U.S. President Donald Trump and a turkey named Carrots appear to have at least one thing in common: They both refuse to concede after losing a fair and open election.
Millions of social media users have watched and recirculated an old clip of Trump pardoning two turkeys for Thanksgiving in 2018, amid his ongoing effort to overturn the result of the presidential election he lost this month.
Trump jokingly describes one of the turkeys as a sore election loser in the clip, and laughs at the notion of the bird trying to dispute the result with a recount.
“Unfortunately, Carrots refused to concede and demanded a recount, and we’re still fighting with Carrots,” he said at the time.
The clip was recorded at the White House on Nov. 20, 2018, when Trump participated in the annual light-hearted tradition of “pardoning” two turkeys to spare them from the Thanksgiving festivities. The sitting president typically cracks a few jokes at the event.
In the clip, Trump explains how a turkey named Peas edged out another named Carrots in a vote on the White House website, which had been held to determine which bird would receive the presidential pardon. Trump ended up pardoning both birds after making a few tongue-in-cheek remarks about Carrots’ loss.
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“The winner of this vote was decided by a fair and open election conducted on the White House website. This was a fair election,” Trump said at the time, before mocking the notion of a recount.
“I will tell you we’ve come to a conclusion. Carrots, I’m sorry to tell you the result did not change. Too bad for Carrots.”
Trump critics pounced on the resurfaced clip this week ahead of the 2020 turkey pardon. Many pointed out that Trump appears to be modelling the story he told about Carrots, refusing to concede while demanding recounts and attempting to overturn the result.
“This was a prophetic message,” one Twitter user joked.
“How is there always something that proves his hypocrisy?” writer Mikki Kendall tweeted.
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Many tried to make “Carrots” stick as a nickname for the outgoing president.
“Too bad for Carrots,” they wrote.
Joe Biden won the popular vote by six million and defeated Trump in the Electoral College system, racking up a larger total than the one Trump described as a “landslide” in 2016.
U.S. government officials recently said the vote was the “most secure in American history,” and that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Trump fired the head of U.S. election cybersecurity shortly after that statement was issued.
The president and his lawyers have continued to allege widespread voter fraud since election night, without providing evidence in court to back up their claims. They’ve also filed dozens of lawsuits that have largely fallen flat.
The Trump campaign requested a recount in Georgia this week after the state certified the result in favour of Biden.
Trump on Monday night allowed a government bureaucrat to begin the transition process to president-elect Biden. However, he still refused to concede and continued pushing election misinformation on Tuesday.
He also retweeted a message that quoted him saying “I concede NOTHING!” on Tuesday morning.
Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2021, whether Trump concedes or not.
Trump was scheduled to pardon his last pair of turkeys on Tuesday.
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