The latest test for the White House? Pulling off its Easter Egg Roll
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump received an urgent warning in February, informing him of a crucial date he was about to miss.
“FYI manufacturing deadlines for the Easter eggs are near,” said a Twitter post directed at Trump; the first lady, Melania Trump; and the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump. “Please reach out!”
The message came from Wells Wood Turning & Finishing, the company that supplies commemorative wooden eggs for the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, the 138-yearold celebration that has drawn 35,000 people to the South Lawn in recent years.
The staff of the company, based in Buckfield, Maine, wondered whether the Trumps planned to continue distributing the wooden eggs as party favors or whether they were even going to have a White House Easter Egg Roll at all.
By early March, the White House announced that the roll was on — Monday, to be exact — and soon followed up with a rush order for the wooden eggs.
By that time, the ovoid uncertainty had raised a question perhaps not as consequential as investigations into Russian interference in the presidential election, a legally dubious travel ban and a collapsed health-care bill, but no less a window into the inner workings of the Trump administration: Could this White House, plagued by slow hiring and lacking an on-site first lady, manage to pull off the largest, most elaborate and most heavily scrutinized public event of the year?
“It’s the single most high-profile event that takes place at the White House each year, and the White House and the first lady are judged on how well they put it on,” said Melinda Bates, who organized eight years of Easter Egg Rolls as director of the White House Visitors Office under President Bill Clinton. “I’m really concerned for the Trump people, because they have failed to fill some really vital posts, and this thing is all hands on deck.”
White House party catastrophes have been the stuff of presidential nightmares in the past. During his first year in office, President Barack Obama drew harsh criticism for lax security procedures after a pair of aspiring reality-show celebrities successfully crashed a state dinner honoring the prime minister of India, with one of them managing to buttonhole Obama for a handshake.
The late start in planning by the Trump White House points to a smaller and less ambitious Egg Roll than in previous years. There may be half as many guests, a fraction of the
number of volunteers to manage the invasion of the South Lawn, and military bands in place of A-list entertainers like Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Idina Menzel and Silentó who have performed for Egg Rolls past.
White House officials did not respond to several weeks’ worth of inquiries about the Easter Egg Roll, typically a heavily and enthusiastically promoted affair, and declined to provide basic information such as how many people are expected to attend. It is unclear, for instance, whether Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, will reprise his appearance in a bunny suit for the event, as he did a decade ago when George W. Bush was president and Spicer was an aide in the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
Stephanie Grisham, who started as Melania Trump’s communications director this week, had previously denied that the event was being scaled back from past years. But she acknowledged on Tuesday that attendance this year would be “a bit less,” based on feedback from former officials who had said “the event had become so large that many children were not able to enjoy the planned activities.”
“Our team has been working very hard to make this year’s event a success,” Grisham said. “I am confident that the success of this year’s Easter Egg Roll will speak for itself.”
The evidence points to a quickly thrown-together affair that people close to the planning said would probably draw about 20,000 people — substantially smaller than last year’s Easter Egg Roll, which drew 37,000. It will be staffed by 500 volunteers, Grisham said, half the usual number. Grisham said she did not have “firm numbers” on the overall number of attendees, and those who provided estimates did so on the condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to describe the plans for the Easter Egg Roll, which were still evolving just a week before the event.
The White House has ordered 40,000 of the commemorative eggs — about half of the roughly 85,000 ordered in 2016 — with 18,000 to be given away at the Easter Egg Roll and another 22,000 available for sale, according to Lara Kline, vice president for marketing and communications at the White House Historical Association, the official retailer.
The relatively small number, Kline said, “is due to the limited manufacturing window for this year’s Easter Egg Roll.”
Melania Trump, who lives in New York and has had a limited presence in Washington since her husband was sworn in, has been slow to hire a staff for the East Wing, which typically takes the lead on the Easter Egg Roll. She named a chief of staff and social secretary in early February but has yet to announce a director for the Visitors Office, normally the crucial player in the daunting execution of the event.
“You don’t understand what a beast this thing is to plan until you go and plan your first one,” said Ellie Schafer, who organized Easter Egg Rolls for the Obamas as the director of the White House Visitors Office from 2009 to 2016. “Every administration tries to put its own stamp on it, but the stakes are high because it’s such a Washington tradition, and people just love it and have very strong feelings about it.”
Bates, whose memoir “White House Story” documents the challenges of planning Clinton-era Easter Egg Rolls, said the event was a window — up to a point — into the competence of an administration.
“If you can pull off an Easter Egg Roll,” she said, “you can do anything.”