Trump baby blimp expected to fly over Australia during US presidential visit

Extract from The Guardian

Donald Trump

Donald Trump is tipped to visit Australia in November after Malcolm Turnbull’s invitation

Naaman Zhou

@naamanzhou

Tue 24 Jul 2018 14.58 AEST Last modified on Wed 25 Jul 2018 04.50 AEST

The Trump baby blimp during a protest against the US president in Edinburgh, Scotland. Australian protest organisers say the blimp is a ‘globally recognised symbol of opposition to Trump’. Photograph: Robert Perry/EPA

The United Kingdom’s famous Trump baby blimp could soon appear in Australian skies as demonstrators plan a mass protest to coincide with the US president’s visit later this year.
The six-metre-high orange balloon – dubbed by the former Ukip leader and Trump ally Nigel Farage “the biggest insult to a sitting US president ever” – was flown over London this month as part of a countrywide protest against Trump’s visit to the UK.
Now, organisers in Australia say they are in talks to bring the blimp to Australia when Trump visits at the end of the year. While no date is set, Malcolm Turnbull invited the president to visit when they met in February, and it is expected Trump will visit after he attends the Apec summit in Papua New Guinea in November.

  The moment Trump baby blimp lifts off - video

Organiser Simone White said the protest, currently titled United Against Trump, was directly inspired by the tens of thousands of protesters who took to the streets in the UK.
“The Trump baby blimp has become this kind of globally recognised symbol of opposition to Trump,” she said. “We have been in touch with the people that made the blimp and they are actually really keen to have it travel around the world. They’re excited to get the blimp to Australia. Now we’re just in the process of figuring out how to send it, which won’t be too hard.
“We’re expecting an absolutely enormous protest. We are expecting this could be one of the biggest protests in Australia in a long time. Our goal, like the goal of the protesters in the UK, is to make Trump feel like he is not welcome here.”
The New South Wales Greens MP David Shoebridge, who is also a member of the organising committee, said the visit could have domestic political ramifications if it went ahead.
“Australians can already feel the echoes of Trump and his politics on our political system,” he said. “Trump not only symbolises, but actually works to produce, a mean, nasty violent world that is riddled with racism and misogyny. If you don’t protest that, what do you stand up against?
“To date, Turnbull has cuddled up to Trump. If he continues down that path, I believe he will pay a very real domestic political price for it.”
If it does arrive in Australia, the Trump blimp will join a long line of peculiar inflatables to be imported from the UK – including Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhale, which was built in Bristol to mark the centenary of Canberra and graced southern skies in 2013.

Skywhale was designed by Australian artist Patricia Piccinini and flown over Canberra in 2013. Photograph: Getty Images

White said she expected Australians to turn out in great numbers to reject the “global threat” that Trump represented.
“He stands for a global system that is escalating its attacks against refugees, against the poor, against women, against trans people and the LGBTI+ community and the working class,” she said. “We expect that people in Australia will be just as opposed to Trump as people in the UK because Trump represents this global threat to all these oppressed groups and the working class generally.”

The blimp, funded by crowdsourcing, cost UK activists £17,300 (about $30,000) to build but White said there had not been a discussion yet about the cost to bring it to Australia.