President Trump hosted the annual turkey pardon at the White House on Tuesday — and it didn’t take long for the jokes to start flying.
He opened by claiming he was re-pardoning last year’s birds, because former President Joe Biden only used an autopen to sign their reprieve.
“Totally invalid,” Trump joked — noting that Biden has used the autopen so often that an autopen portrait now hangs in place of Biden’s picture in the White House photo gallery.
“The turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located, and they were on their way to be processed… but I have stopped that journey, and I am officially pardoning them, and they will not be served as Thanksgiving dinner,” he said to laughter.
This year’s lucky survivors — Gobble and Waddle — were introduced as the “plumpest birds” ever presented at the annual event.
Trump said he briefly considered naming them after Democratic leaders: “When I first saw their pictures… I was going to call them Chuck and Nancy. But then I realized I wouldn’t be pardoning them. I would never pardon those two people. I wouldn’t care what Melania told me.”
Gobble and Waddle now join a rapidly growing list of Trump’s second-term clemency actions — roughly 1,700 pardons so far, plus many commutations, though updated totals haven’t yet been posted.
The president didn’t stop at poultry comedy. He said staff had jokingly drafted paperwork to send the turkeys “straight through the terrorist confinement center in El Salvador,” adding that “even those birds don’t want to be there.”
He then turned his sights to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker — after reading about a woman being burned on a Chicago train while waiting for cooperation on a crime crackdown.
“The mayor is incompetent and the governor is a big fat slob,” Trump said bluntly.
He claimed his speechwriters tried to add a weight joke — but insisted he wouldn’t touch it: “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.”
With the jokes wrapped, the president and First Lady Melania Trump are set to head to Mar-a-Lago for the holiday.
Watch the replay of the event below:
President Trump and The First Lady Participate in the Thanksgiving Turkey Pardoning https://t.co/2d3QPGdZFK
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 25, 2025
