He stood near the lectern at the White House with a bouffant mane, a preposterously loose-hanging wattle and a winter coat fitting fairly snugly. Donald Trump told the gathering of cabinet members and invited guests that Gobble, who had a frankly brazen manner as he eyeballed the 47th president, was – of course – among the “largest ever” turkeys to receive the annual pardon, permitting him to sail through Thanksgiving without ending up as the centrepiece of an American family dinner. Waddle, his erstwhile companion was, the president said, “missing in action” and didn’t elaborate.
The annual Thanksgiving preamble of the presidential turkey pardoning is a ceremony dating back to Abraham Lincoln but became an official feature on the White House calendar only after George Bush set an example that became a tradition in 1989.
The 2025 edition was laced with Donald Trump’s taste in dark comedy and the more menacing undertones of an FBI investigation into the six Democratic members of Congress for their part in a video message to the US military. Defence secretary Pete Hegseth posted a letter he signed ordering the Navy to review ‘potentially unlawful conduct’ by former Navy captain and Arizona senator Mark Kelly for a possible court martial. Hegseth was among those in the Rose Garden to watch Trump pass judgment on the lucky, if ungrateful, turkeys.
“Gobble and Waddle: when I first saw their pictures, I was gonna call them Chuck and Nancy,” Trump said.
RM Block
“But then I realised I wouldn’t be pardoning them. I would never pardon those two people.”
Trump used the occasion to sell a message of accomplishment about the first nine months of his administration. The annual splurge on the Thanksgiving dinner has become a contemporary cost-of-living crisis and without namechecking a source, Trump claimed that “the cost of a turkey is down 33 per cent from its Biden-era highs.
“Eggs are down 86 per cent since March,” he continued, “and gasoline will soon be hovering around $2 per gallon.”
It’s a message the Republicans cannot repeat enough because it is not sinking through to the electorate. The inflation problem has flipped: what became a sticking point for the Biden administration is now a nut that Trump’s government cannot crack. A new Politico poll has found that grocery costs are now the number one affordability concern among adults polled, with 45 per cent naming food shopping as “the most challenging” aspect of American life.
Housing came in next at 38 per cent, with anxiety over spiralling rents and future ownership acute among the Gen Z cohort. A number of retail outlets, including Walmart, have issued reports claiming that the average cost of Thanksgiving dinner has decreased this year. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics gives the overall rise in food prices at 2.7 per cent for the year to date.
Before a receptive crowd and an indifferent Gobble, Trump also took the moment to remind voters of other triumphs, reminding Americans that the southern border has had “zero” illegal crossings for last seven months. He told the audience that Washington, DC, had become the safest city in the country since the introduction of the National Guard and resumed his verbal battle with Illinois governor JB Pritzker with a lacerating screed that fell somewhere between clumsy insult and clunky attempt at humour.
“In Memphis crime is down 64 per cent in three weeks. We could do that in Chicago if they would let us. We have a governor who thinks it’s wonderful that only seven people were killed this week. The mayor is incompetent and the governor is a big fat slob. He oughta invite us in; say: please make Chicago safe. We are going to lose a great city if we don’t do it quickly.
“So governor Pritzker if you’re listening, let’s get your act together ... we are going to make your place so safe. I had a little bit of a Pritzker joke. I was going to talk about Pritzker in size, but when I talk about Pritzker, I get angry because he’s not letting us do the job. Some speech writer wrote some joke about his weight. I would never talk about his weight- I don’t talk about people being fat. I refuse to talk about the fact that he’s a fat slob. I’d like to lose a few pounds too, by the way. And I’m not going to lose it on Thanksgiving, I can tell you that. Cos I’m gonna have a turkey but it’s not going to be that one.”
It was a crude attack on a political foe and an odd line to take in a country where four in every ten adults are classified as obese, during a time of a raging obsession with weight-loss medicines. According to the US Department of Agriculture stats, some 46 million turkeys are killed each year for Thanksgiving for a feast that marks the beginning of what health professionals term the weight-gain season, ending on New Year’s Day. And despite Trump’s upbeat message, new reports reflect a collective anxiety around this year’s feasting.
The Conference Board, tasked with the monthly Consumer Confidence Index, found that it fell a full seven points, to 88.7, in November. It’s the lowest rating since April, which Trump opened by unleashing the administration’s reciprocal tariff plan.
So that was the mood as Trump approached Gobble to officially confer his pardon.
“He looks like a rather violent bird,” Trump said dubiously before formally addressing the turkey.
“Gobble, I just want to tell you that you are unconditionally pardoned,” he began, news that the bird greeted by emitting the short, sharp, turkey shriek, technically known as a gobble. The crowd tittered. The president jumped a little and then gave way to a quick, involuntary imitation of the turkey’s gobble. It was a bizarre moment and the closest thing to a note of dissent within the White House all year.
It may be a sign of things to come. Some 82 million Americans will be on the move for a Thanksgiving in which the national morale is jittery at best. The Trumps were among them, due to depart a rainy Washington on Tuesday evening for five days of respite in Florida, with no public events scheduled.
