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Joe Biden refused to take phone calls from children about the whereabouts of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, something the president has traditionally done in recent years.
Instead, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden could be seen picking up the phone as she sat in front of a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.
‘It’s almost time to get out the cookies and prepare the carrots for the reindeer. NORAD Command just said that Santa is on his way to your neighborhood!’ she tweeted on Saturday night.
The White House did not explain why the 71-year-old first lady was the one making the calls instead of her 80-year-old husband, however, during last year’s event there was an awkward exchange when a parent used the phone. phone call to insult the commander in chief.
First Lady Dr. Jill Biden could be seen making the calls for her husband as she sat in front of a Christmas tree on Saturday night.
Instead of making the phone calls, President Biden, 80, could be decorating a tree
A smiling father named Jared from Oregon said “Merry Christmas” and “Go Brandon” (code on the right for “f**k Joe Biden”) after his sons told the president what they wanted from Santa Claus.
Biden seemed out of date at the time. “Come on Brandon, I agree,” the president said in response.
This year, Biden posted a photo of him and his wife decorating a Christmas tree at the White House. It is not clear when the photo was taken.
‘Just a few finishing touches! I hope you and your loved ones are having a great Christmas Eve,” the president wrote.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden read to patients and families at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC on Friday. First ladies have been reading stories to hospital patients at Christmas since First Lady Bess Truman took office.
President Joe Biden gestures during a Christmas visit to patients and their families on Friday
A father told President Joe Biden (right) ‘Come on, Brandon!’ during NORAD’s annual follow-up Santa call with First Lady Jill Biden (left) in 2021, pictured above from last year
Presidents have traditionally been known to take calls from children on Christmas Eve since 1955, when a misprinted ad in a Colorado Springs newspaper directed children to call Santa at the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center ( CONAD).
The director of operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, ordered his staff to give all children to call a ‘current location’ of Santa Claus.
The tradition has continued every year since the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) took over tracking Santa in 1958.
Every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has participated in the tradition and it is unclear if there was ever a president who did not take these calls.
President Biden hasn’t had much success with phone calls recently. There was a 17-second gap when he called in the Thanksgiving parade while speaking with NBC’s Dylan Dreyer.
Biden hasn’t been too successful when it comes to public phone calls recently.
Last month, the president and first lady suffered awkward technical difficulties while calling into NBC’s Thanksgiving Day parade broadcast.
Reporter Dylan Dreyer was forced to wait an excruciating 17 seconds for a response to her emotional “Hello, Mr. President” while reporting from the New York City parade in Manhattan.
Before Biden addressed her, the present could be heard speaking to his wife with the couple apparently expressing confusion over connection issues.
Biden, breaking from the tradition of Christmas Eve phone calls, completes a blunder-filled year for the 46th president at a time when he is relatively shielded from the media.
By the end of the year, President Biden had only given seven formal interviews with professional journalists, up from 15 last year.
He also held five solo press conferences in 2022, up from six in 2021. By contrast, former President Trump gave 18 and 19 respectively, during the same time period.
In February, Biden suggested that a Russian “minor foray” into Ukraine might not provoke a response from the West.
“Are you giving Putin permission to make a small foray into the country?” asked a stunned reporter.
The president laughed and said: ‘Good question. That’s how it sounded, right?
In September, Biden declared that “the pandemic is over” on 60 Minutes, something his own chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, disagreed with.
During a packed room at a White House conference, Biden sought out Rep. Jackie Walorski, who had tragically died in a car crash in August.
‘Jackie, are you here? Where is Jackie? She shouldn’t be here,’ she said to the room.
Biden even personally called Walorski’s family almost immediately after the tragedy to express condolences that he seems to have forgotten.
In October, he warned that the world was on the brink of nuclear ‘Armageddon’. The White House went on to emphasize that there was no new intelligence to cause alarm.
In November, Biden claimed that his late son Beau died while serving in Iraq.
Beau sadly died of brain cancer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.
And last week, the president claimed that, as vice president, he awarded his own uncle, Frank H. Biden, a Purple Heart for his heroism in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.
That story is not only false, but also impossible, since Frank H. Biden died in 1999, nearly a decade before Biden became vice president.