The Most Bizarre Press Conference in PR History

The Four Seasons Total Landscaping press con­fer­ence… was weird.

After four years of scan­dals, the Donald Trump pres­id­ency was slowly end­ing — just as the vote count was start­ing to reveal Joe Biden as the next US president. 

Even as a Swede, I closely fol­lowed the drama.
I knew we would be in for a slice of mod­ern PR history.

Let’s take a closer look:

Giuliani’s Approach: Don’t Get Angry, Get Mad

On the park­ing lot out­side Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, the Trump cam­paign took to the make­shift stage to com­ment on the dire situ­ation for Donald Trump and his dwind­ling chances of remain­ing in office.

The press con­fer­ence was highly anti­cip­ated; it wouldn’t have been out­land­ish for any oth­er can­did­ate to con­cede at this point, but most of us knew that admit­ting defeat wasn’t exactly in align­ment with the administration’s playbook.

Instead, we got to see Trump’s law­yer, the former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, put on a show for the cameras:

Giuliani was rampant, scream­ing and aggress­ive. At one point, he even demon­strat­ively looked up into the sky, with his arms straight up as if on a cru­ci­fix, as he just went on to declare unsub­stan­ti­ated voter fraud across the nation.

Ending up without any tan­gible proof for Giuliani’s raging voter fraud claims, we who were watch­ing the press con­fer­ence from home were left with the simple real­isa­tion that the Trump cam­paign had screamed:

“Stop the count!” when they were in the lead,
“Count all the votes!” when they were behind, and
“Voter fraud!” when the res­ults were in.

Watching all of this unfold live, I scratched my head in bewilderment.

As one of three voter fraud eye­wit­nesses, Giuliani intro­duced “Philadelphia res­id­ent and GOP poll watch­er” Daryl Brooks. 

Like the oth­er two “wit­nesses,” Brooks spoke about hav­ing wit­nessed voter fraud without using those words or out­lining what he had seen.

My PR “spidey senses” made it dif­fi­cult for me to find Brooks cred­ible. Therefore, I wasn’t at all sur­prised when I later learned that Brooks was indeed some­thing of a char­ac­ter:

Brooks had been sent to pris­on in the 1990s for pub­lic mas­turb­a­tion and expos­ing him­self to two girls aged 7 and 11. Still, this didn’t stop him from run­ning for vari­ous offices, like the US Senate and the House of Representatives. 

Notably, Brooks always ran in New Jersey — nev­er in Philadelphia.

Huh.

But let’s back up a few hours.

Enter: Four Seasons Total Landscaping

That day, Trump tweeted about the press con­fer­ence at the posh Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia. However, a new tweet was sent out shortly after, cla­ri­fy­ing that the loc­a­tion was Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

So, the Trump cam­paign hos­ted its press con­fer­ence at a park­ing lot across the street from a crem­at­ori­um and next to a sex shop.

Right.

A PBS report­er called Four Seasons Total Landscaping and got the response that the Trump cam­paign wanted to use their park­ing lot because it was “secure and close to the I‑95.”

The Trump cam­paign explained that they had always inten­ded to host their press con­fer­ence at Four Seasons Total Landscaping; any men­tions of the Four Seasons Hotel were just an unfor­tu­nate com­mu­nic­a­tion error.

Sure.

Make America Rake Again

Now, what about Four Seasons Total Landscaping, then? Well, the com­pany quickly took to selling t‑shirts and oth­er mer­chand­ise online:

“Make America rake again.”
“Trying to make America green again.”
“Lawn & Order!”

America is the land of oppor­tun­ity, so why not take your lem­ons and squeeze some PR juice?

And the inter­net sure had its fair share of fun, too.

There’s now an 11-mile char­ity run from the Four Seasons Total Landscaping to the Four Seasons Hotel in the city — the Fraud Street Run.

And Ochre Jelly went on to sug­gest the Lego set Definitely Winning:

And there’s an online peti­tion on Change.org to add the Four Seasons Total Landscaping to the nation­al register of his­tor­ic places.

Now, all of this is hil­ari­ous.
And breath­tak­ingly incompetent.

Still, there’s much dark­ness to this whole cir­cus, too. Many have sug­ges­ted this was a fit­ting, poet­ic end­ing to per­haps the most con­tro­ver­sial US pres­id­ency ever.

A pres­id­ency that intro­duced con­cepts such as fake news and altern­at­ive facts.

We still don’t know how far Trump’s law­yers are pre­pared to push this agenda of try­ing to over­throw the demo­crat­ic pro­cess and keep power over the world’s most power­ful nation. Still, that should be more chal­len­ging than arran­ging a press con­fer­ence in Philadelphia. ¹Update: The Trump admin­is­tra­tion did push the agenda of try­ing to over­throw the demo­crat­ic pro­cess. On the 6th of January 2021, after a Donald Trump speech, an angry mob of Trump sup­port­ers stormed … Continue read­ing

All in all, this wasn’t just an epis­ode of Veep.
This was a slice of mod­ern PR history.