Yes, the three-story-tall inflatable Trump chicken has been dusted off and will be re-inflated Thursday in San Francisco, wearing a black-and-white prison uniform, in an act of protest of Trump appearing in SF to collect some money from some Silicon Valley billionaires who have lost the thread of reality.
Local writer Danelle Morton didn't think she'd ever have to haul out her 33-foot-tall Trump-as-chicken balloon again when she laid it to rest in a mock funeral in 2021. But haul it out she will today, and the sublimely hideous balloon will take a sail on the Bay to protest the fundraising event tonight at the home of amoral billionaire David Sacks.
The lookalike balloon was a $450 purchase Morton made off the internet in 2017, originally manufactured in China around the time of Trump's inauguration and Lunar New Year celebrations that year (it was the Year of the Rooster, and a Chinese balloon maker seized on the similarities with an existing rooster balloon they had). She later added a black-and-white-striped prison shirt — for a 2018 cruise across the Bay to Alcatraz, six years before Trump was actually convicted of 34 felonies.
It sounds like the balloon will be hoisted via boat once more, as Morton tells Bay City News.
"I think the point of sailing the chicken has to be made, right?" Morton says. "I mean, it’d be so much better if we’re doing it while the man was actually standing there, but even if we don’t, I feel like just getting it done is a victory."
The Trump chicken made numerous appearances in the early days of Trump's presidency, and inspired others in other cities to purchase and parade similar balloons. As Morton told the Vallejo Times-Herald in 2017, "Instead of being full of rage, I chose the other tool of politics: Ridicule and humor."
She added, "To have this big, bloated, pasty white chicken and these hands… to have that as our symbol is a way of us taking back some kind of control."
Of course we now the mock funeral for the protest balloon in 2021 was premature, though at the time Morton said she was storing away the balloon in a "mausoleum" rather than destroying it because that seemed more appropriate.
"There was a time when joyful mockery of Donald Trump was appropriate," Morton told the Chronicle at the time. "Not anymore. Not after the takeover of the U.S. Capitol in January. That was one of the scariest moments in history."
She also, poignantly, referred to the former president as "just a bad lounge act, wandering around his country club and showing up uninvited at strangers’ weddings to complain about election fraud." She added, I hope that’s the last of him."
Now, a group of millionaires and billionaires who either don't remember or don't care that Trump tried to destroy the country for his own ego three short years ago are gathering in Pacific Heights to pay $50,000 per person to greet the man, and help fund his attempt to return to the White House. Why? Because they are rich and trying to protect their riches, and anything else they say about it is gaslighting.
The fundraiser is being co-hosted by Sacks and his wife, Jacqueline Sacks, and Sacks's co-host on the "All-In" podcast, Chamath Palihapitiya.
Previously: Invites Go Out For Trump Fundraiser In San Francisco, Hosted By David Sacks
Photo via Danelle Morton