After receiving a presidential pardon, the turkeys will spend the rest of their lives in the care of North Carolina State University
The North American President fulfilled the tradition of saving two turkeys from being cooked for Thanksgiving dinner, in a ceremony in which he joked that the ‘pardons’ for those birds by his predecessor were null and void due to Joe Biden’s incapacity.
Accompanied by the first lady, Melania, in a ceremony on Tuesday in the White House Rose Garden, the President pardoned the birds Gobble and Waddle, born in July on a North Carolina farm and weighing 24 and 23 kilos, respectively.
“Gobble, I want to tell you something very important: you are unconditionally forgiven,” Trump said in front of the turkey, placed on a pedestal.
Every year, around this time, around 46 million turkeys are slaughtered in the United States as the main dish for Thanksgiving, a festival that commemorates a feast shared between English colonists and indigenous people in 1621 to celebrate a good harvest.
Although for decades presidents received turkeys as a Thanksgiving gift, it was George HW Bush who initiated the traditional pardon in 1989, when he joked that he forgave the turkey from being cooked, in response to an environmentalist protest in front of the White House.
This is one of the White House’s most colorful traditions, and presidents often accompany it with humor, an occasion that Trump took advantage of to attack his political rivals.
The president, who usually accuses his predecessor in the White House, Joe Biden, of incapacity and whose signature decrees and pardons were signed with an “automatic pen” (that is, by advisors), announced amid laughter that the use of this makes last year’s presidential pardons for turkeys “totally invalid.”
Continuing, in a joking tone he said that the two turkeys pardoned by Biden were on their way to being “processed”, but that, at the last minute, he decided to spare them from being devoured.
Always in a joking tone, he also said that he would name this year’s turkeys after Democratic congressmen Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, but later realized that with those names he would never pardon them.
The two turkeys, with white plumage and blue heads, were chosen in the competition organized every year by the National Federation of Turkey and slept in a luxury hotel close to the White House.
After receiving a presidential pardon, they will spend the rest of their lives under the care of North Carolina State University.
