I see the rage slowly building in your face, a bad pumpkin carving of Les Dawson slowly collapsing in on itself as the rot sets in. I see you rolling your eyes, dismissing your critics with a gesture and a head turn, as deaf and blind to the bad news and the protests as you ever were. It’s been a bigly tremendous week, hasn’t it, Donald Trump? The midterms came and went and you’re still here, an overgrown Joffrey on a moron throne.
The news cycle around you spins so fast that you practically defy satirising. Long gone are those who suggested you’d calm down a bit once you got the big desk, now utterly resigned as they are to the howling cyclone of screeching rhetoric and conflict-baiting that seems to inform your every decision. You’re on permanent blast, any and all criticism rejected as fake news, every failure recast as a shining victory. Those who shout too loud or ask too many questions are suppressed and frogmarched out, a doctored Infowars video from a weepy-eyed Paul Joseph Watson all the evidence you need to shut a journalist down. “Pardon me, ma’am” becomes a karate chop in the blink of an edit suite, and all of a sudden CNN no longer have a seat at the big boy table.
Far right conspiracy theorists manufacture an excuse to silence a left-leaning media organisation and the President follows their lead. Demonstrably fake news becomes official White House rhetoric, sold to the public by Sarah Sanders in a voice so flat she could break Kanye West’s auto-tuner. It should still be headline news but instead it’s a fart in a cumulative hurricane, just another subtle erosion of the democratic principles that a free press is supposed to uphold.
Then there are the recounts, and the honest application of democracy suddenly becomes an enemy plot to steal the election. Never mind the fact that voter fraud has been proven time and time again to be such a non-issue that it’s as about as relevant as you find Tiffany. Election meddling only counts when the Democrats do it, except no evidence has yet been presented that they’ve done any such thing, and going back to make sure every ballot is counted is less election meddling and more… well, actual democracy. You can bet your bottom dollar (and it’s at the very bottom of an extra trillion dollars of debt) that the stolen votes rhetoric was ready to go in the face of a more embarrassing loss in the midterms. Now it looks like some of the Senate races are tighter than they first appeared, and what little face you saved in the contest that already favoured the Republicans is slipping.
The lack of evidence doesn’t matter. All that matters is that your base believes you. Another chip out of the wall, another undermining of the foundations.
Then there’s the firing-not-firing of Jeff Sessions, a man who somehow walks out of his role as the brutalised and pitiable victim, despite the fact he’d fail to get cast as the antagonist in a Spike Lee movie on the grounds he’s too ludicrously racist to be believable. Now the Mueller enquiry is magically overseen by a sceptical loyalist in a move so brazen and transparent that you may as well have shipped your tax records out of Trump Tower in a glass truck the day after the midterms. The House of Representatives may have tilted blue, but pushing Sessions out of the door and back to his woodland clearing full of burning crosses tightens your grip on the special counsel.
Oversight becomes a word as dirty as accountability and the bulwark weakens even further.
And still you’re insulated, aren’t you, Donald Trump? Despite the constant erosions, the distraction politics, the persistent and pathological dishonesty, you’re insulated. The American way is still the best and nobody is willing to suggest this might not be it, despite the voter suppression and the surrendering to malevolent interests that are now so brazen that they’re openly manipulating the narrative. There’s nothing that can stop you. Not Mueller, not the Clintons, not the people.
Well… there’s perhaps one thing, isn’t there?
I see you, Donald Trump. I see you on the balcony of the White House, waving to a sea of red hats. It’s 2020 and you’re here to Make America Great Again Again like the giant orange Teletubby you are. I see you approach the microphone, ready to bask in the glory of your re-election, the Democrats swept aside like inconvenient marriage vows. This is your crowning glory, isn’t it? Four more years of this, three of which will be spent flying in granite to extend Mount Rushmore so they can put your head at the top of it. There’s no stopping you now, Donald Trump.
I hear you begin to speak, another stream of unconsciousness booming out across the PA system, the fevered grins of the crowd beaming back at you. I see them tilt their hats at the first drops fall, the rain coming down in spatters, slowly building to a downpour.
I see you shriek, Donald Trump, and I see your hands waving as you begin to melt. I hear the screams of the crowd as you collapse in your suit, foul orange steam rising from its folds. If you knew how to work an umbrella you could have saved yourself, but you dumped the only one you ever had on the steps of Air Force One.
I hear your screams dissolve into nothingness, Donald Trump, and I hear the puddle fizzing. You convinced them all it was just a witch hunt, didn’t you?
And if there’s one thing a witch can’t stand, it’s a little water. Not even when it comes to honouring the dead.
I see you, Donald Trump. I fucking see you.
