The PBS White House Christmas special, reinstated under the Biden administration, features masked nurses dancing and singing a Broadway showtune in the East Room, as the unmasked First Lady Jill Biden looks on in amusement.
In a two-minute video making the rounds on social media Thursday, the nurses can be seen wearing dark blue scrubs, all but two behind black face masks, belting out ‘We Need a Little Christmas’ as they do a little dance.
The performance appears to be from a Christmas special recorded earlier this month and aired on PBS Tuesday – the first such event since 2016, as none were made during the Trump administration.
‘We Need a Little Christmas’ is a song from the 1966 musical ‘Mame’, originally performed by Angela Lansbury.
President Joe Biden does not make an appearance in the clip, but his wife Jill is visible at one point, wearing a pink outfit – and no mask – as she looks on.
Based on the logo on the scrubs, independent journalist Jordan Schachtel figured out that the nurses were employees of Northwell Health, New York state’s largest healthcare provider employing over 76,000 staff. Northwell fired 1,400 employees in October and then declared itself fully in compliance with Biden’s vaccine mandate.