier on Wednesday, which heralded ‘Beautiful Clean Coal.’

First Lady Melania Trump joined the president in taking calls from a festively decorated room in Palm Beach, Florida. 

During the roughly twenty minutes of broadcast calls, the president and first lady tracked Santa’s whereabouts across Europe, including Denmark and Sweden. 

This is the 70th year that NORAD has publicly tracked Santa’s sleigh on its global rounds.

 The Daily Mail spoke to the NORAD Tracks Santa program manager, US Army Captain Alex Werden, who revealed that nearly 400,000 children will be calling the Colorado Springs base to find out where Santa is this year.

‘Last year, our peak was between 5 and 7pm [Mountain Time]. Each of those two hours, we received just about 60,000 calls per hour,’ Werden said.

Thanks to a major technological update in 2025, he added that children now have more ways to follow Santa’s journey than ever before, including through their main phone hotline, 1-877-HI-NORAD.

To meet the massive demand for information on Santa’s flight, this year’s military tracking program has been upgraded with a fully web-based call center, web calling via Twilio, and Amazon Connect for better handling of global calls.

Since the Colorado base speaks with children from all nations, interpreters fluent in 200 languages provided by Interpreters Unlimited will also be available for international calls so the military can answer questions without language barriers.

The Army captain added that 1,000 volunteers will also be on hand tonight, using laptops and headsets to answer calls, checking on Santa’s real-time location on NORAD’s tracking map, and telling callers exactly when he will reach their home.