Trump Makes Heinous Deportation Joke During Turkey Pardon

Donald Trump is already making light of his administration wrongfully deporting immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Speaking from the newly paved Rose Garden Tuesday, Trump delivered a ghastly joke while he passed out pardons to two turkeys, Gobble and Waddle.

“Instead of pardons, some of my more enthusiastic staffers were already drafting the paperwork straight to the terrorist confinement center in El Salvador,” Trump said. “And even those birds don’t want to be there, you know what I mean.”

Unlike his many other groan-worthy jokes, this one didn’t seem to elicit the slightest laugh from the White House audience.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s CECOT, which is notorious for human rights abuses, even though the vast majority of those immigrants did not have criminal records. Despite the administration’s claims that the deportees were brutal gang members and “the worst of the worst,” only 32 of the deportees had actually been convicted of crimes, most of which were minor offenses such as traffic violations. The Trump administration has continued to refer to CECOT as part of a barbaric propaganda campaign to scare immigrants.

Since that scandal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has only continued its trend of targeting immigrants who aren’t criminals. The latest disclosure from ICE revealed that 40 percent of immigrants detained at agency facilities had no criminal record at all.

Trump also cracked multiple jokes about presidential pardons, saying former President Joe Biden had “used an autopen last year for the turkey’s pardon.”

“So I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined, that last year’s turkey pardons are totally invalid,” Trump continued.

He also claimed he’d wanted to call the birds Chuck and Nancy, after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “But then I realized I wouldn’t be pardoning them, I would never pardon those two people,” Trump said.

It seems that Gobble and Waddle should count themselves lucky. They’re probably the first recipients of Trump’s presidential pardons who didn’t have to help make him rich.

Kash Patel’s FBI is joining the hunt against the so-called “Seditious Six,” signaling the administration’s commitment to taking revenge on the six Democratic members of Congress who dared tell soldiers that they didn’t have to follow illegal orders.

The FBI has requested interviews with Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, and Representatives Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan—all military and intelligence veterans—for their participation in the now-infamous video in which they reminded the military that they swore an oath to be loyal to the U.S. Constitution, not President Trump. The Trump administration saw this as treasonous, called for them to be hanged, and is weighing court-martialing Kelly.

The six members of Congress have yet to respond to the potential FBI interview.

It’s unclear when the interviews will occur or what exactly they entail. An anonymous Justice Department official told Reuters that the interviews would be to see “if there’s any wrongdoing and then go from there.” The FBI has yet to comment on the interviews, but one can assume that it won’t be very amicable given the Trump administration’s rhetoric around the situation.

“The video made by the ‘Seditious Six’ was despicable, reckless, and false,” Hegseth wrote Monday on his personal X account. “Encouraging our warriors to ignore the orders of their Commanders undermines every aspect of ‘good order and discipline.’ Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion—which only puts our warriors in danger.”

The Department of Government Efficiency is claiming that it is still operational, despite reports that the agency has disbanded. 

In a post on X Monday night, the account called a Reuters article reporting that the agency “doesn’t exist” with eight months remaining on its charter “fake news.” 

“As usual, this is fake news from @Reuters,” the post read. “President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to modernize the federal government and reduce waste, fraud and abuse. Just last week, DOGE terminated 78 wasteful contracts and saved taxpayers $335M.  We’ll be back in a few days with our regularly scheduled Friday update. 🇺🇸”

DOGE has not posted since then, or offered any proof of the cuts. It also didn’t refute a key piece of information in the Reuters article: that DOGE is no longer a “centralized entity.” Its acting administrator, Amy Gleason, is now an official adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services, even as she makes jokes on LinkedIn.

Many of DOGE’s functions have been taken over by the Office of Personnel Management, and many of its employees have moved to other agencies within the government. So what does the X post mean? Maybe DOGE is still a tool in the hands of Elon Musk and Russell Vought, or a scapegoat whenever the Trump administration wants to make massive cuts. 

Whatever the case, the massive damage DOGE caused to the federal bureaucracy will live on and probably continue for the rest of the Trump administration. Whether the name lives on is another story. 

A well-timed phone call from House Speaker Mike Johnson may have been the tipping point for the White House to call off releasing Donald Trump’s new health care plan.

Ahead of the decision Monday, Johnson cautioned Trump officials against including a two-year extension to Affordable Care Act subsidies as part of the president’s so-called “Healthcare Price Cuts Act,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Johnson reportedly told White House officials that Republicans just couldn’t get behind extending subsidies, after the speaker had spent more than a month railing against Democrats’ bid to save the subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Should those tax credits permanently lapse, an estimated 5.1 million Americans will lose their health coverage by 2034.

Johnson’s decision to throw a wrench in Trump’s rollout comes as insurance premiums are set to skyrocket starting in January, and premiums for individuals will increase by as much as double for millions of Americans.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is attacking the Scouts for not being nice enough to boys.

Hegseth plans to cut all military ties with Scouting America, formerly known as the Boy Scouts, on the grounds that they are attacking “boy-friendly spaces,” being too “genderless,” pushing “gender confusion,” and adopting diversity, equity, and inclusion, according to a draft memo to Congress reviewed by NPR.

“The organization once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt no longer supports the future of American boys,” Hegseth wrote in the memo.

“The Boy Scouts has been cratering itself for quite some time,” Hegseth said in a 2024 Fox interview. “This is an institution the left didn’t control. They didn’t want to improve it. They wanted to destroy it or dilute it into something that stood for nothing.”

Under the proposal, Scouts will no longer receive medical and logistical support for their massive “National Jamboree” and will no longer be allowed to visit military bases.

The proposal has not yet been sent to Congress but would bring an end to 100 years of support from the U.S. government.

“Scouting is and has always been a nonpartisan organization,” Scouting America said in a statement responding to the news. “Over more than a century, we’ve worked constructively with every U.S. presidential administration—Democratic and Republican—focusing on our common goal of building future leaders grounded in integrity, responsibility, and community service.”

Retired Army Staff Sergeant Kenny Green—who has three children who are scouts—was caught off guard by Hegseth’s proposal.

“It’s gonna be kind of harsh the way I say this.… It’s kind of like they don’t care about us more than they care about their perceived message. Scouting … it probably is not a perfect organization, but … I can’t even say how vast their benefits are, especially for military families.”

From fat-shaming troops to complaining that soldiers have been emasculated, this is par for the course for the defense secretary.