Transcript

The Magnificent Mischief of Tad Lincoln · Clay & Buck Recommendations

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Tad was the youngest son of Abraham Lincoln, and I for years covered the
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White House turkey pardon, which people will remember. You see it on TV
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all the time. Yeah, they bring two birds out. Biden will no
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doubt pardon the bird or whoever's in the audience. I guess he doesn't know
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what party, but assuming he does, he follows protocol. They bring two
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turkeys out, he pardons one of them or both of them. I didn't
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realize what the origins of this were, and years ago somebody in the Trump
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White House told me it was JFK Or Truman who started the tradition. So
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I did a deep dive and discovered no, it was Tad Lincoln and Abraham
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Lincoln. And the backstory was so moving to me. And it really is
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about how a child allowed to be a child and be a boy and knock
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things over and have mishaps and create mischief, which Tad Lincoln did in the
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White House. He would hitch a goat, you know, to a dining
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room chair and gallop through the east room. He dug up the rose garden.
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All of that's in the book. But it really is about how a
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child has the capacity to save a father in many ways, and it's about
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how Tad Lincoln was the touchstone of normalcy and joy in a healthscape that Lincoln
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was living in, literally, with a war crowding around him and a child
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whom he just lost in the White House.