THE GUARDIAN: President jets in to speak at ritzy American Business Forum as millions see their food aid slashed – crisis, what crisis?
It was the week in which Republicans took a beating at the polls, the government shutdown became the longest in history, and 42 million people across the country, including 3 million in Florida, saw their federal food aid slashed.
But in the alternative reality of Miami, where tickets to an overwhelmingly conservative business conference headlined by Donald Trump cost up to $1,990, and billionaires from Saudi Arabia rubbed shoulders with equally wealthy American tycoons such as Jeff Bezos and Ken Griffin, those events created barely a ripple.
Instead, in a gesture that appeared almost to mock the widening disparity between the city’s haves and have-nots, organizers of the America Business Forum cooked up a little treat for attendees: a $50 gift card to spend on food to sustain themselves while they listened to their president congratulate himself for a “golden age” he said his “economic miracle” had delivered.
Advocates say the move, along with the high-budget opulence of the conference itself, was an ill-timed insult to more than a half-million Miami-Dade county residents who just saw their own ability to buy essential groceries for their families kiboshed by the gutting of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap). » | Richard Luscombe in Miami | Friday, November 7, 2025
