Summer 2015
An overconfident and underprepared man smiles blankly from a descending escalator in the lobby of his gold-plated plastic tower. He doesn’t know where to put his hands; his fingers hang like tiny sad sausages, peeking out from his baggy sleeve. What would a real politician do? He decides to wave, even throws out a few celebratory thumbs-ups. His trophy wife smiles serenely, two steps in front of him and below him. She has no idea how hard the next few years will be.
But everything in his world is a lie, and he has everything to hide. His hair is a lie.
Young prepubescent America is about to be jolted into adolescence, a grisly coming of age. This man is America’s gnarly orange testicle, descending down that staircase, dropping, THUD. The nascent, curious nation is now a confused, scared and mean teenager.
He slowly steps up to the podium. Before speaking he tugs at his cheap red Chinese tie and chins the room, stretching his rumpled jowls as if to say, “I have nothing to hide.” But everything in his world is a lie, and he has everything to hide. His hair is a lie.
His speech bungles along. He has the oratorical skills of a smoke alarm. He cannot help but spurt his sins onto others. This man — with six bankruptcies and mounting sexual-assault allegations — tells curious onlookers that he will make America rich and that immigrants are rapists before announcing that, yes, he will be running for president.
Most Americans recoil at the display but then maybe shrug — even laugh — at this pathetic howl from an attention-seeking fool, and then move on with their days.
It’s clear that his only real passion is in settling scores. The more people he pisses off on both sides of the political divide, the more they insult him. Without cabinet places to offer as loyalty trophies, the sycophants and yes men fall away, and criticism of the president becomes unrelenting.
Summer 2017
Now that callous oaf is president. But he will not destroy America; he doesn’t have the will or the way.
With no real ideology or guiding principles, and a reluctance to actually do his job, he spends most of his time in his Manhattan tower, occasionally commuting to the White House. He regularly cancels policy meetings. When he is convinced to attend a briefing, he spends the sessions thumbing through Twitter as the onlooking intelligence chiefs bite their tongues.
It’s clear that his only real passion is in settling scores. The more people he pisses off on both sides of the political divide, the more they insult him. Without cabinet places to offer as loyalty trophies, the sycophants and yes men fall away, and criticism of the president becomes unrelenting. Even former allies — Christie, Sessions, Steven Baldwin — point to his clear inability to govern.
The more he is criticized, the more he insists on punching back harder, as is his way. He is always looking backward, never forward, meaning he will never enact any real change.
People even stop comparing him to Hitler. The Führer didn’t use the Nuremberg address to call out his art teacher for criticizing his landscapes. Adolf moved on from painting to genocide without blinking. The Donald blinks a lot. He doesn’t have a good or bad vision for America; he doesn’t have a vision at all.
He is fueled only by an endless desire to convince people that he is a winner — this insecure desperation probably having something to do with him never getting a hug from his dad.
(This is real and maybe the saddest tweet ever.)
2018
His reluctance and inability to work creates a power vacuum. Infighting between Ryan, Pence and Grand Moff Priebus tears the ruling party apart. No policy changes get close to becoming law. The citizens just hold tight and wait for the nightmare to be over.
After speculating on Twitter that sea otters are in fact Chinese spying devices, Kellyanne Conway tells the nation on her morning show (Kelly & Newt) not to take what the president says literally and to just listen to his heart. But his heart is awithered plum.
The Donald spends more time building his complicated “hair” every morning than he does listening to advisors. Manicured speeches, broadcast from his new television network, directly from his penthouse suite, have become the new normal. He is never seen entering the White House for fear of a gust of wind in the Rose Garden compromising his delicate weave structure.
After speculating on Twitter that sea otters are in fact Chinese spying devices, Kellyanne Conway tells the nation on her morning show (Kelly & Newt) not to take what the president says literally and to just listen to his heart. But his heart is a withered plum.
2019
While refusing to comment on Russia’s apparent annexation of Latvia, the Donald heads down to Steve Bannon’s velvet suite on the thirteenth floor to brainstorm ideas for TV pilots for the new network (the Mike Tyson Love Boat reboot is meeting resistance from financiers). But as the golden elevator doors open, there, staring back at him with a pepperoni slice in its mouth, is a rat.
Pizza Rat? Is that you?
The Donald immediately presumes this to be a joke at his expense, maybe one of big Joey Scarborough’s pranks. He fumes and kicks the poor rodent, who squeals and scampers away, leaving the soggy slice behind.
Maybe it was the weather, or maybe because he’d been listening to Ben Carson’s new audiobook, Haikus for the Crumbling Inner City, but for the first time in his life, Donald feels something close to…empathy.
Pizza Rat senses a truce and hesitantly returns to the marbled elevator floor to retrieve his dinner. The Donald stares into the beast’s beady little eyes and has an epiphany.
Maybe…maybe I am not a great man?
It reminds him of a strange moment in a recent meeting with Paul Ryan, when he surprised himself by standing up and barking, “No, you’re wrong, Paul. Every American deserves healthcare!”
Something about these thoughts of something outside of himself give him a brief frisson of real warmth.
Before he can dwell on this unfamiliar feeling, he receives a notification that Alec Baldwin’s new movie, Donald 4: Cheeto’s European Vacation, is a box-office smash. Oof. Time to get on Twitter and punch back. Keep. On. Punching. Back.
But something has changed. He finds it harder and harder to bluster through this…self-doubt. He is becoming something he hates: an introvert.
All his big ideas are also gone. There’s no wall, no Muslim registry, no boom in manufacturing. A new recession is forecast. There is no great Donaldian America. He continues to spew embarrassing, vindictive and grammatically abhorrent tweets, but his heart is just not in it anymore.
2020
Elizabeth Warren is elected president after a remarkably respectful campaign. With Donald’s approval rating below 25 percent, he becomes more reclusive than ever, like Howard Hughes in his last days but with slightly less urine in his bedroom.
He tells himself that no one can say he didn’t do it. No one can say he didn’t become president, right? He tries to convince himself that he won this thing, that it was worth it. For the first time since he was 12, he stops caring about his appearance. People observe that he is aging a year every month. His remaining wisps of hair disappear into the frigid air on Fifth Avenue.
All his big ideas are also gone. There’s no wall, no Muslim registry, no boom in manufacturing. A new recession is forecast. There is no great Donaldian America. He continues to spew embarrassing, vindictive and grammatically abhorrent tweets, but his heart is just not in it anymore.
Parents avoid talking politics with their kids. They look to the floor and fondly remember when the most embarrassing thing the president said was “misunderestimate,” not “Grab ’em by the pussy.”
Some schools and post offices quietly take down the framed presidential picture on the wall. Mothers of first-graders hope that maybe, just maybe, their children won’t remember this time, this man.
When he does venture into the Oval Office, he locks the door and doesn’t take visitors. He sneers at the CNN feed on the TV he had installed in place of the Lincoln portrait. As Wolf Blitzer points at a chart depicting spiking unemployment in the Rust Belt, the Secret Service watch Donald reach for his phone. He has no friends to call. He tweets something — anything — just to get a reaction.
2021
It’s finally over. Donald — old, weak, pale, beat — goes back up the same escalator he came down six years prior. He can’t help but wonder how he will be remembered. Maybe as a great president? Probably not. The worst? No. In fact, in his worst nightmare comes true — he is barely remembered at all.
People breathe again. America gets back on its feet and is finally allowed to progress, to grow gracefully into adulthood.
As somebody great once said, everything will be all right in the end, and if it’s not all right, then it’s not the end.
Original artwork by Aaron A. Alvarez.
