As 42 million Americans lost their federal food stamps thanks to a government shutdown, US President Donald Trump celebrated Halloween with a garish Roaring ’20s-themed party at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
A Little Party Never Killed Nobody was the official theme of the soiree, named after the Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie’s song used in the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s artless 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby. The gathering was further proof that the whole point of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel soared over the heads of the MAGA crowd.
The champagne-blurred snaps that have trickled through social media in the days since reveal photos of scantily clad women dancing in giant, gilded martini glasses and gyrating their way through the throngs of black-tied GOP donors and wannabe grifters that flock to Trump’s West Palm Beach royal court.
Mar-a-Lago’s mirage of exclusivity and class is a magnet for conservatives across the world. Among them appeared to be One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who was spotted in a private Instagram story from Trump’s party, obtained by CBD.
What was Hanson doing there? Her people would only confirm she was in the United States but remained shtum as to the what and the why. But CBD has a theory.
In another Instagram post from Friday night, former New York judge Jeanine Pirro, host of the eponymous reality-TV show, poses with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his former Miami Dolphins cheerleader wife Jeanette Dousdebes Rubio, seated at the president’s table. Trump seems uninterested in the camera, and appears to be busy having his ear chewed off by Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart.
By now the billionaire mining magnate is fast becoming part of the furniture at Mar-a-Lago. She was spotted celebrating Trump’s election victory last November, has bought property in the West Palm Beach area and is an investor in the president’s Truth Social media platform.
Did Rinehart score an invite and bring Hanson along as her plus one? The two were spotted dining together in Thailand over the summer, so it’s not completely implausible. It may also indicate former Liberal vice-president Teena McQueen, Rinehart’s former right-hand-woman and date to all things Trump so far, could have been usurped as the Hancock Prospecting boss’ plus-one after leaving the company this year.
As for Hanson, she remained overseas on Monday despite the Senate sitting in Canberra. Perhaps she’s still in Mar-a-Lago.
