President Trump will make a rare public appearance next week, entering the White House Rose Garden to “pardon” two Thanksgiving turkeys.
White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere confirmed to the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that Trump would attend the traditional ceremony, as is now typical for a sitting president.
While the official presentation of a turkey dates back to President Harry Truman in 1947, President Ronald Reagan was the first on record to issue a “pardon” to his turkey. On taking office in 1989, President George H.W. Bush made the pardon practice official.
Washington Secrets reported that this year’s birds will come from a sixth-generation Iowa farmer, Ron Kardel, who is this year’s National Turkey Federation chairman.
Once pardoned, birds may leave for a farm. They are bred to live just six months and rarely have a lifespan longer than a year.
But Trump’s last two pardons, Peas and Carrots in 2018 and Bread and Butter in 2019, are still roaming Virginia Tech, where they live together on the school’s livestock farm, dubbed “Gobblers Rest.”
“Crazy as it seems, they are doing fine,” David Linker, the school’s agricultural program coordinator, told Secrets. “The two from last year, which would be Bread and Butter, were born in July of 2019, and they look really good. Then, actually, we still have Peas and Carrots alive, and they were born in June of 2018. And they look like 2 1/2-year-old birds. They are molting a bit, but they’re healthy. Legs are still doing fine.”
Last year, Trump pardoned Butter but forgot to do the same for Bread.
Trump, who is waging a protracted legal battle to contest the results of the presidential election, has appeared publicly just a few times since the race was called earlier this month for President-elect Joe Biden. His schedule listed “no public events” on Wednesday for the 11th time since Election Day.
He emerged on Veterans Day to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and he held a Rose Garden news conference a few days later to celebrate a new coronavirus vaccine. However, he took no questions.
Still, Trump has been talking to advisers and active on Twitter.
