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.