Part Two: Three ghosts suggest an unmerry future for Donald Trump

TRG imagines, and cites, how the past, present, and future could come back to haunt him.

The Resistant Grandmother (TRG)

Fifteen minutes after Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost left his friend Donald Trump in his bed chambers at the White House, a willowy apparition glided into the room, hovering within about five feet of the president’s bed.

The cool air currents preceding her were enough to awaken the fitful president. Knowing unconsciously that something strange was happening, he eventually shook himself awake.

Rubbing his eyes, he could not believe his luck. The willowy blond of about 15 or 16 looked down, dressed in what looked like long white, semi-sheer Greek chiton, cinched at the waist and revealing a lithe, graceful creature of beautiful proportions. Atop her head was a circlet of sweet alyssum whose natural perfume filled the air.

She introduced herself as Miranda, the Ghost of Midsomer Past. Just as (Ghost) Epstein had promised, she was here to take him back to the past. The goal: to show the error of his ways in hopes he would change—for his sake, and the world’s.

No Whigs here
TRUMP: (Thinking: Not just hot, but “F-ing hot!”) His attraction was so immediate he realized he was ogling her without the benefit of his whitish-blond toupee.

While basking under her steel-blue gaze, he quickly retrieved it from his nightstand and battened it down on his bald pate, the application being only slightly askew. He thought that if this were death, maybe it’d be something to look forward to, all the while unconsciously stroking his right leg from the ankle up.

Still smitten, Trump decided to go for it—after all, he’s the President of the United States and can do anything, both in his mind and the Supreme Court’s.
TRUMP: Well, h-e-l-l-o…Aren’t I the lucky one, to have such a beautiful creature standing so close to me in my bedroom! If this is a dream—you tell me, honey—I may never want to wake up…

GHOST: (Backs up a little due to the ick factor. She knew now she must establish her authority quickly.) I’m here for one reason: to show you the errors of your ways as evidenced by your past behavior.

TRUMP: I don’t agree there are any errors in my ways. But you, sweetie, can show me anything you want. As long as I can reciprocate and show you a thing or two.

And, just to be clear, any accusations against me are always bogus and the fault of a witch hunt or hoax..

Who’s bogus?
GHOST: All those accusations of bad behavior with women are bogus? Twenty young females have accused you of unwanted sexual behavior and have been deemed credible. And then there’s that New York court where you were that found guilty of sexual assault in the E. Jean Carroll case. Sorry, but today’s self-serving equivalent of “Bah, humbug!” isn’t going to work.

TRUMP: Never met her…not my type, she’s lying…a hoax.

GHOST: (Getting her strong woman affect on) Mr. President, you’ve been a cad ever since you emerged from your mother’s womb, and you know it. And a large part of that depravity blossomed during your Jeffrey Epstein days. You were best buddies for about 15-20 years from the mid 90s to well into the 2000s. It wasn’t until 2019 that you really began to distance yourself from him—when the feds started closing in on his pedophilia. For the good of your soul, we’re going to go back in time to relive a part of that terrible past. Starting now.

(A big “Whoosh” and a powerful air current suddenly plunks them back into 1990s New York. There, Trump and Epstein are out partying so often they’re deemed to be “close friends” by similarly out-and-about New Yorkers. They’re seen in clubs, Epstein’s townhouse, and on both Trump and Epstein’s planes.)

GHOST: Bring back memories? All that middle-aged cavorting with females a third your age?

TRUMP: Oh, c’mon. I was young and impressionable…I may have hung out with him a little, but everybody in New York did…

GHOST: You were 47 years old, Donald, not just some 20-something! It was the girls who were young and impressionable…incapable of knowing just yet how memories of their terrible liaisons would change their lives forever. One of them, a young wife and mother living in Australia, just recently killed herself. Apparently all that sex at such an early age was too heavy a burden to carry through life.

TRUMP: That’s on Epstein, not me.

GHOST: Your relationship with Epstein was much tighter that you’ve let on of late. In the early 2000s, he was a “terrific guy”; now you claim you barely knew him.

Granted, it’s hard to sort out the AI-generated “evidence” of Trump’s being in inappropriate settings with minors. But that’s why one turns to reports in reputable publications to help.

Reports of impropriety
The Guardian’s Sidney Blumenthal reports, “The 1990s and early 2000s were the heyday of the Trump-Epstein romp. Roger Stone, Trump’s dirty trickster who was dumped from the 1996 Bob Dole presidential campaign…was a hanger-on in the Palm Beach demimonde. ‘There’s 100 beautiful women and 10 guys. Look how cool are we?’ he told the Washington Post in 2016…it was great!”

The same Guardian writer said that the author Michael Wolff told him that Epstein opened his safe in his New York townhouse and retrieved a pile of about a dozen photographs “spread out like playing cards” of Trump with girls of an “uncertain age.” In two of them, topless girls are sitting on Trump’s lap. In another, he has a visible stain on the crotch of his pants while several girls are laughing and pointing at it. Wolff believes they remain in Epstein’s safe “when the FBI came in after his arrest and took everything.”

Tell me, Mr. Trump. Are those among the photos and other evidence you’ve promised to reveal as part of your “transparency pledge”?

TRUMP: None of your business.

GHOST: Perhaps. But it seems many of your followers want everything about Epstein all laid out for pubic review.

And then there’s that July 17 Wall Street Journal piece. You wrote that sycophantic birthday poem in 1992, scrawling your familiar black Sharpie signature on the most indelicate area of a nude woman’s body outline, and that bawdy card says it all.

TRUMP: All lies. Bogus. Witch hunt. Hoax.

Pontius Trump
And then there was that Mar-a-Lago party. You invited scores of young women from the area and then stood off to the side with Epstein, ogling and sizing up your female guests with him like a couple of horny middle-schoolers.

TRUMP: Nothing wrong there, either…

GHOST: No, Donald. Those girls you invited were creeped out and complained to you, didn’t they?
TRUMP: I don’t remember.

GHOST: You were the man in charge. You should have told Epstein to go home. Except you were creeping them out, too.

Forty-seven? You were a father of three by then, divorced from your first wife and in a serious relationship with the woman who’d become your second. Forty-seven going on 16 describes Jeffrey Epstein’s Donald Trump.

TRUMP: You’re getting a little lippy for a sixteen-looking-year-old. Too bad, because I could put those lips …

GHOST (By now, the Ghost had become certain that this man had no capacity for, or the desire to change.)
You’re hopeless. At least Scrooge had some old-school decorum. You might be the American president, but you have no class befitting your age and position. Just from our brief conversations, I can tell there’s nothing more I can do here, so I’m leaving. Try to find your own way home…

With a whoosh, the ghost of the Past disappeared, leaving Trump wondering how he’d get back to the White House. Just then, another blast of air reveals a second ghost who immediately IDs himself as the Ghost of Midsomer Present—a.k.a., Ghost Two.)

Modern ghost Everyman
(Unlike the effusive, larger-than-life Middle Ghost in Dickens’ novel, this version could not have been more different. Gone were the rosy cheeks, velvet cape, and peuter stein filled with “Christmas cheer.” In its place appeared a disappointed-looking, middle-aged spectre dressed in an inexpensive fiber-filled jacket and carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts cup filled with black coffee.)

Upticking
GHOST: If I look dissimilar from the Dickens ghost it’s because the place and times are very different. Only a year ago, The Economist had described America as the “World’s Greatest Economy” under Joe Biden (economist.com), but now it has morphed into a country worried about ever-shifting tariff policies, and the unpredictable-to-the-point-of-being-scary president in charge of them who is always, menacinely, changing his mind.

As a result, bad management of the economy coupled with ongoing uncertainty has caused consumer prices to have ticked up by almost three percent, companies struggling just since April, and unemployment inching upward, as are the number of bankruptcies…by 9 percent just since last April (2 May, americanbankruptcyinstitute/abi.org).

TRUMP: There’s always been bankruptcies…

GHOST: I know you’re an expert on the subject, but it’s awfully strange that they’ve coincided with your tariff announcement and the Stock Market’s tanking after it, lasting for most of the month. Wouldn’t you say?

TRUMP: No I would not. All hoax stuff.

GHOST: Then too the war on immigrants begun in January of this year has taken away a needed workforce for a wide swath of industries, ranging from agriculture, restaurants, construction, meat-packing, etc. And now a heavily financed national domestic army’s roaming the country picking up both undocumented and documented migrants and sending them to both domestic and foreign detention centers, or, to be honest, concentration camps. That’s created a whole new level of fear for the oldest democracy in the world.

TRUMP: Lies, hoax, Biden…

GHOST: For a look at how all these numbers factor into the changing lives of Americans, let’s go to Anytown, America and take a look at a couple of streets.
TRUMP: Fake news, hoax, etc.

GHOST: On one side of the tableau we see huge mega mansions with five-car garages, swimming pools, and tennis courts. On the other side—streets lined with modest bungalows or small ranch houses, many sporting “For Sale” signs.

These were the homes of the small business owners going belly up since last year…small merchants who could no longer pay the tariffs on goods now costing 20, 30, or 40 percent more than last year.

Some houses on the market belonged to legal immigrants also swept up in ICE raids and given no or limited due process to prove their legality. On tight budgets, homes aren’t affordable in light of looming legal bills and loss of work.

TRUMP: You’re assuming the wives don’t work, but that’s typical now.
GHOST: Also living in those houses were spouses who had lost or were in danger of losing their jobs: special education teachers not being called back due to unsteady funding, employees of businesses facing hard times, and furloughed government workers (“the flagging economy is hurting the housing market” 25 may, washingtonpost.com).

Tell me, Mr. President, did you or anyone on your team anticipate these outcomes when you determined that a cold-turkey tariff policy and Draconian immigration crackdowns were the way to go?
TRUMP: (Arms crossed in defiance)
GHOST: Okay, look, Mr. President. I’m sorry, but this is going nowhere. At this point with Scrooge, we were seeing material change in his psyche. A peek into the life of Tiny Tim and the Cratchetts had made him understand how his behavior was hurting people, and that he was needed to help them. But it’s clear to me that you’re a different animal altogether. You’re a man incapable of feeling empathy in
any way.

TRUMP: (Shrugs)

GHOST: So, like Miranda, I see no benefit from continuing these present-day revelations. She didn’t see how a look down Yesterday Lane was doing much good and neither do I. But we haven’t given up completely: next up is the Ghost of Midsomer Future. He’s probably more important anyway. If you’re not emotionally touched by seeing the likely outcomes of your reckless and cruel mismanagement, I believe we can safely say there’s no hope, for you or us, as you continue on in your presidential role.

TRUMP: Whatever…

Dark future?
GHOST: (Vanishes and is immediately replaced by an apparation who looks exactly as he appears in A Christmas Carol — all in black with a heavy dark mesh over his face. He says:)

Although I look exactly like Dickens’ spectre, there’s one major difference: I will be speaking to you throughout our journey. No muting today.
TRUMP: Good, I’m not big on mimes or mutants.
GHOST: Not a mime, Mr. President, nor a “mutant.” That’s for Ninja Turtles. Based on Miranda’s report, I concluded that, with you, Mr. Trump, there should be no room for ambiguity. I’ll be keeping everything that’s pertinent on our shared experience today crystal clear. Let’s go then, shall we?

(Another great swoop lands them at the top of a mountain to view a panorama of Trump’s affect on people in the six months of his second presidency, especially when it comes to his downsizing government and slashing climate-related people and agencies. Looking below they see surging rivers swelled from a growing number of severe rainstorms. It looks very much like the raging Guadalupe River in Texas that took an estimated 200 lives, 27 from the Camp Mystic Girl Scout Camp) over July 4th and 5th.)

TRUMP: This is old news…Let’s move on.

GHOST: No, Mr. President. This isn’t from two weeks ago: it’s a harbinger of things to come.

According to ourworlddata.org, natural disasters have increased three hundred fold from 1960 to 2023. While some of that increase is due to better reporting methods, various United Nations agencies say actual disaster events have increased from 100 per year in the 1970s to around 400 per year worldwide in the past 20 years (4 Feb. 2023, undrr.org)

TRUMP: Worldwide—not us.

GHOST: (Restrainedly) Mr. President, this data includes the natural disaster events from the United States, which is also a part of worldwide data.

TRUMP: You’re obviously slamming me for the tragedy in Texas. I had nothing to do with it. It was all Biden’s fault…

The madness
GHOST: Lies don’t work here, Mr. President. The truth is, your taking a chainsaw rather than a scalpel to government reorganization cost the U.S. Weather Service valuable personpower and expertise—at the very beginning of the natural disaster season! If DOGE hadn’t forced out one San Angelo meteorologist by its cutbacks, that employe would have been on the ground working with local officials to evacuate. Without that experience and dedication, and without adequate warnings, also due to cutbacks, River Country residents and campers didn’t learn of the danger until early morning, already too late for many. That was madness, and people died.

TRUMP: You sound like one of those Democrat cry-babies…always blaming everyone but themselves.
GHOST: Oh, good god. This happened on your watch. Why haven’t you taken steps to prevent further disasters?
TRUMP: I already said FEMA could stick around a little longer.

GHOST: (Now, visibly exasperated and angry) OMG. Never mind. Time’s ticking…we need to move on to something else.

(At that moment, a violent vortex scooped up the two men and landed them on the bleak grounds of a massive cemetery. The topography is covered with a sea of white crosses, marble sarcophagi, and stone headstones as far as the eye can see.)

Little white crosses
These are the grave markers of all who have died and will die due to the cutbacks in the Weather Service, FEMA, the National Institute of Health, Health and Human Services, U.S. AID, and other government agencies. The small white versions reflect the young ages of those buried there, from starvation and disease in Africa; exposure to deadly diseases due to conspiracy-driven vaccination policies; elimination of health insurance for 19 million Americans on Medicaid; and higher medical premiums for others, making insurance unaffordable for many. Also ended under your aegis were all the promising federal and university research projects that could have led to cures in cancer, heart disease, and dementia.

TRUMP: (No reaction)

GHOST: Okay…we have one, two more stops. They’ll probably not make much difference, but we’ll try…

(Just then, they’re swept up from the cemetery and find themselves miles away in the classroom of a university. It’s filled primarily with white students, due to the destruction of efforts to seek out and fund minority students and fewer international students, now reluctant to study here for fear of ICE.)

Fewer options
Lower numbers also reflect the new difficulty in finding student loans as a result of the destruction of the Department of Education. Lower class sizes have led to still-higher tuition rates, opening the doors to more children of well-to-do families whose tax breaks have made even higher tuitions affordable, for them.

GHOST: The end result: America’s losing ground to other countries in producing an educated citizenry and recruiting top students to study and often settle down here. Bottom line: Thomas Jefferson warned that an educated citizenry was key to making democracy work. Don’t you feel even a little bit ashamed?

TRUMP: Hah! (Having selectively listened only to the part where more rich students are able to access higher education, he says:) If you can’t pay the fare, too bad. Rich kids are normally better students, anyway.
GHOST: Speaking from your own personal experience, are we? I have seen your grades at Wharton…looks like daddy’s money was the only thing that kept you afloat.

TRUMP: My point exactly. Money talks even with those snob college administrators. I wouldn’t be here today without that Wharton degree.

GHOST: And that’s my point. Some better, smarter kid who couldn’t otherwise afford college could be president if she or he had gone to Wharton, instead of you.
TRUMP: F-you!

GHOST: We can also see fewer white kids in college as linked to the destruction of the Department of Education. The resulting reduction of services to children with special needs left thousands of those kids unsupported and with fewer options (Feb. 26, nea.org).

Cruelty for kids
Some kids with speech impediments, for example, no longer receive help throughout school, leaving them angry and vengeful. One such boy was so bullied by the time he graduated high school he shot up a classroom in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 fourth graders and two teachers. That’s the kind of results your chainsaw approach to federal programs can bring about, affecting lives—all to pay for the billionaire tax cuts. Happy?

TRUMP: Yes, I’m happy. I’ve become a billionaire myself from this presidency, avoided prison, and am punishing my enemies. I don’t care if America succeeds in the future. I’ll be dead and gone by then. No skin off my nose…

The reckoning…
GHOST: Okay. I get that you don’t have the will or imagination to see the consequences of your actions. But perhaps this next tableau will help with that.
(Just then both men are swooped up and taken to a dark, sprawling cemetery with a huge marble obelisk The name “TRUMP” sits at the top, etched in gold. Sadly, there’s garbage around the base and yellow streaks running down the marble. Trump
doesn’t notice.

The engraved biographical information at the bottom makes clear Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States, rests there. But no one lies nearby.)

TRUMP: Where’s Melania?

GHOST: She married her young Tantric Yoga instructor soon after your passing. They live in Italy now. Melania didn’t like what America had become—not up to her standards. And she didn’t have that many fans here anyway, as you know.

TRUMP: And the kids?
GHOST: None are dead yet, though getting on in years. But a quick look at their wills show all of them have stipulated burial sites as far away from you as possible. The reasons, not explained.

TRUMP: They made their personal fortunes off of my presidency, you’d think…

GHOST: You’d think they’d want to show some respect, is that it?

TRUMP: Damn straight.

GHOST: Well, this lonely gravesite suggests not. Sad.

TRUMP: Is this it finally? Again, I need to get bac–

GHOST: As a last stop, do you want to view the Trump Library?

TRUMP: (Furtively) Oh, Okay. Let’s make it quick, though.

Pariah temple
GHOST: (Appearing before them is a mammoth, oppressive edifice with all the charm of the architectural style popularized in post-war Soviet Union. Again,“TRUMP” is emblazoned across the top.

The interior is festooned with memorabilia of Trump’s cruelest triumphs — the January 6 attempt to overthrow the government; the pardoning of the rioters on Inauguration Day, 2025; the April 2, “Liberation Day,” when the first set of punishing tariffs were announced; and the Helsinki conference where Putin walked on stage proudly followed by Trump looking servile and meak.

Then there was a virtual reenactment of his verbal tongue lashing of NATO members on May 25, 2017 at the NATO Summit in Brussels; and his upstaging Queen Elizabeth II by walking in front of her during the Trooping of the Guard ceremony on July 13, 2018.)

TRUMP: Great. They put everything in I wanted. Say, why aren’t there any people inside?

A dreamy future…
GHOST: That’s because your base splintered starting in mid 2025 over your campaign promise to reveal the Epstein files, only to welch on it. From then on, you became the very essence of the deep state and all the other lies you’ve been spouting since entering politics.

Then, losing to the Wall St. Journal in Court turned off the blackmail spigot to media companies. From that point on, the gloves were off and by mid 2027 you completely lost your grip on America and your party. The handwriting was on the wall. Eventually, an “intervention” of political and economic leaders took place and convinced you to resign, as this country pushed out Nixon, and, more recently, the U.K. did with Prime Minister Liz Truss.

TRUMP: And the Democrats?

GHOST: Recaptured both Houses in ‘26 and the presidency in ‘28. Of course, like all modern Repubican presidents, you left them with a mess that’s going to be hard to fix in a few years, if ever. But at least with MAGA broken, the tarnished Republican brand will make it harder to mount a viable opposition, as they did with Clinton, Obama, and Biden.

But Democrats were smart to also focus in on “small things,” like spearheading a national movement to teach history and civics to help students spot authoritarians when they see them. That, and spearheading the development of economic models that will keep traditional media sources, like newspapers, viable, helping to offset the lies spewing out of a lot of social media. Those history classes are also going to instruct students on how to develop the skills to separate truth from fiction and become better voters. At least that’s the hope.

Past hope
TRUMP: I feel sick. Get me back to the White House!
GHOST: For the record, do you have anything to say, such as Scrooge’s plea to me as authored by Dickens: “Spirit, hear me. I am not the man I was! Why show me this if I am past hope?”

TRUMP: Nope. Just get that “whooshing” cranked up so I can get back to bed.

GHOST: I go first. Can’t abide another moment in your presence. But just after I disappear, you’ll be picked up by that now-familiar air current that’ll return you to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and your presidency…for now.
TRUMP: OKAY—Just beat it!

As promised, after the Ghost departs, another Whoosh sweeps Trump back to the White House. He lands in bed, convinced that nothing about the night was relevent—no need to change his policies, no fractures in his base, no ignominious death, no lonely gravesite, etc.

But before he dozes off, a sharp pain attacks him in his right ankle. Donald Trump tries to send upward, toward his heart, the blood pooling in his leg.

—trg

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