The lighting of the White House Christmas tree is one of those feel-good ceremonial duties that it is almost impossible for a president to screw up. That is, until Donald Trump lit the White House Christmas tree in 2025.
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The lighting of the tree usually involves the president standing around and talking about how Christmas brings us all together, and some stuff potentially cribbed from a Hallmark Christmas movie or two.
It is a pretty lighthearted moment that is another milestone on the road to the end of the political year.
All of this was true until the deteriorating version of Donald Trump took the stage.
On the same day that Trump told reporters:
I was with a gentleman, the future king of Saudi Arabia, and you’ve heard me say this a couple of times, but two months ago when I was over there, he said, uh, and actually Qatar is represented today and you UAE is represented and your leader said the exact same thing, different words, but the exact same thing that one year ago they thought our country was dead.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia nearly seven months ago, and MBS was at the White House two weeks ago, not two months ago, so Trump doesn’t seem to have any sense of time or what is going on.
Someone decided that it was a great idea to let this nearly 80-year-old man out after dark and to let him light the White House Christmas tree.
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