The campaign bus was attracting funny looks. On its side was the by now all-too-familiar last name of the Republican presidential frontrunner. Somewhere inside the castle-shaped hotel next door, Donald Trump was holding court, as hundreds awaited another rally of bombast and branding. Except, in the parking lot, the white block letters on the bus had been split up by a period, and so it read oddly: T.RUMP. And Trump’s famous slogan, cribbed from Ronald Reagan, had been playfully re-imagined: #MAKE FRUIT PUNCH GREAT AGAIN!, the bus declared…. The bus that once ferried Trump across Iowa is now a mobile art installation run by a group of Philadelphia-based artists who would prefer the real estate mogul stick to golf courses and skyscrapers, rather than come here with a win in his sails and momentum on the campaign trail days before the New Hampshire primary…. On the back of the bus, the artists wrote Trump’s actual motto - “Make America Great Again” - in Arabic.
I’ve sworn off writing about Donald Trump, primarily because I’m sick and tired of the negativity and rage he fosters in low-information Americans. What I haven’t pledged to forego is the recognition of those able to take the bottomless pit of negativity that is The Donald and turn it into humor. So it is with the artists who’ve transformed The Donald’s former campaign bus into a diesel-powered rolling art installation, complete with a stripper pole.
They may not change the world or even the course of the GOP primary campaign season, but at least the artists responsible have introduced a bit of levity into an ocean of insanity, racism, xenophobia, and negative energy. Besides, what better way could there be to make a statement- political or otherwise- than by lampooning someone who’s a living, breathing exercise in self-parody?
This bus has been a satirized for your protection….
