In the UK, our strange customs include cheese-rolling, Morris dancing and compulsive passive-aggressive apologising. Over in the US, one of their more unusual national traditions is the annual White House ‘turkey pardon’. What happens is this: every Thanksgiving, the sitting president steps out onto the White House lawn in front of a bank of cameras, and tells a turkey that it won’t have to become dinner that day.

Normally, the turkey pardon is just a bit of fun. It’s a chance for the president to show their more human, lighthearted side, and a guaranteed fluffy story for the press. But this year, the event took a darker tone after one journalist made an important observation on Twitter.

Liz Plank, a producer and correspondent at American news website Vox, was watching the pardon on TV when she noticed something about the way President Donald Trump was behaving around the turkey. He was deferential, almost cautious.

“Am I allowed to touch it?” he asked, standing a respectful distance away from the bird.

In other words, Trump’s treatment of a turkey was significantly more courteous than the way he has historically treated women.

Trump respects turkeys more than women – and this picture is proof