The Trump campaigns inglorious end at Four Seasons Total Landscaping
Before the presidential race was called, around 11:30 am EST on Saturday, Donald Trump was still in denial and still threatening all kinds of bogus voter fraud lawsuits. Trump and his minions are especially triggered by Pennsylvania’s voters, which… I mean, as it turns out, PA was the state to make Joe Biden president, so the MAGAs had good reason to be concerned. So, before the race was called, Trump announced on Twitter that there would be a big press conference from his legal team at “Four Seasons” in Philly. That tweet was then deleted and a correction was issued: the press conference would be held at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, which is located in-between a sex shop and a crematorium. The press conference was done in the parking lot, and it included a ranting Rudy Giuliani. As Rudy spoke, the race was called for Biden. An inglorious end, perhaps, or maybe it was just… completely fitting.
What began five years ago with the made-for-TV announcement of Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions from the escalator of his ritzy Manhattan high-rise, ended Saturday with his aging lawyer shouting conspiracy theories and vowing lawsuits in a Northeast Philadelphia parking lot, near a sex shop and a crematorium.
In hindsight, the hastily arranged news conference featuring Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, just minutes after Joe Biden had been declared the victor of the 2020 race, delivered a fitting end to a campaign that had been at times characterized by its slapdash techniques.
But the story of how a landscaping company in Holmesburg became the backdrop for what could have been one of the Trump team’s last public gasps in their bid to reverse the results quickly captured the public’s imagination. It started Saturday morning, with a presidential tweet that, as has often happened during the past four years, Trump’s advisers quickly scrambled to correct.
Trump announced: “Lawyers News Conference Four Seasons, Philadelphia, 11 a.m.,” only to delete his post minutes later and replace it with one changing the venue from the upscale Center City hotel to a similarly named business: Four Seasons Total Landscaping on industrial State Road, next to Fantasy Island Adult Books and Novelties and across the street from the Delaware Valley Cremation Center.
“To clarify, President Trump’s news conference will NOT be held at Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia,” the hotel’s management tweeted out minutes later. “It will be held at Four Seasons Total Landscaping — no relation with the hotel.”
The New York Times reported Saturday that Giuliani and Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski had always intended the news conference to take place in a section of Philadelphia where they might receive a more welcome reception than at the raucous celebrations of Biden’s victory going on in Center City. It was the president, the paper reported, who had misunderstood.
As for why Four Seasons Total Landscaping? Giuliani offered no explanation Saturday and made no mention of the company or its owner, Marie Siravo, during his remarks. Tom Matkowski, GOP ward leader for the neighborhood, said the news conference hadn’t been coordinated with the local Republican Party and that he didn’t believe the Siravo family was active in local party politics.
[From The Philadelphia Inquirer]
There was a lot of laughing, well-deserved, about all of this, but I have a few frightening notes to make. First of all, this is who they ALWAYS were. They were always this slap-dash and half-assed. They literally just called the first “Four Seasons” they saw in a phone book and “booked” some press conference space… in a parking lot. That’s how they ran the 2016 campaign AND the 2020 campaign. Four Seasons Total Landscaping wasn’t an outlier, it was their entire brand!! “Re-elect us, we’re grossly incompetant and we’re just some old guys ranting in parking lots and airport hangars.” Thank God this part of the nightmare is over.
As for Rudy, he found out mid-press conference that the news networks called it for Biden. His reaction was to literally yell at clouds.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
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