Nov. 28 (UPI) — President Joe Biden expressed his “gratitude to the American people” and called the United states the “greatest country on Earth” during his final Thanksgiving message as president.
“This Thanksgiving, as families, friends and loved ones gather in gratitude, may we all celebrate the many blessings of our great nation,” Biden said in the holiday proclamation. “May we celebrate all that unites us, because there is nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together.”
Biden said the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving with the Wampanoag people to thank them for their kindness and generosity in making a bountiful fall harvest possible.
George Washington‘s troops “found a moment for Thanksgiving” during a “fierce struggle for our nation’s independence,” Biden said, and President Abraham Lincoln established the Thanksgiving holiday in 1863 “amid the fight to preserve our Union during the Civil War.”
“America is a nation of promise and possibilities … because every day, ordinary Americans are doing extraordinary things,” Biden said.
“Our service members and veterans have given all, risked all and dared all to keep our nation free,” he continued. “Our first responders, firefighters and police officers risk their lives every day to keep the rest of us safe.”
Biden said he can “see the best of America in them and in our workers and union leaders, public servants and teachers, doctors and scientists, and all who give their heart and soul to ensuring people are treated with dignity and respect.”
Biden is spending his final Thanksgiving as president at his family’s Nantucket, Mass., holiday celebration.
While there Biden and his family are staying at the home of billionaire David Rubenstein, where the Biden family has celebrated its last three Thanksgiving holidays.
Biden also visited a Nantucket firehouse and its firefighters with first lady Jill Biden and a young girl who appears to be one of their granddaughters.
It’s the fourth straight year Biden has visited a firehouse on Thanksgiving.
While the Biden family is celebrating Thanksgiving in Nantucket, President-elect Donald Trump is at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., and expressed thanks that voters are giving him another term as president.
“Happy Thanksgiving to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics [sic] who have worked hard to destroy our country, but who have failed miserably,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“Their ideas and policies are so hopelessly bad that the great people of our nation gave a landslide victory to those who want to make America great again!” Trump added.
He concluded the holiday post by saying the nation will be “greater than ever before” by next Thanksgiving.
Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff volunteered to serve Thanksgiving meals at the DC Central Kitchen in Washington, D.C.