Nov. 25 (UPI) — President Donald Trump, with first lady Melania Trump, on Tuesday continued a White House tradition that dates to the 1800s — pardoning a turkey from the dinner table ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
This year’s turkeys, named Gobble and Waddle, were given “full, absolute and unconditional” pardons by Trump during the midday ceremony in the newly renovated White House Rose Garden.
“This is a lucky day for them,” Trump said while welcoming members of his administration and a handful of business leaders to the pardoning, noting that in years past their feet would be stuck in mud during the annual act of mercy before the garden was updated this year.
The annual pardon dates back more than 100 years, but it gained steam as a traditional White House event when the National Turkey Federation first presented a live turkey to President Harry Truman in 1947.
The presentation of the National Thanksgiving Turkey started to become an event as Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, as well as First Ladies Pat Nixon and Rosalynn Carter, started issuing pardons to the official turkeys.
The pardons did not become an official tradition, however, until President George H.W. Bush turned it into one in 1989, according to the White House Historical Association, when he assured White House guests that “this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table.”
This year’s two tom turkeys that were nominated for pardons, Gobble and Waddle, hail from Wayne County, N.C., where they were raised by Travis and Amanda Pittman.
Gobble and Waddle, Trump said, are the biggest turkeys that have been pardoned in history, having been fed as much as possible because “we wanted them to be special.”
During the Rose Garden ceremony, Trump weaved references to his administration’s track record this year into jokes about the turkeys, including that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. declared that “despite their size, that they are MAHA (Make America Healthy Again). They may be fat, but they’re MAHA.”
Trump also joked that his staff were drafting paperwork to send the turkeys to a prison in El Salvador and that, when we first saw their pictures, “I was gonna call them Chuck and Nancy. But then I realized I wouldn’t be pardoning them because I would never pardon them, no matter what Melania told me.”
Trump said that he had extended pardons to last year’s National Thanksgiving Turkeys, Peach and Blossom, alleging that former President Joe Biden’s pardons were not valid because he’d signed them with an auto-pen and learned that the birds had been slated for the slaughter.
Before Gobble received the official pardon — Waddle’s was granted in absentia, though Trump did not say where the bird was — the president asked if the bird was violent. As he walked over to issue the pardon, Gobble stood up to rise to the moment.
“Are you ready?” Trump said. “Gobble, I just want to tell you, this is very important, you are totally and unconditionally pardoned.”
Gobble offered a full-throated “gobble gobble gobble” in thanks to the president.
Both Gobble and Waddle will now return to their home state to live out their lives at a custom, climate-controlled quarters at North Carolina State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
“It’s an honor for all of us at N.C. State to once again welcome the National Thanksgiving Turkeys to Raleigh,” Garey Fox, dean of the college, said in a press release.
The National Thanksgiving Turkey and alternate in 2022, Chocolate and Chip, also retired to N.C. State after receiving their pardons from Biden.
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