So, whatever you were imagining for the story behind how Rudy Giuliani and Trump's "crack legal team" ended up giving a press conference yesterday at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia rather than the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia, I guarantee you it's not as utterly bonkers as the truth.
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.”
But by then, many on social media were already delighting in a booking they assumed must have been a mistake.
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.
The phone at Four Seasons went unanswered throughout the day, and Siravo did not return calls for comment.
Her social media posts indicate she and some of her family members were vocal, but not necessarily unshakable, Trump supporters.
“We don’t need to invite him for dinner,” Siravo posted in August, in response to a “Conservative Hangout” Facebook page that listed Trump’s accomplishments in office. “We just need him to fix our country & all the democratic mess.” She added that she had been “raised a Democrat.”
In a Facebook post, the Four Seasons team described itself as a “family-owned small business run by lifelong Philadelphians” that would have “proudly hosted any presidential candidate’s campaign.”
“We strongly believe in America and in democracy,” the message read. It promised it would have merch ready to sell by next week.
Rather than admit a staffer booked the wrong venue, or that Trump booked the wrong venue, everybody went with the Emperor Has No Clothes and just ran with it.
They never had a plan for anything, and they nearly destroyed the country.
They still might.
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