WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will pardon two turkeys from Indiana named Peanut Butter and Jelly at the White House on Friday, carrying on a decades-old Thanksgiving tradition.
The birds, perched on side-by-side hotel-style beds with crested headboards, were featured in a short video the White House tweeted out Thursday, exactly a week before the holiday, which falls on Nov. 25 this year.
In 1947, President Harry Truman was the first recipient of a bird gifted by America’s turkey farmers, a tradition that continued. In 1963, President John Kennedy decided to send his gift back to the farm where it came from.
George H.W. Bush was the first president to officially offer a turkey pardon at the White House in 1989. Barack Obama’s pardons featured jokes that often had his daughters rolling their eyes at his side.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump emerged from a self-imposed isolation he began after losing the November presidential election to pardon Corn, a 42-pound (19-kg) turkey.
(This story refiles to show the turkeys will be pardoned on Friday, not on Thanksgiving; edits)
(Reporting by Heather Timmons; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sandra Maler)
