No, the Trump Drone Show Over Miami Wasn't Fake News — And We Have Receipts!

On Tuesday, March 18, a dramatic, minute-long video depicting what appeared to be a drone light show paying tribute to President Donald Trump over downtown Miami began to go viral on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

"Hands down one of the coolest things I’ve seen," self-styled conservative pundit Benny Johnson tweeted to his 3.6 million followers at 6:50 p.m. "Watch this INSANE drone show put on in Florida last night in appreciation of President Trump 🔥🇺🇸."

Later that evening, Mayor Francis Suarez, the Magic City's resident Trump stan, reshared the video, all-capsing, "ONLY IN MIAMI."

Conservative influencers and MAGA buffs gushed over the ostensible footage, which opened with a shot of scores of drones lifting off into the nighttime sky over Biscayne Bay near Watson Island to form a Trump likeness performing the president's trademark "Y.M.C.A." rally shuffle. The cinematic masterpiece cut to shots of onlookers recording the show with their phones in admiration.

But was it a depiction of an actual event? If so, when had it transpired? And why did this promo package seem to be the first everyone was learning of it?

Well, not quite the first.

At 9:50 the previous night, a Miami resident with a handful of X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) followers shared a brief video he'd apparently shot.

"One bowl in and I look up to see Trump dancing in the sky, Miami isn't real," @Legend_Saylor posted above an eight-second clip showing drone-Trump doing the "Y.M.C.A." shimmy.

The following night, Saylor confirmed to New Times that he'd witnessed the show with his own two eyes from a balcony overlooking Watson Island. As evidence, he sent along two additional shots — one showing drones forming outlines of the United States and Israel beneath the words "DEFENDERS OF FREEDOM," the other a fierce bald eagle formation below the phrase "LIBERATOR OF HOSTAGES."

So we published a story about the sighting.


And yet...

Was the Drone Show Real? Inquiring Journalists Want to Know!

Saylor appeared to be the only person who had captured footage of the show as it transpired. And all over social media, locals were quick to suggest that Tuesday's splash reel was some sort of whole-cloth AI creation — which is to say: fake news.

"We did not see it," wrote a Reddit user. "And I overlook Biscayne Bay. We would have seen it if it happened."

If it were real, added another, then "major news outlets would [have] covered it when it was happening. It would've made the news that night. Not days later. You'd find 1000s of videos from people that live in Miami all over socials. My bullshit detector calls bullshit."

Following a weeklong investigation, New Times can confidently report that a Trump-centric light show did in fact illuminate the night sky over Biscayne Bay and the Port of Miami on Monday, March 17, the night before the splash reel landed. And while the contents of the reel may gild the proverbial lily, at least some — if not all — of its imagery is the genuine article.

Drone Shows and the FAA

Drone displays and other light shows are subject to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations and typically require the operator to file a waiver with the agency. Additionally, drone operators are "responsible for coordinating with local law enforcement city officials, and others as appropriate," an FAA spokesperson imparted in an email exchange with New Times.

That said, spokespersons for the City of Miami and the Miami Police Department (MPD) assured New Times they had no information about any drone show in Miami on Monday night.

"As of now, what I can tell you is that it was NOT a city-sponsored event," City of Miami communications director Kenia Fallat informed New Times in a March 20 email.

We also checked with the mayor's office. "I’m so sorry for the delay, but Kenia is responding to these inquiries, and she has already responded," Francis Suarez's spokesperson, Ana Hume, wrote in a text message.

Similarly, an MPD spokesperson said none of the department's officers stationed near the area where the drone show ostensibly took place reported seeing anything remarkable in the skies that night. Nor could the department find any records of a special event permit having been issued for March 17.

How Many Drone Show Operators Ply the Miami Skies, Anyway?

Undeterred, New Times pursued what your grandpappy, rest his soul, used to call the shoe-leather approach: We started cold-calling U.S.-based drone operators to inquire whether they'd staged a Trump drone show in Miami.

A daunting task, you say?

On our second call, we struck gold. The person who picked up at Texas-based Sky Elements Drone Shows confirmed, "Yeah, that was us." [Editor's note: Pour one out for Grandpappy!]

Sad to say, the individual could offer no further information, directing us to email our queries to the company's general info address.

As Grandpappy surely would have predicted, emailing got us precisely nowhere. Same with multiple phone calls to individual members of Sky Elements leadership crew listed on the company's website. Eventually, we reached a spokesperson who explained that the company does not divulge any information about any of its shows — including whether they actually took place — unless specifically authorized to do so.

That said, according to the company's website, Sky Elements is the leading drone light show provider in the U.S. and offers service in all 50 states. And the imagery touted on the website is in line with what Miamians saw (or didn't see) on March 17. The company holds multiple Guinness World Records, including "Largest fictional character made with multi-rotors or drones," "Largest aerial logo," and "Largest aerial logo."

Apart from its record-breaking shows, the company has found itself in hot water over its drone work. Just this past December, the FAA temporarily suspended Sky Elements' Part 107 Waiver — a piece of paperwork that allows drone pilots to deviate from drone-operating rules such as flying over people at night — after some of the company's drones fell from the sky during a show in Orlando. One of the devices struck a 7-year-old boy, who reportedly had to undergo emergency open-heart surgery as a result.

In a preliminary investigation report, the National Transportation Safety Board noted that the Sky Elements drones had failed to "lift uniformly," causing them to shift position and collide in midair.

An FAA spokesperson informs New Times that the agency issued the company a new waiver on February 21.

No Potentially Drone-Related Stone Unturned!

Even as we continued to pester City of Miami officials, we began to question whether the show had actually happened. We went back to Legend Saylor, who reiterated that he absolutely saw the display with his own two eyes. And we put in a call to the Miami-Dade County Aviation Department, which oversees operations at Miami International Airport. Greg Chin, the agency's communications director, assured us that all necessary approvals would go through the FAA.

So we circled back to the FAA to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request — what Grandpappy described as the journalistic equivalent of a Hail Mary pass, given the legendarily long wait time for such a request to be fulfilled.

When we emailed the FAA media relations office to clarify where to file our request, the spokesperson apparently suddenly remembered that the agency maintains a database of every Part 107 Waiver. (Or maybe they were just fed up with us.)

New Times dutifully searched the database and found four active waivers. Some were tied to specific locations and included additional details and diagrams. But none appeared to relate to the Trump display explicitly.

Nevertheless, we got in touch with the local FAA flight standards office — and hit the jackpot again. When we asked whether the office had been notified about any drone shows planned for March 17 in Miami, an aviation safety inspector confirmed that Preston Ward, Sky Elements' chief pilot, had an active waiver on file. Moreover, we learned, Ward had notified the office on Friday, March 14, about a planned drone show in Miami.

PTZtv Enters the Chat

While we may have secured sufficient proof, we knew Grandpappy wouldn't have been satisfied with proof of planning. So we went on another needle-in-a-haystack hunt—this time in the hope of learning whether any of the live cameras stationed in downtown Miami captured the show.

It didn't take long for us to stumble across PTZtv, a Fort Lauderdale-based "webcam solutions company" that operates a 24/7 livestream of PortMiami and Bayfront Park. Even more fortuitously, PTZtv archives its footage and makes it accessible on its site — if a smidge cumbersome to navigate, in a 2003-era-MySpace sort of way.

And lo and behold, as we trolled the PortMiami cam archive, we detected a smoking gun: bright lights that materialize around 9:30 p.m. in the vicinity of the seaplane base on Watson Island and arise to form shapes that bear the unmistakable imprint of the Trump drone show splash reel.

We kind of had to squint: PTZtv's archive consists of snapshots taken once per minute as the camera pans across the bay and the port. But at the 9:32 mark, we caught our first glimpse of the illuminated drones. The image was indistinct, as were subsequent snapshots from 9:34 and 9:35. Stills from 9:37 and 9:38 p.m. absolutely captured the bald eagle formation. And 9:42 the camera caught the drones forming the globe that preceded the "THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP" sign-off seen on the splash reel.

By 9:44 p.m., the show was over.

PTZtv Exits the Chat

We hastened to reach out to PTZtv using the website's contact form. "Would it be possible to receive footage from the Port Miami/Intercontinental live cameras from March 17th from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.?" we asked. "Thank you."

Noting the invitation to direct "business inquiries" to [email protected], we tried that route as well. (Heeding the company's "NO callers please" admonition, we refrained from searching for a phone number.)

PTZtv cofounder and partner David Balmforth responded. "Sorry, the answer is no," he wrote. "For future reference: please do not spam all of our contact points multiple times. Doesn't put us in a mood to help you."

Grandpappy would have rolled over in his grave had we given up after getting this far. So we wrote back — first to apologize and explain that had only tried to comply with the company's instructions, and a bit later to ask why the flat no.

Bamsforth genially provided the following helpful explanation:

"Because you are wasting my time and are continuing to do so!

"It’s unclear if we even have any footage. We are not a security camera operation that archives weeks or months of video. We do LIVE video. I’m not going to waste even more time pouring [sic] through hours of video (if it even exists) on an off chance. Plus we also only license our video (to legitimate media outlets) for a fee and that typically starts at $1,000 and comes with conditions of use. I doubt you or your editor are even interested in shelling out real money for this footage.

"Now please go away and stop bothering us."