Four Seasons Total Landscaping

2020

Date: 7 November 2020 · Place: 7339 State Road, Northeast Philadelphia · between Fantasy Island Adult Bookstore and Delaware Valley Cremation Center · Figures: Rudy Giuliani, Trump campaign attorney · Marie Siravo, owner of Four Seasons Total Landscaping · the Trump campaign press scheduler, never publicly named · Tags: Election Aftermath, Misbooking, Philadelphia 01. The Booking The morning of 7 November 2020, the Associated Press calls the presidential race for Joe Biden. Within minutes, the Trump campaign tweets that Rudy Giuliani will hold a press conference at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. The tweet is deleted, replaced: 'Four Seasons Total Landscaping.' The location is not the hotel. It is a landscaping company in Northeast Philadelphia, in an industrial strip flanked by an adult bookstore and a crematorium. Giuliani holds the press conference there anyway. 02. Concession by Geography Giuliani stands in front of the garage doors and alleges voter fraud for forty-five minutes. The visual is the punchline: every news network frames the shot wide to include the bookstore signage. Four Seasons Total Landscaping sells t-shirts within twenty-four hours, raises money for charity, becomes a tourist stop. The misbooking is treated by most subsequent coverage as the moment the second Trump presidency campaign was conceded by accident, in the parking lot of a small business that happened to share a name. Sources • Lisa Lerer and Annie Karni, 'A Giuliani news conference in a Philadelphia landscaping lot,' New York Times, 7 November 2020 • Allyson Chiu, 'Four Seasons Total Landscaping speaks: We had no idea,' Washington Post, 8 November 2020 • Know Your Meme, 'Four Seasons Total Landscaping'