The Thanksgiving turkey pardon was the final humiliation of Donald Trump

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Clearly some believed there was, as the ceremony was briefly interrupted with the shouted words of a reporter in the back: “Mr President, what about a pardon for yourself?” Perhaps The Donald was haunted by his own words in 2018, when he turned up to the same turkey pardoning ceremony and joked that the loser — the turkey condemned to the White House Thanksgiving table — had “refused to concede” after a “free and fair election”. He said that members of the US military “keep America safe, keep America great and, as I say, America first.” No, that’s not a fully coherent sentence, despite the fact that he kept his eyes down on a printed piece of paper on the lectern in front of him the entire time, but at least it wasn’t a conspiracy theory about commie voting machines from Venezuela. Of the many hallowed and consequential duties of the presidency, said Barack Obama at the same ceremony during his time in the White House, the turkey pardoning “is not one of them”. There was something wistful, even romantic, about the way he paused and said, “This is a great, great country — there’s nothing even close as far as I’m concerned.” There was a touch of the melancholy in the way he tried to muster humor, claiming that the birds had named themselves Corn and Cob in an act of “blatant pandering” to the American people.