‘Celebrate Jesus’: White House holds annual Easter Egg Roll with patriotic theme for America’s 250th

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump celebrated Easter by hosting the annual egg roll on Monday, which they cast as a “special” one since this year marks America’s 250th birthday.

The sprawling South Lawn event was expected to draw tens of thousands of guests to a festival-style celebration featuring everything from a NASA lunar exploration experience and a flight lab to live baby chicks, mini golf and performances from military bands.

“Today is a very special day, it’s the day where we celebrate Jesus, it’s the day where we celebrate religion,” Trump said in opening remarks, before giving an update on Iran and praising the U.S. military for rescuing two airmen whose fighter jet was downed over the weekend.

“We have a great military. We’re the greatest military, most powerful military of any place in the world,” he said. “Our warriors are the greatest fighters on earth.”

He also touted lower egg prices under his administration, saying he quickly brought egg prices down 40% to 50% from high prices under the Biden administration. Monday’s event included more than 40,000 real eggs supplied from farmers across the country, he said.

“We are celebrating a very special Easter egg roll this year because it’s the 250th birthday of this beautiful nation,” the first lady said, standing beside the president. She later visited stations to write cards for military members, attended a ring toss event, and read The Runaway Bunny to children. Other readers at the event’s Reading Nook included Second Lady Usha Vance, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. 

Trump spoke to reporters, including The Lion, several times throughout the event about Iran.

“It could end very quickly, the war, if they do what they have to do,” he said. “They have to do certain things. They know that, they’ve been negotiating, I think, in good faith. We’ve had total regime change. You know, the people there now are much more reasonable than the lunatics that you had in phase one and phase two.”

Trump criticized the Iranian regime for killing “45,000 people as of a month and a half ago,” referring to the country’s violent crackdown against protesters. He said that oil is “there for the taking” and that he would prefer to “keep the oil” but that “unfortunately, the American people would like to see us come home.”

The American public has significant concerns with the war in Iran, recent Reuters polling indicates: 56% of American adults believe it will hurt their personal finances as gas prices have surged, 52% think it will make the Middle East more unstable, and 49% think it will make the quality of life for people in Iran worse in the next year. 

Trump was asked why the U.S. was still conducting war operations, given his statements that Iran has been “obliterated.”

“It’s a big country, they can’t fight back,” he responded. “They have some missiles left, they have some drones left, but essentially they have no capability.” He said the Iranian people “want to hear bombs” because “they want to be free.”

Photo credit: The White House