'Great Gatsby'-Themed Party At Mar-a-Lago A Little Too On The Dystopian Nose

Welcome to the new Gilded Age.

We’re have been trying to imagine what the debate about the theme for this year’s Halloween party must have sounded like amongst the Jell-O-brained fuckwits who run Donald Trump’s dollar-store Biltmore down in the heart of Florida, America’s flaccid dingus. We’re imaging something like this:

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #1: We really need something glamorous, something where everyone can dress up in fancy costumes evoking an era of excess and decadence.

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #2: Something that would show our contempt-slash-obliviousness to the nation’s rapidly growing wealth inequality, racial divisions, and the “let them starve” policies the current Republican government, led by our club’s owner and all-around Sun King Donald Trump, is pushing on the poor and needy.

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #3: But also sexy, because the president loves to see legs and tits.

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #1: Oooo, what was that Leo movie a few years ago? The one with the shirts?

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #2: The Wolf of Wall Street?

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #1: No, we should aim for something that doesn’t portray crimes 80 percent of our members are guilty of themselves.

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #3: Django? Talk about wealth inequality and racial divisions!

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #1: Close, but no.

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #2: The Great Gatsby?

Jell-O-brained fuckwit #1: That’s the one!

And thus was the idea to hold a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago born. Apparently, the Jell-O-brained fuckwits didn’t listen to their high school English teachers, so they think Tom and Daisy Buchanan were the heroes of the story.

At any other time in the last decade, this party would have seemed like just one more tacky indulgence visited upon good taste by Donald Trump and the incognizant rich people who hang out at his club. We would have all rolled our eyes and mocked the pictures posted to Instagram of overly botoxed old women flashing their veneers while waltzing around in glitzy flapper dresses, or the overly botoxed young women showing off the boob jobs their older husbands bought them for their 25^th birthday. We would have sneered about the fall-of-the-Roman-empire vibes filling every frame of every picture.

Especially this one of a real performer sitting in a giant cocktail glass on the Mar-a-Lago lawn like a cartoon straight out of a Jazz Era issue of The New Yorker. Ma’am, your legs are going to cramp if you sit like that for too long:

The one person who didn’t dress up in a Roaring-‘20s-themed costume was Trump himself, who showed up in his usual jacket and tie, making him look like an old dementia patient who had wandered into a fraternity house by mistake. More than usual, we mean.

No, what drove this party into the realm of the surreal was that it happened at the exact moment that SNAP benefits for 42 million Americans are expiring, and the Republicans that control all three branches of government, at least a few of whom were at the party, are doing nothing about it.

Well, that’s not totally true. The administration is telling grocery stores that were going to run specials to help out SNAP recipients until the program comes back online that they are not allowed to do so. The more people will suffer, the more the libs will be totally owned!

And it’s not as if they couldn’t keep SNAP going during the government shutdown. There is a contingency fund the administration could tap to fund SNAP. The White House and the Republicans in Congress simply don’t want to. It’s much easier to blame the Democrats who hold no power and whom the Senate majority could simply ignore by nuking the filibuster if it felt Americans having the means to eat was that important.

Witness, for example, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, being asked about the party and turning it into DURRRRRR Obama played lots of golf DURRRRR:

Late Monday morning, the administration partially caved in on SNAP benefits, announcing they will be partly funded for November after all. Ostensibly they were following a court order, but we’re wondering how much the blowback since Friday night helped them make the decision. It must have been pretty bad, because usually Trump’s people are more likely to respond with “yo momma” jokes.

The party also happened at the exact moment that millions of Americans are finding out just how much their health insurance premiums are going to spike in 2026 thanks to the Republicans refusing to continue paying the generous federal subsidies that have been enormously helpful to people whose incomes don’t allow them to buy Mar-a-Lago memberships. This is going to result in likely millions of people having to purchase cheaper plans with poor coverage, or opting out of carrying health insurance altogether.

We can’t decide if the people who chose the theme and planned the party didn’t know any of this, or if they didn’t understand the cautionary message of The Great Gatsby, or if they knew and simply didn’t give a shit because trolling the libs is so much darn fun.

Also somewhat ironically, the party happened a couple of days before CNN released a poll showing Trump’s disapproval rating has risen to 63 percent. Believe it or not, this is the highest it has ever been in either of his terms, just beating out the 62 percent he got to after January 6.

We hope everyone had fun at the party! Next Halloween, maybe the theme could be “The French Revolution.”

OPEN THREAD!

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