{"id":283823,"date":"2025-11-26T05:48:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T05:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283823\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T05:48:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T05:48:12","slug":"trump-pardons-turkeys-ahead-of-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283823\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump pardons turkeys ahead of Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The history of the White House turkey pardonpublished at 16:46 GMT 25 November<\/p>\n<p>16:46 GMT 25 November<\/p>\n<p>      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Truman and his aides look at two live turkeys at the White House\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/fee0ca9a-8b81-4b2d-8bae-3c6234530f7d.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"1023\" height=\"576\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, Bettmann via Getty ImagesImage caption, <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">President Harry Truman receiving two gift turkeys from the Poultry and Egg National Board in 1948.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The tradition can be traced back to President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 &#8211; historians claim he spared a turkey&#8217;s life after his son, Tad, befriended it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But yearly pardoning became an &#8220;official&#8221; tradition only under George H W Bush, when the former president spared a turkey&#8217;s life in 1989 as animal-rights activists protested nearby.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;&#8216;Reprieve,&#8217; &#8216;keep him going&#8217;, or &#8216;pardon&#8217;: it&#8217;s all the same for the turkey, as long as he doesn&#8217;t end up on the president&#8217;s holiday table,&#8221; Bush said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Other presidents before H W Bush did spare birds&#8217; lives, including President John F Kennedy, who gave an unofficial pardoning days before his assassination in 1963.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Individual farms had been gifting presidents birds since the 19th century, but it wasn&#8217;t until 1947 when Harry Truman became the first president to turn the gifting of the birds into a regular photo opportunity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Truman&#8217;s government launched a campaign in 1947 to encourage people to forego eating poultry and eggs on Thursdays, in order to conserve supplies to send to post-war Europe. But Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year&#8217;s Day all fell on Thursdays that year causing outrage.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"JFK and staffers surrounding a turkey on a pedestal with a sign that signs &quot;good eating, Mr President!&quot;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/2e311330-1523-4842-ad13-90528a245ce6.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"1023\" height=\"576\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, Smith Collection\/Gado\/Getty ImagesImage caption, <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">President John F Kennedy and Senator Everett M Dirksen receive a Thanksgiving turkey from the Poultry and Egg National Board at the White House in 1963<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The history of the White House turkey pardonpublished at 16:46 GMT 25 November 16:46 GMT 25 November Image&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-283823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}