Three things to watch as Trump is scheduled to pardon final Thanksgiving turkeys

<p>Donald Trump golfs at Trump National Golf Club on 22 November in Sterling, Virginia.</p> (Getty Images)

Donald Trump golfs at Trump National Golf Club on 22 November in Sterling, Virginia.

(Getty Images)
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Time is running short for Corn and Cobb as they await a presidential pardon from Donald Trump, a lameduck president showing less and less interest in the trappings and traditions of his office.

Mr Trump has, like all of his predecessors, acknowledged the ridiculousness of the annual tradition of the most powerful person in the world issuing a presidential “pardon” to birds that the National Wild Turkey Federation says have a life expectancy of three or four years.

Nevertheless, he has gone through with it – corny jokes written by West Wing aides and all, along with more than a few Trumpian jabs at Democrats.

There were turkey pardoning events at the executive mansion through the years, from Ulysses S Grant to Woodrow Wilson to John F Kennedy to Ronald Reagan. It was the latter chief executive who made it a permanent tradition, and Mr Trump has been keen to mirror many of Reagan’s political tactics, including his “America first” governing philosophy and a version of The Gipper’s 1980 mantra: “Let’s make America great again.”

So the 45th president, who on Monday night signaled the beginning of the end of his presidency when he claimed to have cleared an otherwise obscure federal agency to unlock President-elect Joe Biden’s transition authorities, is scheduled to be in the Rose Garden around 2 p.m. to spare two final turkeys from joining someone’s Thanksgiving feats.

Here are three things to watch when Corn and Cobb beg for their lives.

The non-concession concession

Mr Trump likely will never say he lost the election. Even after green-lighting the GSA to start Mr Biden’s transition process, the president let the world know he will “never concede to fake ballots.”

But he and his team have yet to produce any fake ballots.

Will he drop a joke or ad-libbed quip that offers another clue that he realises his presidency is over?

Or will he, knowing the political base he would need again during a potential 2024 run will be watching, vow to be back next year to spare some poultry?

Got questions?

Presidents almost never spar with reporters at this event.

But, then, presidents didn’t spar with reporters a few times a week with a loud helicopter idling in the background before Mr Trump came along.

As always, anything is possible.

The once-talkative president has not taken a reporter’s question in weeks, and keeps promising on Twitter to produce evidence of widespread voter fraud. Will he break his streak?

Did Corn and Cobb vote?

Mr Trump and his legal team have made troubling accusations of deceased individuals casting ballots and other shenanigans they say were part of a coast-to-coast Democratic hoax to “steal” an election that was “rigged” against him from the start.

“What does GSA being allowed to preliminarily work with the Dems have to do with continuing to pursue our various cases on what will go down as the most corrupt election in American political history? We are moving full speed ahead. Will never concede to fake ballots & ‘Dominion’,” the president tweeted late Monday night.

He followed that by quoting a GOP lawyer who apparently appeared on the online news platform NewsMax: “In Wisconsin, somebody has to be indefinitely confined in order to vote absentee. In the past there were 20,000 people. This past election there were 120,000...and Republicans were locked out of the vote counting process.”

(Both tweets received a Twitter disclaimer that his claims have been disputed.)

But it’s worth wondering if the president, jokingly, might allege that both turkeys he will spare cast ballots for the president-elect.

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