If Donald Trump ever offers to pay for your meal—or your anything, really—I would think this goes without saying, but you should definitely not believe him.
Trump is notorious for stiffing everyone from contractors to lawyers. (Which might be why he’s having such a hard time finding legal counsel at the moment, despite his desperate need.) Hundreds upon hundreds of individuals and businesses have alleged Trump didn’t pay them what they were owed. And now a group of Florida restaurant diners can also add their names to that list.
At a recent trip to a Miami restaurant, Trump magnanimously declared to the room, “Food for everyone!”, got applause and cheers from the crowd, and then reportedly just … left.
Trump’s trip to the restaurant was bizarre all around. First of all, he visited straight after leaving the Miami courthouse after being arrested for allegedly mishandling classified documents. His arrest came the day before his birthday, so Trump got the crowd of supporters to sing “Happy Birthday” to him as he ranted about his indictment.
But this wasn’t just a random birthday dinner. (In fact, Trump reportedly didn’t even eat anything at the Cuban restaurant. Instead, he ate his usual McDonald’s dinner on his plane heading back to New Jersey.) No, the specific restaurant where he stopped—called Versailles—was a calculated choice. As the Miami New Times writes, “the iconic restaurant has long been a pit stop for politicians seeking to curry favor with Miami’s Cuban voters.”
This was a campaign stop, plain and simple. And not only was Trump capitalizing on supporters’ fervor around his arrest, but he was very obviously taking advantage of the free news coverage from every outlet reporting on the indictment.
Anchors at both CNN and MSNBC went so far as to ask their producers to stop showing live video from the Versailles trip, as it was abundantly clear that Trump’s presidential campaign was trying to trick them all into some free publicity. HuffPost reported at the time:
“I want to explain the picture on our screen,” [Nicole] Wallace told viewers on Tuesday after MSNBC aired footage of the scene at Versailles. “Trump has gone to a famous place that all Republican candidates, actually probably Democrat candidates, go as well. It’s Versailles. It’s a Little Havana in the Miami area. He’s still a candidate for president. We don’t need to see that anymore, we know where he is.”
[CNN’s Jake] Tapper made similar comments Tuesday, referring to it as a “campaign ad.”
“To the folks in the control room, I don’t need to see any more of that. He’s trying to turn it into a spectacle and into a campaign ad. That is enough of that. We’ve seen it already,” Tapper said.
It was clear to everyone watching that this campaign event was an empty, substanceless spectacle, but the fact that Trump couldn’t (or wouldn’t, rather) even deliver on the smallest, most shallow promise of instant gratification for a small group of human props gathered to show him support is a perfect metaphor for his campaign and possibly his entire existence.
(featured image: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
