Trump’s running the “country and the world” Help!
Bad taste, bad character, bad policies--but he's determined. Our job of defeating him is just beginning. And must ramp up, fast.
Ed. note: The Resistant Grandmother (TRG) sees both the U.S. and President Trump at an important turning point. Polls show growing majorities of Americans don’t trust or agree with, and do fear the 47th president. While that would be bad for other chief executives, it seems not all that disturbing to someone who’s plotting to make democratic pressure points out of date along with democracy itself. In this fictional account supported by news accounts reporting on the facts cited, TRG has imagined current Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles as a voice of reality and sanity. I’ve based that on her career of serving more traditional Republicans such as Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan. But, in truth, I do not know what Wiles thinks, feels, or knows.
The Resistant Grandmother…
The setting: Trump sits alone in the Oval Office surrounded by the new baroque/rococo decor that now proliferates throughout the presidential work space. Gold dominates, from the paperweight emblazoned with an all-caps “TRUMP” sitting on the Resolute desk to the fireplace mantel’s array of golden vases and baskets. A visitor looking up encounters multiple putti (little angels popular in 15th Century Renaissance paintings), tucked too-cutely into the room’s cornices. Looking down reveals gaudy gold appliques commandeering the fireplace’s wood paneling. Critics have called the room “An Interior Decorator’s Nightmare” as others have described its style as “Atlantic-City-Aspiring-To-Be-Las Vegas. “
More suggestive of 17th century, pre-Enlightenment Sun King Louis XIV’s France than the federal simplicity favored by presidents from the White House’s first resident John Adams onward, it’s a pretentious work area that screams, “I’ve arrived,” but also infers an “I don’t belong here” undercurrent, with the current occupant trying too hard to impress.
100th day hubris
In the newly refurbished Oval, Trump marks his 100th day week feeling good, Sun King style—self-describing his status to three TheAtlantic reporters as the president who “runs the country and the world.”
Since that interview, Trump has returned from an April 30 trip to Macomb County, Michigan, the blue-collar seat of his support in the Wolverine State. Trump devotees enthusiastically greeted him in a Warren, Mich.’s community college auditorium, where Trump waxed on for well more than an hour in a grief-riddled, vengeance-promising, dishonesty-laden speech blaming current economic woes on his predecessor “Sleepy Joe” Biden who left Trump with the “greatest economy in the world,” according to a late 2024 edition of The Economist.
As satisfying as those memories remain, a cloud of anger and sorrow briefly changes his sanguine affect over the familiar issue of numbers in crowds.
It’s the (crowd) size
TRUMP: “F those ingrates! After all I’ve done for them and they repay me with lousy attendance! Outside protestors outnumbered the butts inside that poor-ass community college they forced me into! (At that point, he slams his fist on the desk, overturning a Diet Coke on the Resolute, then pressing a button for a butler to come in and clean it up. As the wait-staff member walks in, behind him is Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, carrying a multi-tabbed binder with post-it notes sticking out from color-coded sections):
WILES: Good afternoon, Mr. President! I took the liberty of seeing if I could join you for just a few minutes. We didn’t have much time on the plane together, and I want to cover off on a a few issues being teed up in the press. And the polls.
Polls/schmolls
TRUMP: Polls—Ha! (Chuckles) You know how we deal with them: they’re phony when we want them to be, and not when we decide they’re OK. I’m in a place now where it doesn’t matter what people think: I’ve got the world in the palm of my hand and plan to keep it that way.
WILES: Well, certainly, Mr. President. (Then adding, trying to be playful…) But the Canadian election shows some parts of the world aren’t on board with your-, our agenda. And plus the Dow has been down big, sir, showing ongoing world and domestic confusion over the tariffs. I’m sure it will rally again. But yesterday, the market didn’t like our lower GDP numbers. The jobs report is coming out on Friday. We could see another downturn, depending on the numbers. I want us to be prepared.
TRUMP: (Takes a swig of a new Diet Coke that’s replaced the spilled one.) What do you mean our GDP? Don’t tell me you’re not touting how this is Biden’s bad stock market based on his GDP and the terrible economy he left me?
Markets, schmarkets
WILES: (Clears throat) Well, the data shows the market turndowns began in earnest with the tariffs announcement in early April. Hard to pin that on Biden, Mr. President. The main thing is people just don’t know what’s going on. There’s no real communication as to how the talks are going, who you’re talking to, and what you’re focusing on. The people are especially wanting to know what’s happening with the Chinese. Scott tells me he hasn’t been able to get them to return his calls.
TRUMP: Look, Susie. Scott will say what I want him to—got that? The line we should be peddling is the talks are coming along great! We’re talking to China and have them right where we want them. It won’t be long before they’re caving to our demands.
WILES: It’s just that the Chinese keep saying they’re not talking to us at all. And the more we claim they’re in talks, the more they assert we’re disrespecting them. You know how they’re touchy about that, their being such an old civilization. Or at least they’re playing that card.
Without some concurrence from Xi and maybe some photos of meetings happening, everybody including Wall Street assumes we’re just blowing smoke. And they’re blaming the lack of trust thing for the market’s woes.
TRUMP (irritated): I know what I’m doing. The messaging is fine. You see them cheering me wildly yesterday in Michigan?
WILES: They were quietest during the tariffs part of your remarks, sir. And attendance was way down from your other Michigan rallies.
TRUMP: No—everything was great! That’s the story.
(Ponders, briefly) You don’t think those Canadians had anything to do with it, do you? They live just over the bridge. I wouldn’t put it past those stupid ingrates. Want their own country and not be part of America? Who wouldn’t want to be part of our country? The fools!
WILES: Pro-Canada sentiments in Michigan do permeate the politics there. It doesn’t help that Canada just voted in a Liberal Prime Minister in Mark Carney who hates your gu–…who opposes your policies…
TRUMP: I haven’t stopped working on making them our 51st state. They’ll crack some day…
Liars, inc.
(Just then, Stephen Miller enters, looking miffed that Wiles had entered and been talking with Trump privately. Miller is Wiles’ deputy chief of staff, but emits an aura of superiority she resents, but can do little about given Miller’s tight relationship with the president)
MILLER (smarmily): Good day, Susie. I thought you might be in here chatting up the President on some things.
WILES: I didn’t realize what I did required any concern on your part. Don’t you have work to do?
TRUMP (always enjoying the prospect of watching a good fight between staff members):
Susie was just saying the American public, and more importantly, the markets were demanding more information—transparency—isn’t that what you’ve been calling it? Says no transparency was bringing down investments and my poll numbers. (Chuckling)
MILLER (laughing with Trump in good ol’ boy fashion): You know I don’t believe in open communication. The less said, the better. I’m reminded of the story of Roman General Marcus Coriolanus who openly shared his disdain of Roman plebeians a few times too many. They banished and killed him for his honesty. Shakespeare wrote a play about it. To put it succinctly—honesty is for losers.
WILES: Coriolanus lived in the 5th century BC and was not president of a democracy. He also did not need to factor in lowering poll numbers and a sinking stock market as a backdrop for next year’s midterms.
TRUMP: I don’t give a f-ing rip who this Coryo Linus guy is. Sounds like a kid cartoon character if you ask me. Besides, you ought to know me better by now: I’m not worried about elections, next year or ever. You know we’re working on ways to make it harder to vote, right? That was the point of my April Executive Order requiring birth certificates and passports to prove citizenship to cast a ballot.
WILES: A federal court has blocked that order.
TRUMP: Correction—temporarily blocked the order…
WILES: Well, it’s blocked for now and people are protesting your attempt to usurp the powers of Congress, the states, independent election commissions, and their own agency…
The plan
TRUMP: You really don’t get it, do you, Susie? You still don’t understand we’ve got this covered.
WILES: What do you mean?
TRUMP: You say protestors don’t like what we’re doing. But I say so what? We’re working something much, mych bigger that’ll solve everything. Protests won’t make a an F’s worth of difference when our plan comes to pass. What do you think DOGE was all about—saving money? We knew going in that the federal government wasn’t a big money waster. What we wanted was the data all these big separate agencies had at their fingertips and were keeping to themselves in their own little silos.
WILES: They were required to keep their data private.
TRUMP (not listening) …Individual personal wealth, tax info going back years, medical records—you name it. We wanna get access to all that, merge it into one big database, and then use that goldmine any way we want. Think of the possibilities! Finding out about people’s vulnerabilities, their weak spots be they personal or economical that we could use to make everyome do our bidding.
Protests? We could identify the biggest protesters and threaten harassment by revealing or using their data against them in some way. Or figure out ways to keep them from demonstrating, and ultimately prevent them from voting. Such leverage will put all Americans in the palm of our hands (30 april, The Rachel Maddow Show, msnbc.com).
WILES: But the Courts won’t stand for that, even the Supre-
Playing the judges
TRUMP: Way ahead of you, Susie. Then comes our plan to discredit the judicial system and all those judge-losers who believe in the rule of law. Right now our people are looking for ways to put more of them in handcuffs like we did with the Milwaukee immigratioms judge. We’ll see how many remain so F-ing smug with their high and mighty rulings when they face arrests, impeachments, or long-ass lawsuits on some cooked up charge or other.
So to recap, Susie, our strategy consists of verbally downgrading and threatening them with jail time any way we can. In the meantime, we ignore/or slow-walk all their decisions. We do that, and the midterms and presidential elections will fall into our laps from now to forever, and those judges won’t be able to do a thing (26 april, “Judge’s arrest is latest in Trump’s battle with the courts,” washingtonpost.com).
(Miller looks on smugly, admiring the chutzpah and criminality of the man he’s been aligned with for the last eight years. Wiles, a former Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan staffer in more traditional times, tries hard to stifle a level of recognition of her own complicity in Trump’s end game, by helping him get elected and now serving in the White House. As a political pro, however, she maintains a poker face and says…)
WILES: It’s an ambitious agenda, Mr. President. No doubt about it. I just think it’s a lot to bite off in the next two years, and maybe we should have a back up plan—like making things run as smoothly as possible until everything you’ve just described can all come to pass.
TRUMP: (Speaking about himself in the now-familiar third person) You know by now that Trump doesn’t like to wait on anything. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I did. No, Susie, time is on our side. And so is the basic sheep-like nature of the American people. They voted me in TWICE, Susie! They knew I was a snake and they took me in! (Both Trump and Miller erupt in low, confident laughter. Wiles feins a smile and joins in the frivolity as best as possible, suddenly feeling the need to get back to her office where she feels some sense of security and control, false as that may be.)
Blah, blah, bye…
WILES: Well, thank you so much, Mr. President. I benefitted greatly from our discussion—especially your setting me straight on the big picture. I’ll adjust my understanding accordingly.
I’ll see you in the Cabinet Room in a few minutes. Everyone’s been updating their loyalty statements and practicing them with great enthusiasm. (With that, she gets up to leave while looking over her shoulder at Miller and Trump in deep discussion. And although it was a warm day in the nation’s capital, Wiles departs feeling a deep and sudden chill.)
—trg
Who I write for…
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