An Air New Zealand advertisement released for the Christmas season this week takes a dig at US President Donald Trump by portraying an American boy wearing a red “Make Christmas Great Again” cap being laughed at by other children on Santa’s “naughty” list.
The three-minute advert beckoning travelers with a Christmas greeting from “the nicest place on earth” sees Santa accidentally e-mailing his list of this year’s naughty children to a student in New Zealand named Elvis Anderson instead of his elves at the North Pole.
Sitting in detention, Anderson gets the idea of gathering the naughty kids from around the world to fix the problem and calls on New Zealand’s national carrier to help transport the children to a summit on the country’s North Island.
Each child representing a country makes promises to change their behavior for the better by eating more vegetables, reducing flatulence and cutting down on hair-pulling.
The American boy, dressed in a two-piece suit and the red sloganed cap, says that he is not naughty at all and is the nicest person he knows, provoking laughter from the other children, reminiscent of the reaction to Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly in September, when he spoke about the achievements of his administration.
“I didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s okay,” the boy says in the advertisement, the same words Trump used at the UN.
Further pledges to be good from Anderson, including one to be nicer to neighboring Australia made with his fingers crossed behind his back to suggest he does not intend to keep the promise, pushes a meter to “Nice” for the children and confetti rains down as they celebrate.
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