President’s holiday event for the birds as Trump plans to hammer America’s democratic institutions come January
This is the way Biden world ends. Not with a bang but a gobble.
Joe Biden, 82, once the defender of democracy and saviour of America’s soul, is heading for the door, about to trade the nuclear codes for golf clubs and beach loungers. Power is as fickle as fame.
But on a crisp, sunny Monday he pulled off one last win over old rival Donald Trump by drawing surely the biggest crowd ever seen at the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning. And he knows how obsessed Trump is with crowd sizes.
“They tell me there’s 2,500 people here today,” said Biden, standing at the presidential lectern on the south lawn and quipping, “looking for a pardon.”
He laughed and so did the crowd. When a downbeat Trump held this event at the end of his own presidency in 2020, there were shouted questions such as “Mr President, will you be issuing a pardon for yourself?” Biden has ruled out a last-minute pardon for his son, Hunter, convicted on federal gun charges.
But a mischief maker with a dark sense of humour might have named this year’s turkeys Nancy and Barack, after the two Democrats who hastened the president’s exit from the election race after his disastrous TV debate against Trump.
Instead the two white-plumed birds, raised in Minnesota, were called Peach and Blossom, named after the official state flower of Biden’s home state, Delaware.
Wearing his trademark aviator sunglasses, Biden, marking his final holiday season at the White House, could not resist remarking: “And by the way, Delaware has a long history of growing peaches.
