Trump Rambles About Biden and Autopens to Table of Children at White House Easter Egg Roll

President Donald Trump utilized the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday to reignite a long-standing grievance against his predecessor, telling a crowd of children and parents that former President Joe Biden’s official signatures were “illegal” and fraudulent.

The April 6 event, typically a non-partisan celebration, shifted toward political theater as Trump interacted with children during a drawing session. While signing autographs—which he jokingly claimed would eventually retail for $25,000 on eBay—Trump pivoted to a critique of Biden’s reliance on an autopen, a mechanical device used by U.S. presidents for decades to reproduce their signatures on routine documents.

“He didn’t sign; he was incapable of signing his name, so they’d follow him around with a big machine,” Trump told the gathered children. “He’d take the paper, hand it to his guys, sign it with an autopen and give it back. That’s not too good, right?”

The remarks represent the latest escalation in Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the Biden administration’s record. Throughout 2025, Trump repeatedly alleged that Biden’s use of the device was unauthorized, suggesting at a September press conference with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer that Biden “wasn’t giving those orders.”

Trump has taken symbolic steps to codify this narrative within the White House. He famously omitted Biden’s portrait from the “Presidential Walk of Fame,” replacing the 46th president’s likeness with a framed photo of an autopen.

Despite the President’s rhetoric, the use of an autopen is a well-documented and legal presidential practice. In July 2025, Joe Biden defended his use of the technology, confirming he authorized its use specifically for high-volume tasks such as pardons and clemency grants.

“The autopen is legal,” Biden told The New York Times last year. “Other presidents used it, including Trump.”

While Trump declared Biden’s pardons “void” in a March 2025 Truth Social post, constitutional scholars and legal experts have consistently refuted this claim. Legal experts interviewed by PBS noted that the U.S. Constitution provides no mechanism for a sitting president to unilaterally reverse a predecessor’s granted pardons, regardless of the method used to apply the signature.

The Easter Monday comments underscore a central theme of the current administration: the systematic scrutiny of the previous executive’s actions. By bringing these allegations to a youth-centered event, the President continues to prioritize the “autopen” narrative as a cornerstone of his administration’s investigative focus, despite a lack of evidence confirming any violation of federal law.