{"id":200907,"date":"2025-11-26T09:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T09:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/200907\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T09:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T09:04:08","slug":"trump-talks-turkey-and-trash-as-americans-look-to-thanksgiving-and-cost-of-living-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/200907\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump talks turkey and trash as Americans look to Thanksgiving and cost of living \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> told the gathering of cabinet members and invited guests that Gobble, who had a frankly brazen manner as he eyeballed the 47th president, was \u2013 of course \u2013 among the \u201clargest ever\u201d 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, \u201cmissing in action\u201d and didn\u2019t elaborate. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

The 2025 edition was laced with Donald Trump\u2019s 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<\/a> posted a letter he signed ordering the Navy to review \u2018potentially unlawful conduct\u2019 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cGobble and Waddle: when I first saw their pictures, I was gonna call them Chuck and Nancy,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then I realised I wouldn\u2019t be pardoning them. I would never pardon those two people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cthe cost of a turkey is down 33 per cent from its Biden-era highs.<\/p>\n

\u201cEggs are down 86 per cent since March,\u201d he continued, \u201cand gasoline will soon be hovering around $2 per gallon.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201cthe most challenging\u201d aspect of American life. <\/p>\n

\"PresidentPresident Donald Trump pardons a turkey named Gobble during a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House, in Washington, DC. Photograph: EPA <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201czero\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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\u2019s 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\u2019t do it quickly. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo governor Pritzker if you\u2019re listening, let\u2019s 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\u2019s not letting us do the job. Some speech writer wrote some joke about his weight. I would never talk about his weight- I don\u2019t talk about people being fat. I refuse to talk about the fact that he\u2019s a fat slob. I\u2019d like to lose a few pounds too, by the way. And I\u2019m not going to lose it on Thanksgiving, I can tell you that. Cos I\u2019m gonna have a turkey but it\u2019s not going to be that one.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\u2019s Day. And despite Trump\u2019s upbeat message, new reports reflect a collective anxiety around this year\u2019s feasting.<\/p>\n

The Conference Board, tasked with the monthly Consumer Confidence Index, found that it fell a full seven points, to 88.7, in November. It\u2019s the lowest rating since April, which Trump opened by unleashing the administration\u2019s reciprocal tariff plan. <\/p>\n

So that was the mood as Trump approached Gobble to officially confer his pardon.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looks like a rather violent bird,\u201d Trump said dubiously before formally addressing the turkey. <\/p>\n

\"FirstFirst lady Melania Trump looks on as US president Donald Trump pardons Gobble the turkey. Photograph: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS\/ AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cGobble, I just want to tell you that you are unconditionally pardoned,\u201d 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\u2019s gobble. It was a bizarre moment and the closest thing to a note of dissent within the White House all year. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He stood near the lectern at the White House with a bouffant mane, a preposterously loose-hanging wattle and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,51692,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-200907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-pete-hegseth","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115615201184465654","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}