With the Easter Bunny at his side, Trump won’t stop talking about Iran

By Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — Shortly before President Donald Trump was flanked by the defense secretary, CIA director and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to talk about Iran on Monday, he had a softer sidekick.

“I don’t think it gets much more hostile than Iran. They’re capable fighters,” Trump said from the South Portico balcony, a widely smiling Easter Bunny at his side.

The White House Easter Egg Roll tradition has evolved with the times, weathering intense political polarization, world wars and even pandemics over its 146-year history. But on Monday, it became the site of multiple presidential gaggles with reporters — many about the war with Iran and Trump’s latest threat to destroy the country’s infrastructure.

After addressing the crowd, Trump descended to the lawn, over which towered a large crane — a noticeable sign of his ballroom project, even if the usual hum of construction appeared to be paused for the day’s events.

A chaotic scrum of children positioned for egg racing waited more than 10 minutes as Trump fielded questions from reporters and waiting cameras. The children clutched their wooden spoons with varying degrees of impatience as the president offered his insights on prospects for a peace deal with Iran and the heroic rescue of an F-15 crew member over the weekend.

Trump eventually wove his way toward the starting line — joined by first lady Melania Trump and the bunny — to referee the annual Easter Monday ritual of pushing colorful hard-boiled eggs across the White House grass.

“Everybody ready? Focus, total focus — is everybody focused?” Trump asked, before blowing the whistle to start the wooden spoon race.

After a brief second stop at a card decoration station, he again returned to the press, holding mini news conferences every few feet along a white fence penning in a crush of reporters. Trump, enthused about the successful rescue mission, didn’t appear to be in a hurry to get to the next event on his public schedule: an actual press conference.

A Waymo sponsorship for the ‘egg Super Bowl’

For the second year in a row, the Egg Roll was bolstered by high-dollar partnerships with corporate sponsors — the office of the first lady touting a “Bunny Hop Stage, courtesy of YouTube,” an “AI-Creation Station, courtesy of Meta,” a “Coloring Road Trip, courtesy of Waymo,” a “Challenge Coin Creation Station, courtesy of the New York Stock Exchange,” plus Coca-Cola, Google, the National Confectioners Association, the Toy Association, and GE Aerospace, among others.

The Egg Roll has long been privately funded without taxpayer dollars, largely through the American Egg Board, which also provides tens of thousands of eggs for the occasion (and this year brought along 150 live chicks).

But the solicitation of sponsorships on White House grounds has prompted concerns from ethics experts and some dismay from former White House officials from both parties, as CNN has previously reported. Any additional funds raised from the sponsorships by an outside event production company will again go toward the nonprofit White House Historical Association, a spokesperson confirmed.

The American Egg Board brought approximately 40,000 eggs to the South Lawn for rolling, hunting, decorating and eating. They were hard-boiled and hand-dyed by more than a dozen volunteers and farmers in North Carolina over six days.

“It basically is two days to hard-boil all those eggs and then it’s an additional four days to dye them,” board president and CEO Emily Metz said in an interview with CNN. “Teamwork makes the dream work when it comes to the egg Super Bowl, that’s for sure.”

Metz and her colleagues brought some of the freshly-hatched chicks into the White House briefing room Monday afternoon, where there was much tweeting from the podium.

The three-day-old chicks spent the night in the storied nearby Willard Hotel, Metz said. She also floated a chick visit to the Oval Office, joking, “They’re sort of golden and I think he would like that.”

The egg board also presented its annual commemorative egg to the first lady, part of a nearly five-decade tradition beginning with the Carter administration. This year’s egg was decorated with the intricate Pysanky wax method by master egg artist Mark Malachowski of Ohio. One side of the ornate real egg features an eagle; the other, the Betsy Ross flag, in keeping with this year’s America 250 theme.

Five US military bands, along with children’s performers “Miss Patty” Shukla and Jack Hartmann, performed. Readers at the reading nook — which has long been set up at the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden — included the first lady, second lady Usha Vance, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Education Secretary Linda McMahon. But the Kennedy garden was demolished along with the East Wing last fall, and the nook was moved to the Rose Garden this year.

A history of egg rolling

The tradition began in the 1870s on US Capitol grounds. After a particularly rotten 1876 roll in which eyewitness John C. Rathbone observed “the wanton destruction of the grass on the terraces of the park,” President Ulysses S. Grant signed legislation to protect Capitol grounds and prohibit egg rolling, per the National Archives.

But in 1878, a more egg-friendly President Rutherford B. Hayes allowed children to roll their eggs across Pennsylvania Avenue — on the White House South Lawn.

The tradition continues as a collaboration among the White House, the White House Historical Association and the National Park Service.

First lady Florence Harding dyed the eggs herself in 1921, the Washington Post reported at the time. And in 1927, first lady Grace Coolidge brought her pet raccoon, Rebecca, out on the grounds on a leash, to Rebecca’s annoyance.

“The crush was too much for Rebecca and she showed her displeasure plainly. But the first lady was not so easily discouraged. She carried the pet indoors and returned to the delight of the crowd,” a Washington Post report said.

First lady Michelle Obama used the egg roll to promote her “Let’s Move” initiative, and the star-studded lineups included performances by Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande. Beyoncé and Jay-Z were among the attendees in 2016.

The first Trump administration saw a return to Egg Roll basics. There was a two-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the event returned during the Biden administration, which celebrated an “EGGucation” theme for three years.

The egg roll remains one of the only times the White House South Lawn is open to the public, with tickets, to enjoy.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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