Reflecting the deep commitment to Middle American values and salt-of-the-earth small towns that the Trump brand has always stood for since late last year, the Trump Organization today announced plans for a new chain of budget-priced hotels, spread throughout the rural class cities Trump’s family was forced to lumber through so he could be president. The new line of three-star hotels will eschew the gold-plated opulence of Trump’s flagship accommodations, trading the brand’s aura of luxury, coastal elitism—even shrugging off the Trump name—for one of humble patriotism, to be sold under the new moniker American Idea. It’s ideal for weary travelers looking to sleep and shit inside a giant metaphor.
The New York Times reports that the inspiration for the new line of three-star hotels struck Eric and Donald Trump Jr. as they flitted through these working-class towns, enamored of all the people they could fleece, but disgusted by the downmarket, chandelier-free lodgings those people were apparently forced to stay in wherever the Trumps glimpsed them in between golf courses. They thought they deserved better, and that they could probably get it by filling those hotels with “artifacts of American culture” like “an old Coca-Cola machine in the lobby or American-made sundries in the rooms,” then charging those people to stay there. American Idea would appeal to red-blooded patriots who don’t want to stay in one of those snooty leftist hotels that stocks its rooms with sushi and mosques and pretends like Coca-Cola wasn’t even invented. Coca-Cola exists, libtards, and don’t you forget it!
Although the Trump Organization, reflexively at this point, insists there’s nothing political about its latest business venture, the chain is expected to make its debut in small towns throughout the overwhelmingly Trump-backing Mississippi—though Eric Danziger, head of the company’s hotels division, takes pains to point out that the very first lodgings will open in counties that voted for Clinton, ostensibly to drive home just how futile that was. Nevertheless, American Idea is part of a noteworthy outgrowth for the Trump brand, beyond the urban luxury market it’s long tried to drive to suicide through embarrassment, and into the blue-collar realm that is its base now, it guesses. But it will still carry the same Trumpian ideals, such as the fact that the chain “will involve rebranding existing properties like Holiday Inns and Comfort Inns,” mostly by just slapping Trump’s name on the contract and filling it with cheap crap.
American Idea was just announced today, so obviously some details are still being worked out—such as how much Toby Keith will be blaring in the elevators, how many bald eagles the staff will leave on your pillow to fuck, and just how unethical this latest commingling of Trump’s political popularity and his business interests will be. Though if we know anything about modern American ideas, the answer to all of these is “a lot.”