{"id":309225,"date":"2025-11-26T04:57:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T04:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/309225\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T04:57:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T04:57:14","slug":"gobble-degook-trump-talks-turkey-and-trashes-another-presidential-tradition-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/309225\/","title":{"rendered":"Gobble-degook: Trump talks turkey and trashes another presidential tradition | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t give up the day job. On Tuesday, Donald Trump came to the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning<\/a> ceremony at the White House ready to serve up some political satire. It went about as well as you would expect.<\/p>\n

Like a startled turkey flapping in zigzags, the US president\u2019s speech ricocheted bafflingly from topic to topic. He told jokes in the worst possible taste and watched them arc through the Rose Garden sky before landing with a thud. And on a day intended for charity and good cheer, he described a state governor as \u201ca big, fat slob\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump has never met a presidential tradition he did not want to trash. For nearly eight decades, the turkey presentation has been a silly but reassuring ritual in which presidents offer a few bad puns<\/a> and uplifting words about the state of the nation. They are not meant to make news.<\/p>\n

But this year, of course, things were different. Normally, two turkeys are in attendance following a public vote on which should be pardoned. On Tuesday, however, Gobble was present but Waddle was \u201cmissing in action\u201d, as Trump put it \u2013 evidently a bird of the same feather as Marjorie Taylor Greene<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Rose Garden was transformed, its grass paved over with Mar-a-Lago-style slabs, while nearby was the presidential walk of fame, featuring tacky gold and framed portraits of Trump\u2019s predecessors save for Joe Biden, replaced by an autopen. Behind the president was a framed mirror in which a yellow crane could be seen at the site of the former East Wing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope you like our new beautiful patio with matching stones at the White House,\u201d said Trump after emerging from the Oval Office with the first lady, Melania, in light rain. \u201cIf it were grass today, you\u2019d be sinking into the mud like they\u2019ve done for many years, and you would be very unhappy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard for Trump\u2019s critics to accept that the man can be funny. At election campaign rallies, he can cut through the pretentiousness of politicians with a down-to-earth comment that strikes a chord with his audience. On this occasion<\/a>, however, he lacked spontaneity, his wit was less rapier than baseball bat. The gags felt sour a day after a judge tossed out his justice department\u2019s prosecution of political opponents.<\/p>\n

Trump rambled about a thorough investigation by Bondi and a host of departments \u201cinto a terrible situation caused by a man named Sleepy Joe Biden. He used an autopen last year for the turkey\u2019s pardon.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the president was expecting riotous laughter from an audience that included JD Vance<\/a> and his wife, Usha, as well as the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and \u201csecretary of war\u201d Pete Hegseth, he was disappointed. There was barely a chuckle.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, he persisted. \u201cI have the official duty to determine, and I have determined, that last year\u2019s turkey pardons are totally invalid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Finally, some polite chuckles from the gathering. What a relief! But then Trump went and spoiled it by riffing on the pardon for Biden\u2019s son Hunter and taking another dark turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located, and they were on their way to be processed \u2013 in other words, to be killed. But I\u2019ve stopped that journey, and I am officially pardoning them, and they will not be served for Thanksgiving<\/a> dinner. We saved them in the nick of time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In his dark coat, suit and red tie, Trump was bombing. Would Melania or someone wield a hook to yank him off stage? The privilege of the presidency is that no one dares.<\/p>\n

Trump was doing \u201cthe weave\u201d, drifting from nuclear power plants to border security, from car factories to AI, from tax cuts to the price of eggs. It was the biggest tonal misjudgment since he tried to tell military generals how to be tough guys.<\/p>\n

Finally, he got back to the turkeys. \u201cWhen I first saw their pictures, I thought we should send them \u2013 well, I shouldn\u2019t say this \u2013 I was going to call them Chuck and Nancy,\u201d he said \u2013 a reference to Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi that earned gentle mirth from the sycophants\u2019 corner.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then I realised I wouldn\u2019t be pardoning them, I would never pardon those two people. I wouldn\u2019t pardon them. I wouldn\u2019t care what Melania told me: \u2018Darling, I think it would be a nice thing to do.\u2019 I won\u2019t do it, darling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will next year\u2019s pardoned turkeys be called Maxwell and Mountbatten?<\/p>\n

Trump boasted that, at more than 50lb, his turkeys were bigger than those of his predecessors. He claimed that Robert Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, had certified them as the first-ever \u201cMaha\u201d (Make America Healthy Again) turkeys. He worried that Gobble might attack him and then, randomly, talked about immigration again.<\/p>\n

That led to the sickest witticism of the day: \u201cInstead of pardoning, some of my more enthusiastic staffers were already drafting the paperwork to ship Gobble and Waddle straight to the terrorist confinement centre in El Salvador. And even those birds don\u2019t want to be there. You know what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was unfunny because it\u2019s all too believable that Stephen Miller would try to send turkeys to the El Salvador mega-prison<\/a>, along with kittens, puppies and cute rabbits. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, must have regretted bringing her infant son Nicholas<\/a> to work.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Trump moved on to his draconian crackdown on crime in Chicago and Washington DC. \u201cThey burned this beautiful woman riding in a train,\u201d was another phrase jarringly at odds with this once jovial occasion. Anger rising in his voice, he ditched a prewritten line about the Illinois governor JB Pritzker\u2019s weight and called him a \u201cbig, fat slob\u201d before admitting that he could afford to lose a few pounds too.<\/p>\n

Then Trump walked over to Gobble, made his characteristically theatrical hand gestures and declared: \u201cGobble, I just want to tell you this \u2013 very important \u2013 you are hereby unconditionally pardoned!\u201d He even appeared to do a turkey impression for a moment, then reached over to run his hand over the feathers, asking: \u201cWho would want to harm this beautiful bird?\u201d<\/p>\n

The future lame-duck president had delivered a box-office turkey. Had the nation of Mark Twain<\/a> come to this? But no one in this audience of enablers was going to object. First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they pretend to laugh at your authoritarian jokes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t give up the day job. On Tuesday, Donald Trump came to the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-309225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}