President Donald Trump pardoned North Carolina turkeys Gobble and Waddle on Tuesday from the possibility of being roasted in beef tallow — or the more traditional basting.

But he also made sure to tout the drop in turkey prices ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, as his administration seeks to convince voters that it’s making progress on bread and butter issues.

“Our country is doing really well economically, like we’ve never done before,” he said during wide-ranging remarks in the newly-redone White House Rose Garden. He claimed that turkey prices are down 33 percent, but it’s not clear what USDA statistic he was referencing.

Trump’s comments on affordability come as his party struggles to win over voters amid rising costs of living — a mirror image of the dilemma former President Joe Biden faced in 2024. Key voters who swung for Trump last year reversed course in the off-year elections earlier this month.

The White House has previously pointed to an estimate from the Farm Bureau that states the cost of the Thanksgiving meal is down 5 percent from 2024 and retail turkey prices are down 16 percent. But the more complicated reality is that food costs remain well-above what consumers can recall in recent memory. A new poll from POLITICO and Public First found that groceries were still voters’ top affordability concern, above housing and health care costs.

At Tuesday’s event, Trump praised Republicans’ domestic tax and spending package, his administration’s immigration crackdown and moves to send the National Guard into cities, including the capital, to tackle crime.

“We actually put four years — actually probably eight or 10 years — but we put four years worth of material into one great, big, beautiful bill,” he told the audience, which included Vice President JD Vance and several Cabinet secretaries, from Attorney General Pam Bondi to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

He also ran through some attacks on his Democratic rivals.

Trump said Biden’s turkey pardons last year “are totally invalid” because they were done with the autopen, which Trump has accused his predecessor of wielding illegally.

“The turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located, and they were on their way to be processed, in other words, to be killed, but I have stopped that journey, and I am officially pardoning them, and they will not be served for Thanksgiving dinner,” he said. “We saved them in the nick of time.”

He added that the pardoned turkeys almost went by different names — Chuck, as in the Senate minority leader, and Nancy, as in the former House speaker — but “I would never pardon those two.”

Rollins was responsible for selecting Waddle and Gobble from a farm in the Tar Heel state earlier this week. Before the pardon, Waddle, weighing in at 50 pounds, gave the press a preview of his plumage when he strutted into the White House briefing room Tuesday morning.

The two birds are some of the largest turkeys presented for the presidential pardon, which dates back to 1947 under former President Harry Truman. Trump said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. formally certified the pair as the first ever “Make America Healthy Again” turkeys.

“They’ve been fattened on a steady diet of grass[-fed] beef, to allow the smoothies and all of the other things that they’ve been eating for this occasion. This was a really big occasion, but they’ve eaten every factory food that you can eat,” the president said.