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Donald Trump Family Christmas Is Full Of Work, Vladimir Putin, ‘Savage Kids,’ Nutcracker Memories, Beaches, Boating and Hannukah [Pics]

By Darien Cavanaugh
Published on: 07:44 PST, Dec 25, 2016

The Trump family is having a busy Christmas and holiday season.

While siblings Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump have been tweeting pics of their far-flung Christmas festivities, President-elect Donald Trump was still working on Christmas Eve. As usual, some of the elder Trump’s efforts have been raising a few eyebrows, but he might get a few good marks for other recent endeavors.

On Christmas Eve the President-elect announced that he will be dissolving his nonprofit charity the Donald J. Trump Foundation. As the Inquisitr previously reported, the foundation has been under investigation in relation to accusations that it used donated funds to cover lawsuits for Donald Trump’s for-profit businesses. That investigation is still ongoing with with the New York Attorney General’s office, but critics viewed the organization as a potential conflict of interest for the incoming president. Trump cannot dissolve the Trump Foundation until the investigation is complete, but his lawyers have supposedly already begun getting things in order to do so.

On Friday, Donald Trump tweeted that his son, Eric, would also be ceasing his fundraising work with cancer charities because of potential conflicts of interests.

While severing ties to organizations — nonprofit or otherwise — that could raise ethical questions should be par for the course for an incoming president, the Trumps nevertheless deserve some credit for doing so.

Any good will those steps may have earned from critics and opponents, however, may have very likely been quashed by some misguided praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin from Donald Trump.

In a tweet sent out Friday, Trump quoted Putin for criticizing former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party because they’ve raised questions about Trump’s relationship with Putin in regards to the Russian government having possibly hacked into the Democratic National Committee’s email servers in the weeks prior to the election.

Considering the amount of fallout there has been surrounding the DNC hacking and the alleged Russia connection, Trump quoting Putin right now seems ill-advised to say the least. On the other hand, perhaps now that Trump has officially secured the presidency as a result of the Electoral College’s December 19 vote, he felt comfortable making a smug dig at Clinton, Obama and everyone who fanned the flames of the hacking controversy.

In case quoting Putin wasn’t enough, Trump also received a Christmas letter — not a card, a letter — from his Russian counterpart congratulating him on his election and expressing his desire to work together in the future.

Trump was very proud of the letter.

“A very nice letter from Vladimir Putin; his thoughts are so correct,” Trump said in a statement quoted by CNN. “I hope both sides are able to live up to these thoughts, and we do not have to travel an alternate path.”

You can read the full letter from Putin at the CNN page linked above. Spoiler: Putin refers to Trump as “His Excellency,” which is totally reasonable and common in diplomatic communiques…but it’s still a little jarring to see it the first time.

While Donald Trump spent the days before Christmas talking and tweeting primarily about work, he did take a breather to send out a couple of holiday tweets. One wished everyone a Merry Christmas and the other wished everyone a Happy Hanukkah. The images in both of the tweets are about as generic as you could imagine. They look like stock images with a banner slapped across them. Well, the Christmas one does have a picture of Trump on it, but it still somehow manages to look like a stock photo. He did manage to throw in a Christmas tree emoji with his simple #MerryChristmas message.

The Trump children were a little more festive with their tweets.

Donald Trump Jr. sent out a Merry Christmas tweet from Mar-a-Lago, a resort his father owns, followed by a before-and-after pic of the Christmas present scene at his home. In the “before” pic, presents are pouring out from underneath a beautifully decorated tree. In the “after” pic, there’s a chaotic trail of torn wrapping paper and opened toy packages. Eric Trump added the hashtags #Christmas, #Savage and #Kids to the pic.

To be clear, we don’t think he was calling his five children savages per se. The sentiment seemed more along the lines of playfully thinking “This is a savage scene” followed by a whimsical “Kids — what can you do?”

Donald Trump Jr. also sent out a pic of a Christmas card featuring just the “Trump ladies,” meaning his wife, Vanessa, and their two daughters, Kai and Chloe.

Invanka Trump reminisced about her days as a childhood ballerina via a picture she tweeted with the hashtag #MuchMuchLatergram.

And Eric Trump spent what looks like a very non-Christmassy Christmas boating and hanging out on the beach with his wife, Lara, and their pups in North Carolina.

Neither Trump’s wife, Melania, nor his younger daughter, Tiffany, have tweeted since the election.

All in all, it seemed like a very Trumpy Christmas indeed for the Trump family.

[Featured image by Mark Wilson/Getty Images]

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