Photos by @usa_life_with_uma/Instagram
Audio By Carbonatix
Last weekend, President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach hosted the American Humane Society’s 15th Annual Hero Dog Awards Gala. The red carpet gathering, organized by the national animal welfare organization, celebrated and raised money for dogs who work alongside law enforcement and first responders.
Naturally, we pictured furry friends at the fundraiser, donning their best K-9 getups. But reality is stranger than fiction these days. The event at the MAGA haven included cocktails, dinner… and dancers wearing dog masks in 18th-century European aristocratic court costumes.
Wait, what?
Videos of the event shared online show entertainers dancing (in many cases, offbeat) to live renditions of “L-O-V-E” by Nat “King” Cole and “Valerie” by the late Amy Winehouse while wearing masks of huskies and Dalmatians and dressed in ball gowns, tailcoats, and other Rococo-era formal wear.
In addition to being mocked online as “creepy” and likened to “the beginning of a horror film,” viewers quickly noted that the costumes bore a striking resemblance to those worn by furries — or, for the uninitiated, people with varying degrees of aesthetic interest in anthropomorphic animals or characters.
“Furries at [Mar-a-Lago] wasn’t on my bingo card,” one person commented.
“This is some weird ass dystopian shit,” another replied.
“I’m hearing sources that there were litter boxes in the bathrooms of [Mar-a-Lago],” a third commented, apparently referencing the 2022 hoax that falsely claimed some schools were providing litter boxes for students who identified as animals.
In response to several photos of the entertainers Meidas Touch posted on X, California governor Gavin Newsom asked: “Why is Donald Trump hosting a FURRY PARTY???”
A video posted on Instagram shows Trump making an appearance at the event and jumping on stage to address the crowd.
“I just wanna let you know the nation is going unbelievably well, we had one hell of a week, am I right?” Trump asked, before gloating: “We picked up about 4 billion dollars of oil in one day!”
The American Humane Society, a nonprofit with an office in Palm Beach, did not respond to New Times‘ request for comment about the event, including questions about how much the gala raised and how much money Trump might have donated.
In response to a request for comment, a White House spokesperson referred New Times to the Trump Organization. The organization didn’t respond to our inquiry.
