Bread and Circuses
hold the bread
Halloween October 31, 2025. Mar-a-Lago. “A little party never killed nobody” read the invitations.
Dancing girls in flapper dresses that forgot most of the dress. A performer in a giant martini glass, wearing little more than bubbles and a smile. Someone said she looked young. Very young. Nobody asked for ID at the party of the law-and-order president.
The guests posed for Instagram with champagne flutes that cost more per bottle than a family gets in monthly food assistance. Marco Rubio, secretary of state, at Trump’s table. The Kushners pretending this was normal. Jeanine Pirro, Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for D.C., doing the Charleston. Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter holding court. Gina Rinehart, Australian mining billionaire, flew in for this.
No Musk. No Bezos. No Thiel. The tech lords who usually kiss Trump’s ass couldn’t even be bothered to show up. Maybe they were smart enough to avoid the optics. Or maybe they just had better parties. Either way, Trump was left with his B-list—family members and second-tier sycophants, watching a maybe-minor perform acrobatics in gin-soaked glory.
The president whose supporters rage about drag queens reading library books. Who campaign to “protect the children” from groomers. Who see pedophiles in every pizza parlor. But a nearly naked girl who might be sixteen performing at Mar-a-Lago? Nobody checked. Nobody cared. Epstein’s ghost doesn’t hover at these parties—it has a table, and everyone pretends not to see it.
The band played past midnight. The girls kept dancing. The cronies kept cheering.
Meanwhile, twelve hours later, 42 million Americans would wake up to dead SNAP cards.
In Ohio, in Kentucky, in West Virginia—the places that handed Trump the White House—his voters were checking their SNAP balances at midnight while their champion was surrounded by dancing girls. The coal miners who believed him when he said “I know the working man.” The factory workers who cheered when he ate McDonald’s on his gold-plated jet to prove he was “just like them.” They couldn’t have gotten past the first security gate at Mar-a-Lago.
A federal court had ordered Trump to release SNAP payments. The judge’s order was clear: fund the program. Full stop. Trump’s response? Promise half the money, eventually, after the party. After the damage. After making sure everyone saw the show.
The man who built his career raging about “coastal elites” who “look down on you.” Who promised to “drain the swamp” and fight for the forgotten man. Who hammered Hillary for her Goldman Sachs speeches and mocked Nancy Pelosi’s expensive ice cream.
But a dancing girl in a martini glass while food aid dies? That’s just Trump being Trump. Making deals. Winning. Tackey.
November 1st arrived. SNAP died on schedule. Trump’s promise of half-funding? Still just a promise. The actual release wouldn’t come until November 3rd—after the riots at grocery stores, after the local news cameras caught mothers trying to explain to cashiers that the card should work, after enough pressure built that even Senate Republicans started sweating.
When the money finally moved, it was $4.65 billion. Half of what the court ordered. Half of what humans need to eat. Delivered with conditions, restrictions, and a clear message: you get what we give you, when we feel like giving it.
But the party? The party got full funding. The dancers got paid in cash. The girl in the martini glass—whoever she was, however old she was—got her fee.
Here’s the judicial irony: the law-and-order president spent Halloween in open defiance of a federal court, surrounded by possibly underage entertainment. His supporters who rage about protecting children will defend their president hosting whatever that was.
You want to know what America looks like in 2025? It’s Jeanine Pirro doing the Charleston while families ration formula. It’s Marco Rubio toasting the future while the present goes hungry. It’s a president treating court orders like suggestions while treating himself to a personal Moulin Rouge. It’s wondering if that girl in the martini glass was old enough to vote.
They’ll defend it anyway. They’ll say the party was a fundraiser, the dancers were professionals, asking about ages is a smear. They’ll say the court was overreaching. They’ll say half the SNAP funding is generous, more than nothing, be grateful.
But here’s the genius of it: they’ll defend this party using the same anti-elite rhetoric. “He earned his wealth.” “He’s a businessman, not a politician.” “At least he’s honest about being rich, not like those fake Democrats who pretend to care.” They’ve been trained to see Democrat wealth as corrupt and Republican wealth as virtuous. A Democrat with a nice house is out of touch. A Republican with a golden palace while SNAP dies is successful. The accusation is always the confession.
They’ll say anything except the truth: their champion looked at a court order to feed them, looked at his dancing girls and champagne fountains, and made his choice.
The band played past midnight. The girls kept dancing. November 1st became November 2nd became November 3rd. Forty-two million Americans discovered their SNAP benefits were gone, court order be damned. And somewhere in Mar-a-Lago, they were still finding glitter in the carpet and champagne corks in the garden.
That’s not political spin. That’s just what happened.
Rome gave its people bread and circuses to keep them quiet. Trump just gave them the circuses. With underage acrobats, maybe. Nobody’s checking. Certainly not the sycophants too busy toasting their good fortune.
“Drain the swamp,” he promised. He drained it alright—straight into champagne flutes while children went hungry. The swamp didn’t get drained. It got a Gatsby theme and a DJ.
Joe Zeigler writes from Crystal River, where he’s old enough to know what a teenage girl looks like, and angry enough to ask why nobody at that party seemed to care.