Thanksgiving on Thin Ice

The president’s rambling turkey-pardon monologue shows a mind slipping its moorings, and a nuclear arsenal still at his fingertips.

It starts, as these things so often do now, with home décor. The president steps out on the South Lawn, not to talk about wars or famines or mass deportations, but to brag that he’s had the grass ripped up so no one’s shoes get muddy at the turkey pardon. He lingers on the new patio like an HGTV host who accidentally seized nuclear codes, proudly announcing, “I hope you like our new beautiful patio with matching stone to the White House,” and assuring everyone that if he hadn’t remodeled the place, “you’d be sinking into the mud like they’ve done for many years.” The first message of the day is clear: nothing says “normal democracy” like tearing up the lawn so your donors don’t sink into it while you rant about crime.

From there, the ceremony swerves into the kind of alternate universe where the national debt, the criminal code, and the fate of two confused birds are all part of the same psychic weather system. He wishes everyone a “very, very happy Thanksgiving,” immediately informs us that the economy is doing “better than we’ve ever done before,” and rebrands the turkey pardon as a geopolitical crisis. Before he can even get to Gobble and Waddle, he breaks in with: “I want to make an important announcement.”

And what a Thanksgiving announcement it is.

Last year’s presidential turkey pardon, he explains, is invalid because Joe Biden used an auto-pen. It’s said with the gravity usually reserved for a coup attempt. According to him, a “thorough and very rigorous investigation” by Pam Bondi, the DOJ, FBI, CIA, White House Counsel, and something he calls “the Department of Everything, I think that’s called the White House” has revealed that the auto-pen tainted the entire ceremony. “Totally invalid,” he rules. So invalid, in fact, that the turkeys Peach and Blossom had already been located “on their way to be processed, in other words, to be killed.” In this telling, he’s not a man performing a holiday gag; he’s a poultry action hero intervening “in the nick of time.”

Then comes the casting parade, a surreal mix of Cabinet members, media personalities, and donors introduced as if they’re starring in a prestige Thanksgiving miniseries. He thanks Kash Patel, now FBI Director in this reality, who “has been very busy,” and praises a nuclear-approval official for supposedly turning 20-year reviews into “a matter of weeks.” He gestures at all this like the turkeys are his PowerPoint clicker.

He cannot resist one of his favorite recurring bits: the omnibus bill he describes as a legislative cornucopia of glory. He calls it a “great big beautiful bill” so many times it begins to sound like a children’s book written under duress. It contains, he claims, “the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country for middle-income people” and “the biggest jobs bill ever passed.” Democrats, he tells us, are so impossible to work with that Republicans “stuffed four years, actually probably eight or ten years,” of material into one bill because “I think that was our one shot.” Call it a legislative turducken.

When he finally introduces the actual turkeys, Gobble and Waddle, he considers calling them Chuck and Nancy but decides against it: “I would never pardon those two people.” He then marvels that the birds weigh over 50 pounds, grilling the farmer about whether they’re “a little fatty.” He appears genuinely invested in the idea that their BMI might undermine the ceremony’s dignity.

He asks if they’re violent. “Will they attack as I walk over?” It’s the closest we get to suspense all afternoon.

Now comes the part of the holiday speech where someone, somewhere, always needs to be incarcerated. After praising the turkeys, he notes that some of his staff were already preparing to ship them to El Salvador’s mega-prison, a place he praises with the cheerful detachment of a man describing an all-inclusive resort. “Even those birds don’t want to be there,” he jokes, before pivoting to crime stats so imaginary they’d make a Hallmark movie blush.

Washington, DC, he says, is “now considered a totally safe city.” Not just safer, totally safe. According to him, the city has had “zero murders in six months,” a figure so deranged it should come with a laugh track. He credits this miracle to removing “1,700 career criminals” and Venezuelan prisoners who were apparently released directly into downtown Washington by unknown geopolitical pranksters. “We got them all the hell out of our country,” he says proudly, though the turkeys appear unconvinced.

Then he turns his attention to Chicago, accusing the mayor of being “low IQ” and the governor of being “a big fat slob.” This, he assures us, does not count as talking about their weight: “I don’t talk about people being fat,” he vows, seconds before calling the governor a “fat slob” again. It’s a theological distinction known only to him and possibly to Waddle, who wisely remains missing.

Eventually we wander into international diplomacy. One year ago, according to him, the king of Saudi Arabia told him the United States was “a dead country,” but now it is “the hottest country anywhere in the world.” He claims $18 trillion in new investments in nine months, a number that would qualify as a global paranormal event, and announces that churches across America are filling up again because of him. “Religion is coming back,” he says, the turkeys looking like they’d very much like to be excluded from this narrative.

We hit the grocery price fantasia next: Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal “down 25 percent,” turkey “down 33 percent,” potatoes “down 13 percent,” ham “down 15 percent,” eggs “down 86 percent since March.” Gasoline, he promises, will “soon be hovering around $2 a gallon.” The birds, who have eaten smoothies for months to achieve their ceremonial girth, refrain from comment.

At last, the sacramental moment arrives. He thanks Melania, notes that Waddle is “missing in action,” and steps forward to grant the pardon with all the solemnity of a man blessing a casino opening. “You are hereby unconditionally pardoned,” he declares. Someone in the crowd calls out “Praise the Lord!” and he repeats it, as if Gobble’s salvation has redemptive benefits for the rest of us.

And that’s the turkey pardon now: a holiday ritual repurposed as a victory lap through delusion, grievance, and invented statistics. What once was a lighthearted White House tradition is now a stage for claiming he saved last year’s birds from a Biden death convoy, ended murder in Washington, crushed immigration to absolute zero, personally revived American religion, and negotiated with God and Walmart for cheaper sweet potatoes.

In case the Thanksgiving turkey pardon wasn’t surreal enough, it turns out the man Trump praised from the podium, “FBI Director Kash Patel, who has been very busy and doing a great job also, thank you” — may be circling the drain before the gravy has even congealed.

Cable news breaks in with what they lovingly call “brand new breaking news,” because apparently no one has invented old breaking news yet. “Miss Now has just learned,” the anchor intones, that Kash Patel “may be out of a job in the coming months.” Three people with knowledge of the situation say Trump and his top aides have grown tired of Patel and the “unflattering headlines he’s been generating,” which is a polite way of saying: when your FBI director treats government jets like Uber Black for his girlfriend and borrows SWAT teams as a personal security detail, eventually even this White House has to pretend to be annoyed.

Journalist Ken Dilanian very carefully lays down all the caveats that attach to Trump personnel stories like barnacles. “All the qualifiers apply here,” he says. “You never actually know exactly what’s going on.” Translation: by the time this sentence airs, Trump could have fired Patel, rehired him, and appointed him Surgeon General, all via Truth Social.

Still, the reporting is clear: Patel is on “increasingly thin ice,” and Trump is considering replacing him “by the end of the year” with Andrew Bailey, the former Missouri attorney general who is currently acting as deputy FBI director, along with Dan Bongino. Yes, the FBI now comes with a Dan Bongino attachment, like a hard-right podcast plug-in for law enforcement.

The official reasons for the palace intrigue are almost quaint by Trump-era standards. There’s the “use of taxpayer resources,” which in this case means flying his girlfriend around on an FBI jet and deploying an FBI SWAT team as her personal security detail. Not for a high-risk operation, mind you, for his “country singer girlfriend who lives in Nashville.” The SWAT guys are apparently doing double duty as a touring bodyguard unit, and the New York Times has reported that other SWAT details from other cities have been pulled into this romantic side quest. It’s like if the FBI briefly became Live Nation.

Then there are his tweets. Patel jumped out ahead of the rest of the government on the “Charlie Kirk assassination” case and on a terrorist attack in Michigan, tweeting about arrests and details before anyone had agreed on the official line. In Trumpworld, this is a delicate balance: you’re supposed to undermine institutions and spread conspiracies, yes, but you’re not supposed to get out in front of the showrunner and spoil the season finale.

According to the reporting, Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche at DOJ have been irritated with Patel “for a long time,” even though they’ve publicly denied it whenever reporters find their spines long enough to ask. Now the White House is apparently joining the “oh my God, what is he doing” caucus.

In a truly Trumpian twist, Dilanian notes this leak “may actually enhance his job security.” Once a story drops that a loyalist might be fired, the boss often feels compelled to prove he’s totally in control and definitely not presiding over chaos. So you get the ceremonial praise, the “doing a great job” line at the turkey pardon, and a bit of staged clapping. “See, Kash, you have a following,” Trump tells him, as if the applause were not strongly encouraged by Secret Service giving everyone the subtle “please clap or at least don’t scream” look.

Laura Barrón-López fills in the timing, which could not be more on the nose. She says she’d just asked the White House for comment on Patel’s potential ouster before the turkey event. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson didn’t deny the reporting, didn’t call it false, just said Patel is “a critical member of the president’s team” and is “working tirelessly to ensure the integrity of the FBI.” Within hours, Trump is on camera thanking him in the Rose Garden, and the crowd is applauding like they’re at a hostage wedding reception. Whether that line was scripted or improvised panic is anyone’s guess, but the choreography is obvious: smile, clap, pretend this relationship is fine.

The list of people who actually like Kash Patel is shrinking to the size of a Post-it. Dilanian points out that “every current and former FBI agent I’ve ever talked to has absolute disdain for the way Kash Patel is running the Bureau.” That’s one flank. On the other flank, the MAGA activists are furious at him for not being quite conspiratorial enough.

They’re angry he hasn’t delivered the fantasy version of the January 6th pipe bomb case, still unsolved, where the FBI was secretly planting devices and framing patriots. They’re also livid that Patel and Bongino recently gave a Fox interview about the assassination attempt against Trump and said the suspect “acted alone” and “there was no conspiracy.” In a normal country, “the shooter acted alone” is the kind of sober conclusion that calms people down. In this one, it’s seen as a betrayal of the fanfic that keeps the base entertained between rallies.

So you end up with a genuinely impressive alignment: the career people at the FBI despise how he’s running the place; the far-right base despises him for not validating their wildest fantasies; and the White House despises the headlines about private jets, SWAT escorts, and premature tweets. It’s the closest thing we’ve seen to national unity in years, and it’s all focused on one guy.

Enter Andrew Bailey, stage right. Laura reminds us that Bailey, the former Missouri attorney general, was brought in because nobody at the White House or inside the FBI was happy with Bongino either. Bongino had been “very upset and rebelling a bit” over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files over the summer, because of course the Epstein files are now part of the internal FBI talent war. Bailey was installed as co–deputy director in a “position that is not normal,” and so far, we’re told, “he hasn’t really ruffled any feathers” among the people who matter most: Trump, his aides, and the lawmakers who show up on Fox in prime time.

In other words, Andrew Bailey’s main qualification is that he’s not currently generating headlines about flying his girlfriend around on a federal plane, assigning a SWAT team to carry her guitar case, tweeting ahead of terrorism investigations, or irritating both the FBI rank and file and the QAnon comment section simultaneously.

Kash Patel, on the other hand, now exists in that uniquely unstable Trumpworld orbit where any day could be his last, unless the president wakes up and decides that firing him would look like admitting a mistake. Trump just told the country, on live television, that Patel is “doing a great job.” The press office is calling him “a critical member of the president’s team.” Allies are leaking that he’s on “thin ice.” Activists are screaming that he’s part of the cover-up. The agents hate his guts.

And somewhere in Nashville, a SWAT team is probably still wondering how they ended up guarding a country singer because the FBI director fell in love.

And as all of this unravels, the turkey psychodrama, the imaginary borders sealed to perfection, the SWAT-team-for-my-girlfriend subplot, the re-litigation of last year’s poultry, the self-contradictions delivered back-to-back without a blink, it’s impossible to ignore the larger, more chilling truth hovering behind every one of these public appearances. This isn’t just chaos; it’s disorganization. Deep, unspooling, unmistakable disorganization from a man who holds the nuclear codes.

Every part of that turkey-pardon performance ricocheted like a pinball machine on the fritz: one moment he’s bragging about patio stones, the next he’s invalidating ceremonial pardons, then he’s insisting the border is at “zero,” then he’s ranting about Chicago murders, then he’s praising a prison in El Salvador, then he’s promising $2 gas, then he’s declaring he ended “eight wars in nine months,” then he’s doing stand-up about fat governors. It’s not just off-topic; it’s untethered. The through-line isn’t policy; it’s impulse.

And that’s the part that should keep everyone up at night. We’re not watching a man who loses the plot. We’re watching a man who no longer seems aware that plots exist. This is someone who jumps between fantasies, vendettas, hallucinated statistics, and self-congratulation with the ease most of us change radio stations. That is frightening enough at a Thanksgiving sideshow. It is catastrophic when the same man can, on a whim or a misunderstanding or a perceived insult, initiate decisions with global consequences measured not in “crime statistics” but in megatons.

There’s a point where this stops being funny, even in a country that copes with gallows humor as a national pastime. There’s a point where the disjointedness stops being a quirk and becomes a risk. We passed that point a long time ago. What we saw at the turkey pardon wasn’t just a rambling holiday speech; it was a man broadcasting, openly and without disguise, that he is no longer capable of holding a coherent idea for more than thirty seconds.

The danger is that the most disorganized speaker in American public life remains the one person empowered to make the kind of decisions you need absolute clarity for.

The country isn’t just on thin ice; the entire world is.