President Donald Trump pardoned two Thanksgiving turkeys on Tuesday, continuing a strange American tradition that has been going on for decades. And while Trump read a speech that included a line about the turkeys being “MAHA,” the acronym for Make America Healthy Again, the president seemed unconvinced.
Why was Trump skeptical that these birds were aligned with MAHA, the movement championed by the Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? The turkeys were fat, just like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, according to Trump.
“Despite their size, Secretary Kennedy has formally certified that these are the first ever MAHA turkeys. I don’t know if I agree with that. These are MAHA,” said Trump. “In other words, they could be fat, but they’re still MAHA.”
Trump went on to say that the turkeys have been fed various things, though it’s unclear if he read his speech correctly.
“They’ve been fattened on a steady diet of grass… beef to allow the smoothies and all of the other things that they’ve been eating for this occasion,” said Trump.
Trump may have meant “grass-fed beef,” though we can’t be certain. It’s also possible he misread “beef tallow” as “beef to allow.” The rest of Trump’s declaration about “to allow the smoothies” doesn’t make any sense grammatically, so we have to assume the line was supposed to be something like “grass and beef tallow smoothies,” since turkeys don’t typically consume beef.
But who knows? Trump actually needs to wear reading glasses, and his refusal to do so is often blamed on his misreading of words in the teleprompter. Or, in this case, off a sheet of paper in front of him.
“This was a really big occasion, but they’ve eaten every fattening food that you can eat,” Trump continued. “We work like… we wanted to really make them special, and they really are. They’re like record-setting. I’ve never seen a turkey that big before.”
Trump asked someone off-camera, presumably one of the turkey farmers who was on hand for the event, whether the turkeys were violent.
“Are they violent at all? Will they attack as I walk over? Because if they were, I’ll stay right up here,” said Trump.
The MAHA movement is riddled with pseudoscience and seems particularly preoccupied with things that don’t actually make people less thin. RFK Jr., for instance, seems obsessed with getting fast food restaurants to swap out seed oils for beef tallow, something that arguably makes fries taste better but does nothing to actually make them healthier or reduce their ability to make people overweight.
But Trump is hyper-aware of weight and often denigrates overweight political opponents, despite his own weight. When the president spoke later in the speech about Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, he called him a fat slob.
“The mayor is incompetent, and the governor is a big fat slob. He ought to invite us in, say ‘Please make Chicago safe,’” Trump said.
The president said that Pritzker should get his act together and allow him to bring in the National Guard. And roughly a minute later, Trump said that he would never call Pritzker a fat slob.
“And I had a little bit of a Pritzker joke. I was going to talk about Pritzker in size, but when I talk about Pritzker, I get angry because he’s not letting us do the job. So I’m not going to tell my Pritzker joke. They have a very cute little joke, you know,” Trump said, turning the turkey pardoning ceremony into a roast.
“Some speechwriter wrote some joke about his weight, but I would never want to talk about his weight,” Trump continued. “I don’t talk about people being fat. I refuse to talk about the fact that he’s a fat slob. I don’t mention it.”
“The governor is a big fat slob.”
[1 minute later]
“I had a little bit of a Pritzker joke. Some speechwriter wrote some joke about his weight, but I would never want to talk about his weight. I don’t talk about people being fat. I refuse to talk about the fact that he’s a fat slob.”
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— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) November 25, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Trump went on to admit, “I’d like to lose a few pounds, too, by the way. And I’m not going to lose it on Thanksgiving, I can tell you that, because I’m going to have a turkey, but it’s not going to be that one.”
Trump and his far-right buddies often comment on Pritzker’s weight. Billionaire Elon Musk once wrote, “Nothing is more dangerous than getting between JB Pritzker and the buffet table!” But Pritzker responded with, “I salute @TheWienerCircle, not Nazis,” a reference to Chicago’s famous hot dog restaurant.
I salute @TheWienerCircle, not Nazis. https://t.co/JFNoBvN807 pic.twitter.com/Y3zArkieE5
— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) January 29, 2025
Musk had given two Nazi-style salutes just a few days earlier at an event celebrating President Trump’s inauguration.
Trump’s speech on Tuesday rambled on and on, with the president also saying a bunch of things that were highly misleading about inflation. Trump insisted that grocery prices were down substantially since “Biden-era highs,” which is technically true. But he didn’t address the fact that inflation came down just before Trump took office in January and has been getting worse since his tariff policies were enacted.
For example, Trump claims that ham prices are down from those Biden-era highs, without mentioning that they’ve risen since he took office. This graph from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that ham prices in the Midwest dipped substantially in the fall of 2024, then soared in March 2025 after Trump was inaugurated for a second time.
Trump also claimed that gas prices were going to be close to $2 per gallon soon, something that’s simply not true. The current rate of inflation is 3%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from a high of 9% in the summer of 2022 (those Biden-era highs) but up from the 2.3% that was achieved between April 2024 and April 2025. You’ll remember that April 2025 was the start of “Liberation Day,” when Trump announced all his record-breaking tariffs.
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