Each year, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, has used its state of the art radio system to track Santa as he travels the globe and spreads Christmas cheer. The tradition originally started in 1955 due to a telephone number mix up.
On Christmas Eve, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania took calls from children who called the agency’s number. The two sat in front of a crackling fire and between two Christmas trees while speaking on separate phones. The President talked to seven-year-old Collman Lloyd of Lexington, South Carolina, wishing here a Merry Christmas and asking about school and holiday plans. Then, he asked the girl if she still believed in Santa. “Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at 7, it’s marginal, right?” Trump asked. The response made the President smile and chuckle.

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“Well, honey, happy Christmas, and you just take care of yourself and say hello to your family, ok? Say hello to everybody,” the president said.

The Post and Courier tracked down Lloyd who declared that, yes, she did believe in Santa and told the President that. She added that she got a doll on Christmas morning and that she had never heard the word “marginal” before.

Here’s a video of the phone call.

“I was like, ‘Wow.’ I was shocked,” she told the paper of their exchange. “It wasn’t really (nerve-wracking), I just had to think of what the truth was.”
In another phone call, Trump fixed his mistake and assumed that the child believed in Santa.
“What’s Santa going to get you for Christmas?” he asked. “Have a great Christmas, and I’ll talk to you again, OK?”
Melania Trump tweeted and said that answering the calls, which the pair did last year as well, is “becoming one of my favorite traditions!”


Despite a government shutdown, which left close 800,000 government employees either to be furloughed or forced to work without pay until the standoff is resolved, Trump took the phone calls. After hoping to reach a compromise over the weekend, lawmakers left and went home for Christmas, leaving a black cloud over those public servants’ heads.

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