We all try to take a few days off from the constant anxiety of ‘Oh god, what’s he done now?’. Well, we’ve kept tabs on Trump during your Christmas detox. Here’s what you missed
Many of us at this time of year do something important to protect our mental health. Something I call the “Trump break”. For a few days over Christmas, we do our best to unplug ourselves from the madness and unhinged behaviour of the leader of the free world. We put his nonsense on hold for a few days and just pray that the world doesn’t explode inexplicably on Boxing Day. Well, time’s up. Christmas is over. And my gift to you this festive season is that I’ve been keeping up with Trump so you don’t have to. Merry Christmas and an Unhinged New Year to one and all. Everybody Christmas Steve.
1. Everybody Christmas Steve
There were many snippets of Trump madness to enjoy over the final stretch before Christmas, most of them coming from the annual NORAD hotline event.
Every year NORAD, (The North American Aerospace Defense Command) “tracks” “Santa’s” progress around the globe and lets kids call up to discuss his progress with volunteers over the phone. And if they’re really lucky, they get to speak to the President of the United States.
You may recall this tradition from his first term, when Trump asked an 8 year old caller whether he still believed in Santa, because at his age “it could go either way.”
Well, he didn’t quite top that, but he had a good go.
When one child told him they were from Pennsylvania, he started banging on about how much he won that state by – and lying about having won it “actually three times”. He lost it in 2020.
And there was this exchange, which is exactly the vibe you want to be giving out during a time of heightened focus on child abuse.
But the absolute highlight was Trump’s late-night 100-Truth posting spree in the early hours of Christmas morning, during which he absolutely lost it and lashed out at Stephen Colbert, various TV networks and news shows, and threatened to terminate their broadcast licences.
He wished a Merry Christmas to “radical left scum”, reposted a Stephen Miller conspiracy theory about people of Somali heritage and spouted many time-worn false claims about the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden by a lot.
And at the height of it all, he posted, in all caps: “EVERYBODY CHRISTMAS STEVE”.
Nobody knows why. Or who Steve is. Could be Colbert. Could be Miller or Bannon. Could be Brexit Hardman Steve Baker for all we know.
Steve is the new Covfefe.
2. Trump vetoed a bill to fund a major drinking water project, and people think it was revenge
Trump’s first veto of his second term killed a bill that was voted through unanimously to fund a huge drinking water project in Colorado.
Colorado has been pretty high on Trump’s s**t list for a couple of reasons.
First up there’s Tina Peters.
As regular roundup readers will remember, Peters, a former Colorado election official who last August was convicted of tampering with voting machines in the 2020 election, is serving nine years in prison.
Republican Peters, 70, helped breach the election computer systems in Mesa County, Colorado, and ordered security cameras disabled to allow a former pro-surfer affiliated with Mike Lindell, the pillow magnate, election denier and serial conspiracy theorist, to access them.
To Trump, on the other hand, she’s a patriot who was trying to uncover evidence of election fraud in the 2020 election, which he still maintains was “stolen” from him. In reality, he lost it to Joe Biden by a lot.
Despite Peters being tried by a grand jury, and convicted by a jury of her peers, Trump has repeatedly called for her to be released. He has offered to pardon her himself, but as she was convicted at the state level, he has no power to free her.
And he has threatened Colorado with punishment for continuing to imprison her.
There’s also the added bonus of the pipeline being based in the district of Lauren Boebert, a Republican who challenged Trump to force the release of the Epstein files.
Last night she put out a statement that read: “Because nothing says “America First” like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in Southeast Colorado, many of whom enthusiastically voted for him in all three elections.”
She went on: “I sincerely hope this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability.”
3. Shirley you can’t be serious: Trump pulls daycare funding from Minnesota over right-wing vlogger’s racist viral ‘expose’
Nick Shirley, an amateur vlogger and YouTube “prankster” from Utah, has managed to get all federal funding pulled from child daycare services in Minnesota.
A video of his – shared both by Elon Musk and JD Vance – claimed a string of childcare centres in the city, run by people of Somali heritage, were fraudulent front companies that only existed to “steal” millions of dollars taxpayer funds.
CBS News looked into it and found no evidence of fraud. Neither could CNN find any actual evidence of fraud at these daycare centres. Investigations by actual journalists of the nurseries he visited found a “steady stream” of children going in and out. And while a couple were found to be unlicensed, and have other minor violations, there is absolutely no evidence of any fraud happening at the places he targeted whatsoever.
It’s worth noting that fraud has absolutely been going on in Minnesota, and a lot of it (though not all) has been committed by people of Somali heritage. The FBI and local government have been investigating and prosecuting them for years.
But Shirley didn’t find any. He just spent a day bothering Somali heritage people, and got 2.5m clicks out of it.
Upon arriving at the daycare centres, Shirley found to his mock horror that their windows were covered up, the doors were locked and they were unable to see any children from their vantage point outside. He also struggled to get hold of anyone on the phone.
As anyone with a toddler will tell you, these are all entirely normal practice for most nurseries – and (aside from the phone thing) are exactly how you’d hope they would be run.
The video also includes footage of Shirley trying to gain entrance to the daycare centres that did answer the door, only to be told things like “go away” and “who are you?”
Which given he approached them with a group of burly security men, with multiple cameras rolling, and kept demanding to know “WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN?!!?”, is not entirely unreasonable behaviour.
(Viewers can, of course, donate to his “security fund” through a link in the video description, by the way)
Let’s also consider the source. Nick Shirley, 23, was among the grifters and influencers invited to a mad MAGA roundtable on “Antifa” a couple of months ago.
He claims to have taken footage of January 6th – which he offered to sell to news networks. In September he made sympathetic video about Tommy Robinson.
And last year he posted a video shot in Kyiv, which focused on luxury cars parked in Ukraine’s capital with a caption that read: “POV: Your in Ukraine and you realise where your taxes are going”. After a backlash, he claimed the video was “satire”.
But despite the video being a massive nothingburger made by a known far-right propagandist, the US government has stepped in and cut off all federal funding for daycare services in Minnesota.
The Administration for Children and Families provides $185m a year in funds to the state.
In a post on (sigh) Twitter, Assistant Secretary Alex Adams said: “That money should be helping 19,000 American children, including toddlers and infants.”
And Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill said the move was in response to “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”
Again, there is no evidence of fraud – widespread or not – at Minnesotan childcare businesses.
O’Neill said the agency would now require justification and receipts or photo evidence for all payments.
The department has said nothing about how families across the state will manage if their childcare services go away.
“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” O’Neill said.
4. He made Zelensky and Netanyahu schlep to Mar A Lago
Trump made two of the most important figures in global politics in 2025 trail down to Florida to meet with him at Mar A Lago during the Christmas break. Zelensky’s visit, to consider a 20-point peace plan to end Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, was once again prefaced by a conversation between Trump and Vladimir Putin. And while Trump said negotiators are getting “closer” to a deal, he acknowledged “thorny issues” – presumably including Ukraine’s reluctance to cede territory to an aggressive neighbour. He later went on to parrot Putin’s unproven claim that Ukraine had launched a drone attack on his house, something Ukraine denied as “typical Russian lies”.
Netanyahu’s later visit veered dramatically off-topic, straying from the future of Gaza to brags about his new $400 million White House ballroom. Trump said it was going to be “even bigger” than previously thought, because he wanted the Inauguration to be held there in future.
Inaugurations are traditionally held on the steps of the Capitol building, where tens of thousands of ordinary people frequently show up to watch.
Trump’s second inaugural was moved indoors for the first time in decades, after it was considered to be too cold to hold it outside.
It’s unclear why Trump has decided future inaugurations should be held there, or why it was important to him to note that bulletproof glass be installed in the ballroom. Bulletproof glass is installed in every window in the White House.
Plans for the ballroom already showed it dwarfing the main White House building. If it gets any bigger, he’ll have to knock down bits of the Treasury to fit it in.