Thanksgiving Presidential Turkey Pardon: Facts About Two Birds Before White House Vote

In keeping with decades-long tradition, President Donald Trump will be pardoning a turkey before Thanksgiving this year. The White House announced Sunday on Twitter that, unlike last year, people will be able to vote for the bird they want the POTUS to pardon.

“The pardoning of the National Thanksgiving Turkey is almost upon us, and our two gobbling candidates have arrived! Get ready to vote on which bird President Trump should pardon this week,” the tweet said, directing people to the official website of the White House.

However, the page linked in the tweet still hadn’t been set up for the voting process to commence.

“On November 20, President Donald J. Trump will continue the time-honored White House tradition of officially pardoning the National Thanksgiving Turkey. And you get to decide which turkey he pardons,” the page read, with a place where visitors could subscribe to receive latest updates regarding the voting process.

So what happens to the bird which receives the lesser vote? There was no need for the voting process to bear down on your conscience because, according to National Turkey Federation, even the bird which does not receive the presidential pardon was not killed or eaten. Having the option of two birds was just a precautionary measure in case one of them got too fussy before the big event.

While no other details about the birds were mentioned on the site, here is everything known so far about the couple of turkeys selected for the Thanksgiving pardoning this year:

The birds hail from Huron, South Dakota, and were paraded around the city last week as part of a formal send-off before being driven 1400 miles to the nation’s capital in an SUV. Although turkeys have been receiving presidential pardon for the last 70 years, this was the first time South Dakota was chosen to present the gobblers.

Both the birds were raised on a farm north of Huron, around 90 miles northwest of Sioux Falls, owned by Ruben Waldner. The pair were handpicked from an array of 50 birds.

"It took a little (time), because there were a lot of nice birds this year," Waldner, who assisted in the selecting process, told CBS-affiliated Cleveland19. "I look at how they are feathered, their personality, how they look and how they act. That was the main criteria in choosing these fellows."

Until the pardoning ceremony, the birds will be staying at the Willard InterContinental Hotel, a five-star establishment in Washington D.C. As the birds await their official names — picked from a list of more than 600 suggestions from South Dakota residents — they have been named Jeff and Ruben respectively. Both of them will be attending a press conference Monday, where they will be “interviewed.”

"People had a good time with thinking about names and in less than a week, we received all these suggestions from the public, like Rushmore or Dakota," said Katlyn Richter, a South Dakota Department of Tourism spokeswoman.

Last year, Trump pardoned two turkeys named Drumstick and Wishbone in a traditional ceremony in the White House Rose Garden on Nov. 21. The tradition of pardoning turkeys officially began with President Harry Truman who pardoned a gobbler the night before Thanksgiving in 1947, according to the Library of Congress.