President Trump and The First Lady Participate in the Thanksgiving Turkey Pardoning

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and First Lady Melania Trump.

I thank you very much, and I hope you like our new beautiful patio with matching stone to the White House. If this were grass today, you'd be sinking into the mud like they've done for many years, and you would be very unhappy. Please, thank you very much. This is a big day. It's a pardon day for a very important beast. On behalf of the First Lady and the entire Trump family, I want to wish all Americans a very, very happy Thanksgiving. It's a great time of year, and our country's doing really well economically, like we've never done before. Today we continue a time-honored American tradition. [01:29] Boy, that's a well-trained turkey. See how happy he is? In a few moments, I will grant a full, absolute, and unconditional presidential pardon to two handsome Thanksgiving turkeys, and this is their lucky day. This is a lucky day for them. But before going any further, I want to make an important announcement because you remember last year, after a thorough and very rigorous investigation by Pam Bondi and all of the people at Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, the White House Counsel's Office, and the Department of Everything—we have a Department of Everything, you know what that is? I think that's called the White House—into a terrible situation caused by a man named Sleepy Joe Biden. He used an auto-pen last year for the turkeys' pardon. So I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined, that last year's turkey pardons are totally invalid. As are the pardons of about every other person that was pardoned, other than—where's Hunter? No, Hunter's was good. That was the one pardon, Pam, that was good, right? The rest of them are all invalid. I don't know what the hell you're going to do about that, but that's—now we're getting to take a little of the joke in, that is a mess. But they're hereby null and void. 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 have 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. This one has plenty of time, but they were saved in the nick of time. [03:22] We're thrilled to be joined today by Vice President J.D. Vance, Second Lady Usha Vance, their daughter Mirabel, and along with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretaries Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, Pete Hegseth, Brooke Rollins, Howard Lutnick, Linda McMahon, Scott Turner, Administrator Lee Zeldin, who's done a great job. A nuclear power plant gets approved in less than a week, okay? I'm only kidding, but pretty close to that. And we have more—where is Lee? Stand up, Lee. One of my great superstars. Thank you. It used to take 20 years before you got rejected when you put in an application; now we're doing them in a matter of weeks, right? And that's why we have the biggest plants anywhere in the world. We're leading in AI, we're leading in everything. Our auto plants are pouring back into our country—wait till you see the jobs coming with them. But many of them are under construction, but Lee's done a great job in getting those approvals. I appreciate it very much. FBI Director Kash Patel, who's been very busy and doing a great job also. Thank you, Kash. Along with members of Congress, and in particular, I want to mention Jason Smith and David Rouzer. Where are those two guys? Come on, stand up, fellas. What good people. Jason knows more about the tax code than any living human being. He knows so much we don't even want to hear about it, right? Too complicated. We're going to make it a simpler code. But we did, in the great big beautiful bill that was just passed, your imprint's all over that, and it's amazing. The biggest tax cuts in the history of our country for middle-income people. The biggest tax cuts in the history of our country for middle-income people. And the biggest jobs bill ever passed, and nobody thought we could get that one done. I'm glad—we actually put four years, actually probably eight or ten years, but we put four years' worth of material into one great big beautiful bill. So that worked out very well, and I want to thank everybody for working on it. J.D., that was a great—well, you know we were going to do it in small bills, we're going to have 18 bills and do it along the process. I'm glad, Scott, that we got it done, because dealing with these Democrats, I don't think—I think that's our one shot. But we have it all in one great big beautiful bill. [05:50] Thanks as well to the Chairman of the National Turkey Federation and the CEO of Butterball, that's a big deal, Jay Jandrain. Where's Jay? Thank you. Stand up, Jay. Thank you very much. Along with his wife, Leslie, and their three children, as well as the farmer who raised these two magnificent birds, Travis Pittman, in Wayne County, North Carolina. I won Wayne County by a lot. That means you had to vote for Trump, I think. I won by 92%. I like Wayne County. They're doing all right, right? And this is like a record-setting turkey that's going to be saved. The turkeys being pardoned today go by the names of Gobble and Waddle. When I first saw their pictures, I thought we should send them—well, I was going to—I shouldn't say this. 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 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." These are two of the largest turkeys ever presented to an American president, over 50 pounds each. That's the largest we've ever had, and those are big turkeys. Are they as good as the normal-sized turkey? Better or as good? Do they tend to be a little fatty, maybe? No, he said no. He knows the turkey business. [07:22] Anyway, despite their size, Secretary Kennedy has formally certified that these are the first-ever MAHA turkeys. I don't know if I agree with that. These are MAHA. In other words, they could be fat, but they're still MAHA. They've been fattened on a steady diet of grass-beef to allow the smoothies and all of the other things that they've been eating for this occasion. This was a really big occasion, but they've eaten every fattening food that you can eat. We worked like—we wanted to really make them special, and they really are. They're like record-setting. I've never seen a turkey that big before. Are they violent at all? Will they attack as I walk over? Because if they were, I'll stay right up here. But as you know, we're a tough-on-crime administration. We are tough on crime. You know our border had zero people coming in for the last seven months, right? Zero. I mean, even I find that hard to believe to be—they had millions and millions of people pour into our border from prisons, from mental institutions, gang members, drug dealers. They poured into our country like we were stupid people. We're not stupid people anymore. But nobody's ever seen anything the job that they've done on the Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, the whole group. The job they've done on the border's almost like a miracle. And the people that make these statistics that said zero, they've said zero for the last seven months. I can't—it has to be like a few people got in, but they say zero. And they're radical left Democrats that do the scoring, so I can't imagine they did that for us. The truth is, we have no people coming into our country illegally. It's an amazing—it's an amazing statistic, and I'm very proud of it. And we have the most people working in the United States today, by far, than we ever had in the history of our country. So those are all good numbers. [09:23] Instead of pardon, some of my more enthusiastic staffers were already drafting the paperwork to ship Gobble and Waddle straight to the terrorist confinement center in El Salvador. And even those birds don't want to be there. You know what I mean? It's a tough—I'd like to thank the President of that country. They do a rather efficient job. It's got to be the largest prison in history. I've never seen anything like it. And a lot of people are behaving on our streets now. You know, Washington, D.C., is a safe—is considered a safe zone. This was one of our most unsafe places anywhere in the United States. It is now considered a totally safe city. I won't tell you about murders. We're having murders, like a lot of murders, on a weekly basis. We haven't had a murder in six months. And it doesn't sound good even to say that, we haven't had a murder in six months, but when you were averaging one and even sometimes two a week, and you haven't had one in six months, you can walk with your family down the middle of any street, go to a restaurant, you won't get in. They're opening new restaurants all over, and it's really been a beautiful thing to see. So Washington, D.C., is now a totally safe city, and a year ago it was a crime criminal mess. We removed, Pam, 1,700 people, career criminals, and people that came to this city from Venezuela and many other places. They were let out of prisons and they came here. They were Tren de Aragua—a lot of Tren de Aragua, that's from Venezuela—and we got them all the hell out of our country or they're in prisons now. And you can walk down any street in Washington and you're going to be just fine. And I want to thank the National Guard. I want to thank Pete Hegseth, the job you've done here is incredible. And I hear you're having the same kind of success in Memphis, Tennessee, where you had an even worse situation, and Memphis crime is down 64% in three weeks. And by the time you have four or five weeks, you're going to have it down almost where there won't be crime. [11:29] And we could do that in Chicago, by the way, if they would let us. If the Mayor, who's a low-IQ person, but he should understand this. This is a very serious thing. You saw all the crime that took place last night, the night before. The woman with the burning—they burned the woman. To be talking about that now, they burned this beautiful woman riding in a train. A man was arrested 72 times. 72 times, think of that. And they'll let him out again. The liberal judges will let him out again. But we're ready to go. You know, we've been moving toward Chicago. We have a Governor that thinks it's wonderful that only like seven people were killed this week. But we are moving toward doing—and we're going to—if crime gets—it's horrible what's happening in Chicago. We could make Chicago a safe city in a period of four weeks. In a period of eight weeks, nine weeks, ten weeks, it would be totally safe, and the people of Chicago want us to go there. And if you look at the crime that's taken place in Chicago in the last two weeks, just take a look. It's on the front page of every newspaper. It's out of control. The Mayor's incompetent and the Governor is a big fat slob. He ought to invite us in and say, "Please make Chicago safe." We're going to lose a great city if we don't do it quickly. Make Chicago—we'll do the same thing as we did in D.C., the same thing as we did everywhere we've gone. It's become almost instantly safe, and I want to do it in Chicago. So Governor Pritzker, if you're listening, let's get your act together. Invite us in. We're going to make your place so safe. You're not going to have these crimes that are making the newspapers and the front page of every newspaper and television story news story. We'll make Chicago a safe place very quickly. [13:35] I looked at the various cases, granting mercy, discovering that the terrible trauma that everyone's going through. And I had a little bit of a Pritzker joke. I was going to talk about Pritzker and size. But when I talk about Pritzker, I get angry because he's not letting us do the job. So I'm not going to tell my Pritzker joke. They have a very cute little joke, you know? Some speechwriter wrote some joke about his weight. But I would never want to 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 don't mention it. On a more serious note, as we gather around the dinner table—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, because I'm going to have a turkey, but it's not going to be that one. I hope all Americans will have the chance to enjoy the fellowship of family and friends and renew our faith in God's providence. One year ago, we had a—we were a dead country one year ago. The King of Saudi Arabia said it to me. He said it to me, actually, four months ago when I was in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE. He said, "You know, one year ago, the United States was a dead country, and now you've got the hottest country anywhere in the world to do—we're the hottest country." We have $18 trillion being invested as of now—we're not even close to being one year. The most ever was $2 trillion for a certain country, I won't name, during the last administration. In four years, they had less than a trillion dollars being invested in the country. In nine months, we have over $18 trillion. It's a number that nobody has ever even thought possible. And that's in building plants and building so many things, investments in our country. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. [15:39] But we have more people working, we have more people praying. The churches are coming back. I don't know if you've been reading that story, but religion is coming back to America. Some people say, "Oh, why would you mention that?" To me, that's a big deal. And this Thanksgiving, we're also making incredible strides to make America affordable again. Walmart announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal is 25% lower than just one year ago. That's a big deal. According to the USDA, the price of Thanksgiving turkey is down 33% from its Biden-era highs. Potatoes are down 13%, ham is down 15% compared to last Thanksgiving. So we are down to a level that we haven't seen in a long time. Egg prices are down 86% since March, and gasoline will soon be hovering around $2 a gallon. Under our leadership, we passed the largest tax cuts in history, the largest spending cuts in history, the largest regulation cuts in history, and we have fully secured our southern border. I've also ended eight wars in nine months, and we're working on that final one. It's not easy, but I don't know, I think we're going to get there. 25,000 soldiers, Ukraine-Russia, in the last month—25,000 soldiers have died. So I think we're getting very close to a deal. We'll find out. I thought that one would have gone quicker. We did eight, I thought that would have been an easier one, but I think we're making progress in less than one year. We've accomplished more than most other administrations have accomplished in eight years. And this is a very special Thanksgiving. We thank God for His many blessings and the great success that this country has seen in the short period of time. We draw strength from the love of family and friends, and we express our undying gratitude for the men and the women of the United States Armed Forces. We love them. We pray that peace and prosperity will continue to bless our land. And together we'll really just keep this great drive going to make America great again. MAGA. I think it's the greatest expression in the history of politics. Make America Great Again. So once again, Melania, thank you for doing such a great job and being such a great First Lady. And now, let's go and give Gobble—Waddle's, by the way, is missing in action, but that's okay, we'll pretend Waddle is here—the gift that they've been waiting for, and I'll move over and I will just say very nicely: Gobble, you're pardoned. Come on, let's say it in front of Gobble. Thank you very much, everybody. [19:02] I just want to tell you this very important. You are hereby unconditionally pardoned. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. There you go. Beautiful. That's great. Beautiful. Well, it's nice. Who would want to harm this beautiful bird? That's great. That's great. Thank you very much. Fantastic job. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody.