WATCH: President Biden 'pardons' Chocolate and Chip, the National Thanksgiving Turkeys, who tip the scales at 46 and 47 pounds.
President Joe Biden ceremoniously pardoned gobblers Chocolate and Chip on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday in a plucky presidential tradition that some reports date to as early as the 1860s.
And he took a crack at the Republican Party’s weaker-than-expected showing in the recent midterm elections, noting, “The only ‘red wave’ is going to be our German shepherd Commander knocking over cranberry sauce on our table.” Chocolate and Chip — who tip the scales at a whopping 46 and 47 pounds, respectively — were raised on the Circle S Ranch in North Carolina by National Turkey Federation chairman Ronny Parker.
President Ronald Reagan began the modern tradition of sending the national Thanksgiving turkey to retire on a farm in the 1980s. But the more formal “ceremony” of pardoning the bird began under President George H.W. Bush in 1989. And in recent years, two turkeys have often squared off in an online vote in which Americans decide which one should be spared the axe — but the commander-in-chief always ends up pardoning them both.
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