|
 |
Welcome back to False Flag! I’m coming up on my second month here with the newsletter, and it’s been great getting to know the Bulwark community.
This work is vital. Far-right personalities and conspiracy theorists have more power than ever. Yet few media outlets face these issues head on or report on these figures and their ideas seriously. That’s what we’re striving to do here—in addition to covering the more outlandish parts of this universe—more on that below! If you want to support my work at The Bulwark, please consider subscribing to Bulwark+:
And as always, thanks for reading.
–Will
MAGA World Planned a Blowout, 100-Days-of-Trump Party. Disaster Ensued.
And now, what’s being dubbed the ‘MAGA Fyre Festival’ is roiling conservative Washington.
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
Party Foul
LAST WEEK, THE CAREER OF CONSERVATIVE journalist Myles Morell hit a new peak.
As a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation, he had just scored what counts as a scoop in that world: He caught an irritated Rep. Ilhan Omar on video telling him to “fuck off.”
Then, this Wednesday, Morell walked into work and was swiftly fired.
The abrupt change in fortunes came thanks to an “official” celebration of the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term, one that was supposed to feature Republican members of Congress and even the president himself. The bash was a massive bust.
Instead of hosting GOP royalty, the event generated two police reports from ticket buyers. One man who was asked to help set up the event compared it to the disastrous Fyre Festival, and at least one embarrassing video of a man breakdancing with a puppet ricocheted across the Internet.
“I do not think the party was that bad,” Morell, one of the party’s organizers, told me.
Matthew Hurtt, a Republican operative and the chairman of the Republican committee of Arlington County, Virginia, disagreed. “This is 100 percent a grift,” he said, accusing the organizers of dangling the possibility of access to Trump officials in order to get people to buy tickets.
No one said Trump 2.0 would lack drama.
To understand how this all went to hell, it’s worth stepping back for a second. Donald Trump’s return to power has generated a boomlet in pro-Trump safe spaces inside the heavily Democratic capital metro area. Butterworth’s, a restaurant partially owned by Steve Bannon acolyte Raheem Kassam, has become a MAGA hangout on Capitol Hill. And for the deepest-pocketed Trump supporters, Donald Trump Jr. is launching a private social club in Georgetown with a $500,000 membership fee.
So it was natural, perhaps, that Morell and Republican activist Alysia McMillan wanted to put on a party of their own. The two planned to host what they described on the event’s now-deleted website as “the official celebration of President Trump’s first 100 days” at the newly Trumpified Kennedy Center.
Tickets for the white-tie event cost between $100 and $2,500. Invitations promised an “unforgettable evening” where “luxury meets excitement.” The event’s website said Trump and numerous other members of Congress had been invited, and could make appearances.
“There was a promise of access to individual guests, members of the Trump administration, and members of Congress,” said Hurtt.
But then the problems started. The first came when President Trump announced a rally in Michigan to mark his first 100 days on the same night as the event.
Having lost their maybe headliner, the party organizers then lost their venue. Just days before the event, they announced that the Kennedy Center contract had been canceled.
McMillan told me that the Kennedy Center, recently taken over by Trump allies, called off the event because of a contract violation, but declined to specify what it was. The Kennedy Center didn’t respond to requests for comment about why the contract was canceled.
Either way, it was canceled. And the party was moved to a slightly less glamorous venue in decidedly more soulless Arlington.
“The event was advertised as taking place at the Kennedy Center,” Hurtt said. “That sends a different signal to people.”
Problems multiplied from there. McMillan acknowledged that she asked attendees with comped tickets to bring bottles of alcohol to fill out the bar even though the website promised “premium drinks.”
Morell himself asked the husband of a photographer who had been hired to shoot the event to bring some alcohol himself. According to Instagram direct messages viewed by The Bulwark, the man then warned Morell to call off the party before a Fyre Festival–style debacle ensued.
“You’re charging big money for this thing and people won’t be getting what they paid for,” the man wrote, according to those messages.
Later, when the photographer, whose identity is being kept anonymous to protect her future business prospects, realized she wouldn’t be paid to shoot the party, she canceled. The Instagram account under Morell’s name subsequently sent a message to the photographer with the line “fuck you whore.” Both Morell and M