Gobble-degook: Trump talks turkey and trashes another presidential tradition

Don’t give up the day job. On Tuesday, Donald Trump came to the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony at the White House ready to serve up some political satire. It went about as well as you would expect.

Like a startled turkey flapping in zigzags, the US president’s 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 “a big, fat slob”.

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 and uplifting words about the state of the nation. They are not meant to make news.

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 “missing in action”, as Trump put it – evidently a bird of the same feather as Marjorie Taylor Greene.

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’s 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.

“I hope you like our new beautiful patio with matching stones at the White House,” said Trump after emerging from the Oval Office with the first lady, Melania, in light rain. “If it were grass today, you’d be sinking into the mud like they’ve done for many years, and you would be very unhappy.”

It’s hard for Trump’s 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, 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’s prosecution of political opponents.

Trump rambled about a thorough investigation by Bondi and a host of departments “into a terrible situation caused by a man named Sleepy Joe Biden. He used an autopen last year for the turkey’s pardon.”

If the president was expecting riotous laughter from an audience that included JD Vance and his wife, Usha, as well as the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth, he was disappointed. There was barely a chuckle.

Nevertheless, he persisted. “I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined, that last year’s turkey pardons are totally invalid,” he said.

Finally, some polite chuckles from the gathering. What a relief! But then Trump went and spoiled it by riffing on the pardon for Biden’s son Hunter and taking another dark turn.

“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 I’ve stopped that journey, and I am officially pardoning them, and they will not be served for Thanksgiving dinner. We saved them in the nick of time,” he said.

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.

Trump was doing “the weave”, 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.

Finally, he got back to the turkeys. “When I first saw their pictures, I thought we should send them – well, I shouldn’t say this – I was going to call them Chuck and Nancy,” he said – a reference to Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi that earned gentle mirth from the sycophants’ corner.

“But then I realised I wouldn’t be pardoning them, I would never pardon those two people. I wouldn’t pardon them. I wouldn’t care what Melania told me: ‘Darling, I think it would be a nice thing to do.’ I won’t do it, darling.”

Will next year’s pardoned turkeys be called Maxwell and Mountbatten?

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 “Maha” (Make America Healthy Again) turkeys. He worried that Gobble might attack him and then, randomly, talked about immigration again.

That led to the sickest witticism of the day: “Instead 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’t want to be there. You know what I mean.”

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

Indeed, Trump moved on to his draconian crackdown on crime in Chicago and Washington DC. “They burned this beautiful woman riding in a train,” 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’s weight and called him a “big, fat slob” before admitting that he could afford to lose a few pounds too.

Then Trump walked over to Gobble, made his characteristically theatrical hand gestures and declared: “Gobble, I just want to tell you this – very important – you are hereby unconditionally pardoned!” He even appeared to do a turkey impression for a moment, then reached over to run his hand over the feathers, asking: “Who would want to harm this beautiful bird?”

The future lame-duck president had delivered a box-office turkey. Had the nation of Mark Twain 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.