On Halloween Night 2025, President Donald Trump held a Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-Lago, complete with 1920s dresses, headbands, dancers and Prohibition-era nostalgia.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel "The Great Gatsby," published 100 years ago in 1925, captured the hedonism of The Jazz Age and, in 1974, was adapted into a movie starring Robert Redford as Long Island millionaire Jay Gatsby and Mia Farrow as his ex-lover Daisy Buchanan. But while Fitzgerald's novel and the Redford film took a critical look at the excesses of the 1920s, Trump's Halloween bash is being attacked as "tone-deaf" for celebrating them at a time when millions of Americans are losing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
Liberal economist Paul Krugman, in a November 4 column for his Substack page, strongly disagrees with Trump's Gatsby party being called "tone-deaf" — as he believes that the president and his MAGA allies flaunt their indifference to the suffering of others.
"There's been plenty of scathing commentary about the lavish, Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party Donald Trump threw at Mar a Lago — a party complete with sequined, feathered dancers and, yes, a scantily-clad woman in a giant martini glass," Krugman argues. "The party, held just hours before 42 million Americans were about to lose federal food assistance, as 1.4 million federal workers are going without pay, was grotesque. It was also, like everything Trump, unspeakably vulgar. But many commenters described the festivities as 'tone-deaf,' as if Trump didn't realize how it would look to be holding such a party as tens of millions of Americans are facing severe hardship."
Krugman continues, "C'mon. Of course he realized how it would look. He understood perfectly well that he was partying while ordinary Americans were suffering. And that understanding — combined with the belief that he can get away with it — was a big reason he enjoyed the event."
The former New York Times columnist notes that in 2018, The Atlantic's Adam Serwer wrote an anti-Trump article that was headlined "The Cruelty Is the Point." Serwer's arguments, Krugman stresses, still apply to Trump seven years later.
"Serwer was thinking of working-class and middle-class Trump supporters, many of whom are voting against their own economic interests," Krugman writes. "But you can see the same joy in cruelty, not just in Trump, but in most of his top minions — from Stephen Miller and JD Vance to Tom Homans, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth. All of them clearly take a smirking satisfaction in their ability to stick it to the poor and powerless."
Krugman continues, "What about the guests at the party? What about the oligarchs abasing themselves at Trump's feet? Some of them may share in the cruelty of Trump's inner circle. Most probably just don't care about other people's suffering, certainly not enough to risk Trump's wrath by protesting or even failing to show up. So, to repeat, the party at Mar-a-Lago wasn't a case of tone deafness, living it up despite others' suffering. It was in large part a party held to celebrate others' suffering."
Paul Krugman's full Substack column is available at this link.
