United States President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden spent part of Christmas Eve helping answer calls to Santa’s hotline at Norad, the North American aerospace defense command. They received three largely pleasant phone calls from children and parents, although one father ended an otherwise polite conversation with the president by wishing him happy holidays and adding, “Come on Brandon!” Before hanging up. The phrase has become widely used by conservatives as a substitute for a more vulgar epithet against the president.
Biden did not seem to have understood the intent of the interlocutor, however he replied: “Come on Brandon, I agree” at the end of the call. The White House did not comment on the episode. The president and the First Lady then went to a children’s hospital in Washington DC. Photos taken at the Children’s National Hospital show the couple together with some young patients. Everyone wears anti-Covid masks during the visit, which came in the midst of concerns about the rapid increase in cases also in the US following the spread of the Omicron variant. Sitting next to a Christmas tree and amidst numerous gift boxes, the presidential couple spent a lot of time with the children, reading them some stories and listening to their wish lists for Christmas.