U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 25, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump deviated from his speech pardoning two turkeys ahead of Thanksgiving to attack one prominent Democratic governor presumed to run for the presidency in 2028.

During his remarks at the White House on Tuesday, Trump spent a portion of his speech talking about 26 year-old Bethany MaGee, who was set on fire while riding a train in Chicago, Illinois and is currently being treated for her injuries in a local hospital. Trump launched into an attack on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) and Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), suggested their policies were to blame for the attack.

"The mayor is incompetent, and the governor is a big, fat slob," Trump said. "He ought to invite us in and say, 'please make Chicago safe.' We're going to lose a great city if we don't do it quickly."

The president's remarks were quickly met with ridicule and disdain on social media. Former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who previously represented a Chicago-area district in Congress and officially switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat this year, called Trump "the absolute worst of us."

"This Thanksgiving, as you sit around the table with family & friends, be the opposite of Trump," Walsh wrote. "Pledge this Thanksgiving to be the exact opposite of Trump."

"Ah yes, the eloquence of a man sporting 3 diapers, 2 cankles, and 1 pair of dangerously stretched spanks," quipped Jason DeSanto, who is a lecturer at the Chicago-based Northwestern University School of Law.

Trump's comments garnered outrage even outside of Chicago. Google policy specialist Lauren Leavell called the president "a rot to American society," and lamented that Americans have "come to normalize this behavior." Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann wrote: "The porky president has anosognosia," which is a condition in which a person's brain is incapable of recognizing their own health conditions.

"There is no off switch for this buffoon," writer Sean Colarossi tweeted. "Not even a light-hearted turkey pardoning event is safe from his deranged rantings and petty attacks."