JOE Biden apologized to the crowd before running off in a bizarre incident during his final turkey pardoning as president.
President Biden was taking part in the annual Thanksgiving tradition at the White House when he suddenly took off and ran away.
In video from the event, some in the crowd could be seen waving just as Biden stopped running and walked away from the cameras.
The band continued playing throughout.
Peach and Blossom were the two lucky turkeys who the commander in chief pardoned on Monday morning in Washington DC.
While on stage, Biden announced that the two freed poultry will now “join the free birds of the United States of America.”
He also joked, “Keep calm and gobble on,” before saying the birds were being freed based on their “commitment to being productive members of society.”
They will now be heading back to their home in Waseca, Minnesota to live out the rest of their lives as “agricultural ambassadors” at Farmamerica, an agricultural interpretive center.
The annual turkey pardon is thought to go back over a century, although the exact origins aren’t clear.
Unofficial reports claim it was started by Abraham Lincoln, who spared a bird from the dinner table after his son, Tad, urged him not to kill it.
The official modern tradition was started under President Harry Truman in 1947.
Truman began “poultry-less Thursdays” in a bid to ration food in the aftermath of the Second World War, but Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day all fell on Thursdays.
A counter-initiative, called “Hens for Harry,” was started in response, but then the National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board presented the president with a bird as a peace offering.
That particular bird was not spared from being eaten, but President John F Kennedy began a trend of publicly sparing a turkey in November 1963, just days before his assassination.
The tradition was followed sporadically in the following years, sometimes the first ladies stepping in for their husbands to accept the turkey.
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan brought the tradition back, although the first official poultry pardoning wasn’t until 1989, under his successor, George HW Bush.
Since then, more than 40 birds have been spared from the Thanksgiving dinner table.
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