Jonathan Griffin:
Washington D.C.

The inaugural event held in the White House’s lavish new ballroom was a masquerade ball. Hundreds of guests were invited—the loyal core of the Make America Great Again movement. As is traditional at such events, guests were asked not to remove their masks until dinner was served. However, the behaviour of many guests soon became so unruly that, when the time for demasking came, they held tight to their disguises in order to conceal their identities.

All guests were required to surrender their mobile phones on entrance, and deposit them in securely sealed bags. There were, inevitably perhaps, several attendees in Donald Trump masks, including (according to rumour) the President himself, although it was impossible to tell which of the various Donalds was the authentic one. Another popular disguise was the iconic black and white Guy Fawkes mask, which was popular in the 2010s among members of the anarchist groups Anonymous and Occupy, but was later also seen during the insurrectionary riot inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. There was at least one Ku Klux Klan hood spotted, although it was impossible to confirm if it was rented for the evening or privately owned.

Armin Boehm, UNE VILLE AVEC DES TRACES DES POÈTES, 2026

Among the invitees were several members of the Oath Keepers militia who had been pardoned by Trump for their involvement in January 6th. Instead of balaclavas, most wore Halloween clown or monster masks. At the White House, some were so shocked by the depraved scenes they witnessed that they never dared remove their masks, and left early.

Male guests were seen groping female attendees, especially the (unmasked) serving staff, who carried trays of glasses and canapés among the crowd, until many of them departed from the job before the end of the evening, refusing to endure such working conditions, thus forfeiting their wages.

When dinner was served, a vast food fight ensued. It was impossible for most people to force food through the mouth holes in their masks, so instead of remove them, they simply opted not to eat. Guests scooped handfuls of salmon, lobster and lemon mousse and hurled them across the room. Beef bourguignon dripped from crystal chandeliers and faux-gold fixtures.

Armin Boehm, MODERN WARFARE, 2026

At one point, late in the evening, a cluster of men and women were seen mounting a table, where they began to recreate a tableau of the infamous scene, reported in the Steele Dossier, in which Trump paid Russian prostitutes to urinate on each other in a Moscow hotel room once occupied by Barack Obama. (There were no Obama masks spotted at the event.) Elsewhere, across the ballroom, a group of men in balaclavas were seen holding down a struggling woman in a rubber Kamala Harris mask, while another man tore off her pants and climbed on top of her. It was unclear if her cries of distress were part of her performance, or real.

In the days following the event, at significant expense, guests were individually visited by White House lawyers who coerced them into signing N.D.A.s about the events of the evening. It took three weeks for multiple commercial cleaning companies and building contractors to restore the ballroom to a usable condition.