President Donald Trump turned what was meant as a lighthearted Thanksgiving presidential tradition into a stage for partisan complaints, swipes at his predecessor and gruesome rants about crime in Democratic-led cities as he used the annual ceremony to “pardon” a pair of turkeys as a stage for familiar grievances.
After boasting to guests — including Vice President JD Vance’s wife and children — about how his recently-renovated patio in the White House Rose Garden was keeping them from “sinking into the mud” as a light rain fell on Washington, Trump said he had an “important announcement” to make before pardoning this year’s turkeys, dubbed Gobble and Waddle by the White House.
He claimed a “thorough and very rigorous investigation by Pam Bondi and all of the people at the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA and the White House Counsel’s Office” had determined that then-president Joe Biden had used an autopen to pardon last year’s birds, Peach and Blossom.
“I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined that last year’s Turkey pardons are totally invalid,” he said.
“They’re hereby null and void, the turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located, and they were on their way to be processed. In other words, to be killed.”
But Trump added that he’d “stopped that journey” and claimed he was now “officially pardoning” last year’s turkeys, saving them “in the nick of time.”
The president then launched into what appeared to be an off-script diatribe about some of his guests for the ceremony and their work in government while also boasting about how his administration had enacted what he called “the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country for middle-income people” in the partisan spending package enacted earlier this year by the GOP-led Congress.
He also thanked the National Turkey Federation chairman and the CEO of turkey farming giant Butterball for attending before returning to the subject at hand, the turkeys who were at the White House to be pardoned.
But Trump could not keep from inserting more partisan attacks into his remarks after noting that the turkeys had been named Gobble and Waddle.
“When I first saw their pictures … I was going to call them Chuck and Nancy. But then I realized I wouldn’t be pardoning them, I would never pardon those two people. I wouldn’t pardon them,” he said.
The president explained that the birds were among the largest-ever to be presented to a president for pardoning, with both tipping the scales at over 50 pounds each.
But he then veered into a dark soliloquy about his “tough on crime administration” and the low numbers of people currently attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border into the United States while claiming — without offering evidence — that those who’d come seeking asylum during the previous administration had “poured into our country” had been gang members or from “mental institution.”
After a lighthearted quip about how some of his “overenthusiastic staffers” had pushed to send Gobble and Waddle to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador — where his administration has sent numerous people to be held without charge after being deported from the U.S. — Trump resumed his dark talk of crime.
With multiple children in the audience, he laid into Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and recounted how a woman had recently been set aflame by a mentally ill man on public transit.
“You saw all the crime that took place last night, the night before, the woman with the burning, they burned the woman — to be talking about that now, they burned this beautiful woman riding in a train,” he said.
He added that it was “horrible what’s happening in Chicago” and claimed his administration could make it a “safe city” in a period of four to 10 weeks if Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker would permit him to deploy National Guard troops there.
“If you look at the crime that’s taken place in Chicago, in the last two weeks, just take a look, it’s on the front page of every newspaper, it’s out ofc ontrol. The mayor is incompetent, and the governor is a big, fat slob,” he said.
“You ought to invite us in, say ‘please make Chicago safe,’” he added.
The president’s meandering remarks were part of what has become an annual tradition at the White House dating back to the George HW Bush administration.
Since 1947, presidents have been presented with an official Thanksgiving turkey in an official ceremony from the National Turkey Federation, and for the first four decades of that period the turkeys were almost always slaughtered and used for the traditional Thanksgiving meal.
That changed in 1989, when Bush assured attendees at the annual presentation that the “fine tom turkey” would “not and up on anyone’s dinner table.”
“Not this guy,” Bush said, referring to the bird in front of him. He’s presented a presidential pardon as of right now — and allow him to live out his days on a children’s farm not far from here.”
Subsequent presidents have similarly granted mercy to a turkey — or pair of turkeys — from the National Turkey Federation each year.
Trump’s pardons of Gobble and Waddle might be the least controversial act of clemency in which he has engaged since returning to office in January.
On the day he was sworn in for his second term, he pardoned thousands of rioters who’d besieged the Capitol four years earlier in a vain attempt to prevent Congress from certifying his 2020 election loss to Biden.
In the ten months since, he has pardoned scores of well-connected and wealthy figures, many of whom have supported him and his campaigns politically and financially.
Earlier this month, he declined to rule out a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex offender and former girlfriend of deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, with whom he maintained a close friendship for many years.
While Trump has granted pardons to numerous campaign donors during his second term thus far, a review of Federal Election Commission records by The Independent did not show any donations to Trump’s 2024 campaign or other political committees by either Gobble or Waddle.
