Trump Touts ‘Clean, Beautiful Coal’ to Kid at Christmas
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
The Daily Beast treats this like a punchline: a kid, a hotline, and Trump riffing about “clean, beautiful coal. ” The assumption is that coal is only a symbol of backwardness, so the joke writes itself. But conservatives hear something else.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump made it clear that getting coal for Christmas this year wasn’t all bad.As the president and First Lady Melania Trump took calls from kids dialing the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Santa Tracker hotline, Trump bragged about his “clean, beautiful coal.”When asked by Trump, 79, what he wanted Santa to bring him for Christmas, one child responded, “Uh, not coal.”Read more at The Daily Beast.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
The Daily Beast treats this like a punchline: a kid, a hotline, and Trump riffing about “clean, beautiful coal.” The assumption is that coal is only a symbol of backwardness, so the joke writes itself.
But conservatives hear something else. The country still runs on reliable power, and families still pay the bill. Dismissing coal as childish “bad” ignores energy reliability, working-class jobs, and the reality that “cleaner” technology is how you improve an industry without detonating communities.
There’s also a public-trust angle. A president talking plainly about energy, even awkwardly, beats the usual elite habit of promising green abundance while outsourcing production to rivals. National security is tied to domestic energy, not virtue signaling.
The principle at stake is simple: policy should respect the real economy, not mock it.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.