Zzzzzzzz. Just the sound of a fly in the room can get on your nerves. You usually can’t catch it with the swatter, so you try to ignore it and not think about where the bug planted its filthy feet before it flew into your house. And just when you wonder: hey, it’s quiet, where did it go?, it swells again: zzzzzzzzz.
That’s how annoying it must be for Donald Trump when he announces Tuesday night (Dutch time) at his country house Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, despite bad omens, that he wants to become the Republican candidate for president again of the United States.
Everything has been pulled out. Mar-a-Lago’s festive ballroom, a baroque hall with mirrored walls, gold leaf and chandeliers, is filled with the faithful and the formerly scorned press (which Trump now desperately needs again). Many banners, caps with ‘Ultra MAGA’ (the superlative of ‘Make America Great Again‘) and stars and stripes. And outside, on the gently rippling waters of the lagoon on which the resort is located: three supporters who visually and effectively express their support for Trump on their boat.
But then, right above the location where the fallen leader hopes to make history again, that little plane with tow and that cynical text: ‘You lost again Donald! #DeSantis 2024.’
Important announcement
If you already warmed up the world two weeks earlier for that “major announcement” you were going to make in Mar-a-Lago, here’s what you get. Did you build your own social network with Truth Social to give Trumpism wings after you got kicked off Twitter, Camp DeSantis comes up with something as simple as a last-century commercial airplane.
Ron DeSantis, the 44-year-old Republican governor who was re-elected in Florida last week after a resounding election victory, is regarded within the party as a key possible rival to Trump in 2024 presidential ambitions. Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates in multiple states recently ran in the midterm elections.
So childish, Trump will probably have sneered when he looked up in Palm Beach, and yet: what a bad prank.
In the Netherlands we might think back to it advertising plane which appeared several times above the training field of the Dutch national football team in June 2021, when Frank de Boer was still national coach. ‘Frank, just 4-3-3‘, it said on the fluttering canvas, and the next time: ‘Are you that smart, Frank? Keep grinding’.
It was a reference to the haughty and winged statement of coach Louis van Gaal at a press conference (‘Am I that smart or are you that stupid?’) and the question whether or not attacker Donyell Malen was drafted by De Boer. After the dramatically early elimination of Orange at the European Football Championship, he may have been as good as forgotten as national coach, but the frown on his face when he observed the interference with his policy from the air, many people will always remember burned.
Everything is fine
The three Trump supporters on the boat have no eye (yet) for the tormentor who has become proficient about the skies above them. Everything is fine. With at least nineteen flags (de stars and stripes not counting one of the men’s swimming trunks) they support Trump and his accusation that the previous presidential election was stolen by the Democrats: 2020 was riggedflutters in the bow.
What a pleasure the inventor of the advertising flight must have had at the sight of this photo. Costs from $500 per hour. At the same time priceless.