“Nobody knows anything,” screenwriter William Goldman once said about Hollywood, but it’s hard to think of a truer accounting of this political moment. With days until the election, the fate of the nation is all-too-dramatically at hand. On some level it has felt this way ever since Donald Trump descended his golden escalator in 2015 and launched us all into his whiplash-inducing reality-TV presidency. Along the way we observed—on Twitter, among friends—that the writers rooms of Hollywood would not have dared offend audiences with such obvious plotlines (the anti-masker president contracting COVID-19? C’mon). And yet we’ve all privately authored endings, whether bloodbaths, anticlimaxes, or Mad Max horizons. We have, as the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg attested, lost precious time thinking about them. As practiced TV viewers, we all have our own ideas about what makes a great ending. We have speculated, for instance, about who might betray Trump from the inside: Melania? Jared? Tiffany? If this were scripted for maximum entertainment, wouldn’t Marla Maples emerge in the eleventh hour as the shock savior of the nation?
With this in mind, we asked some of the most creative people we know—novelists, journalists, politicos, poets—to submit a description of or a scene from the “final episode” of the Trump era. Not predictions—that would be courting fate. Predictions should be left to the pollsters, whom nobody quite believes. In truth, the end could be next week, or it could be 40 years from now, depending on how our democracy writes it. In these fever dreams and comic imaginings, published in two parts, Trump is sometimes cowed and humiliated, a clown führer in his bunker; sometimes, he and his family hang on through the year 2040 and beyond, a plague unfurling until the end of time (sci-fi writers, natch). These fictional endings are expressions of both hope and fear. They are talismans or diversions that, ideally, allow us to stay sane at a time when no one knows anything.
Tom Perrotta, novelist, author of The Leftovers, Election, and Mrs. Fletcher
EXT. WHITE HOUSE LAWN—DAY
A helicopter waits on the lawn, its rotors turning lazily.
INT. OVAL OFFICE—CONTINUOUS
CLOSE ON: A half-eaten cheeseburger on a presidential plate
PULL BACK TO REVEAL: Trump sits at the big desk, a cloth napkin tucked into his shirt collar, while a Secret Service agent in a face mask waits in the doorway.
Trump takes a dainty bite of the burger, trying to make it last.
Trump: Did I ever tell you about my uncle who taught at MIT? Very smart guy. That’s how I know so much about viruses and whatnot. All the doctors were amazed, they said, Sir, how is it that you know so much about viruses and what—
Secret Service Agent: We really have to go.
Trump: Did you see that pitch Tony Fauci threw? Pathetic. Like a little girl. Nice guy, though. He said, Sir, you saved 2 million lives. Not even Abraham Lincoln did that. His words, not mine.
The Secret Service agent takes a couple of steps toward the desk.
Secret Service Agent: Come on. Everybody’s waiting.
Trump examines the burger. There’s not much left.
Trump: I’m still hungry. Order me another one.
Secret Service Agent: Kitchen’s closed.
Trump: It’s open 24 hours.
Secret Service Agent: Not anymore.
The Secret Service agent walks around the desk and begins extracting Trump from the chair.
Trump [rising reluctantly]: You ever see Fauci’s wife? What is she, a hundred years old? But he’s probably 200, so I guess he’s not complaining.
Secret Service Agent: Time to go, Sir.
Trump’s on his feet now. He gazes sadly at the stub of his burger. Just one bite left.
Trump: These used to be delicious, but now, I don’t know. It’s like I can’t even taste them.
He pops the last flavorless morsel into his mouth, chewing with a melancholy expression as the Secret Service agent guides him to the exit, and we…
FADE TO BLACK
Peter Blake, writer, creator of El Candidato (Amazon Prime) and author of Studio Notes on the Trump Presidency, @DJTSTUDIONOTES
MEMO
Date: January 19, 2021
From: The Studio
To: The Writers
Re: Series Finale
So excited for the series finale! What a journey we’ve all had! We love how the story lines are dovetailing so beautifully. Melania’s kiss with Comey? We melted. And that end to the Giuliani arc?! Frankly quite disturbing—but we asked for “noisy” and you delivered!! And we adore the reveal that the Big Bad was really Stephen Miller, working to discredit Republicanism for generations—never saw it coming but it feels so obvious in retrospect. Does that make Miller the “Big Good”? LOL. (Nitpick: When Miller declares himself a “Deep State Deep Cover Agent”—one too many “Deep”s?)
Honestly, our only questions concern the closing scene. Trump’s leap from the flaming White House onto the helicopter piloted by Ivanka is certainly nail-bitingly suspenseful. (And thanks for taking our note to make Trump more badass and better at his job.) But we don’t love the explanation that Trump has “COVID strength.” (Does that exist? Doesn’t matter, but we don’t feel like it does, which is the problem.) We also worry about his declaration, before pulling the trigger, “You’re fired…upon.” Bit arch, no?
But more importantly, doesn’t this feel a little, sorry but don’t know how else to put this…network-y? Can we lean into premium/streaming instead?
So we were noodling around and came up with something like this (of course, we’re just spitballing, this is just a suggestion):
Final scene is a tiny jewel of a chamber piece, somber and theatrical. The Oval Office. Trump is watching Fox while Don Jr. packs up. Trump’s depressed and angry but covering with sour grapes. We see him placing calls to Putin and Xi, but his O.S. secretary says they’re not available. Don Jr., meanwhile, is agitated. Trying to get his dad to face the legal jeopardy they’re in with the N.Y. Attorney General. Don Jr. finally asks: “If one of your kids, say Jared or Eric, did testify against you to save his own skin and that of his girlfriend, Kimberly…would you still love him?” And Trump just stares at him and finally says: “Jared and Eric would never be dumb enough to get caught.” And Don Jr. crumples a little, and it looks like he might say something more…
But at that moment, the secretary calls from O.S., “Got Erdogan on the line.” Trump lights up, and for a moment, as he starts pitching a Trump Tower Istanbul, we see the charisma he displayed in the pilot while gliding down that golden escalator. And as “Brothers in Arms” by Dire Straits starts playing, we slowly push in on Don Jr. until, finally, we—
CUT TO BLACK
Anyway, that’s kinda first-draft theater, but we know you’ll make it work. (“Writer’s problem,” LOL.) Could you turn around those pages by tomorrow?
Finally, thanks again for all your help this year. Sorry that you can’t be involved in That’s So Biden, but quite frankly we’re not sure it’s really up your alley. Between us and the wall, we find it a bit odd that the network’s asking for something “unexciting,” but that’s what audience testing says. Hey, weird world, right?
Eileen Myles, poet, author of Chelsea Girls and Afterglow: A Dog Memoir
Trump loses by a landslide and rather than conceding he winds up in an orange bubble in orange robes with Melania and Barron also in orange robes and everything is bathed in an orange light. He talks calmly about beginning to live in a different way, and he is no longer the man who ran America and he wants to live with his family now in another time and have the life he really wants, and he hopes we understand and perhaps we can all join him one day, but for now (and this is on YouTube) he is virtual.
Gabriel Sherman, Vanity Fair special correspondent, author of The Loudest Voice in the Room
He shows us the aliens.
Alexandra Petri, humorist, columnist for the Washington Post
It is over. The Trump presidency is over. “Tiny Dancer” plays. The Anonymous Officials who have been commenting on background all shed their anonymity and awaken with crocodile tears in their eyes.
Jared Kushner finishes reading his 26th book about the Middle East. Twenty-five books was not enough, but 26 is. Suddenly, he understands everything and knows exactly what to do. But it is too late; no one will listen.
Ivanka tries to open a can of Goya beans. When she opens it and dumps the beans out, each one is a miniature face. They are all screaming. The last face is her own.
Everyone around the White House waits patiently to resume their original forms.
Kimberly Guilfoyle tries to stop shouting. SHE CANNOT STOP SHOUTING.
Mike Pence can finally release his face from the expression of rapt, silent adoration in which it has been held for the past four years, turned gently toward Trump, like a figure standing at the edge of a Nativity scene. He tries to. But he can’t. It is stuck. They are all stuck this way.
All across the country people sit waiting for things to snap back to normal. But more than 225,000 people are still dead. More than 500 children still are not closer to being reunited with their parents. And the Supreme Court still glints an ominous red. Only one thing is over, after all.
Still, people look around for the president, to bid him goodbye. But he is nowhere to be seen. Just a pile of emoluments and an empty suit.
Somewhere, the Nixon tattoo on Roger Stone’s back twitches twice, then peels open like the shell of an enormous egg. Something vast and white and grub-like, crying, without mouth or eyes, slithers out and slides under the White House. No one knows what it is, but they are all afraid of it and a little sorry for it. They plug in a television set for it and leave it there.
Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director under Trump
As the results come in on Election Night, it becomes clear that Vice President Biden has won in a landslide. Trump becomes overcome with fear about going to prison for his multitude of crimes. He tries to hide under the Resolute Desk, but he doesn’t fit. Thus, he retreats to the White House bunker, where he stays until Biden’s inauguration. When Trump refuses to leave the bunker, aides coax him out with a Big Mac® combo meal. With his personal plane repossessed by his creditors, he’s forced to take a Greyhound bus down to Mar-a-Lago. He lives out his days tweeting furiously between rounds of golf and bingo.
Sasha Banks, poet, author of america, MINE
In a dark room, Donald unravels his salty skin slowly amid the glow of a TV screen that murmurs something about “swing states,” “landslide,” “overwhelming,” “blue wave.” He winces.
He is alone. He is seething. He is tired as evil.
The veins under his skin bulge and roil. A closer look—tiny, greenish-blue faces press against his veiny forearms. Donald quickly covers them with his other hand, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. He takes a deep breath, setting off a fit of coughing. The faces press harder against his skin as he coughs and gasps, dragging himself to the bathroom mirror.
Then, a twitch. An itch in the corner of his wiry brow. A greenish face and its accompanying hands press harder, and Donald erupts with an anguished screech. Skin falls to the floor in amber ribbons, sending him to writhe and twist on the bathroom rug.
“NO!” he screams. “NOT NOW!” His voice is overcome by the clamoring voices of bygone eras, all strung together and clanging. A catastrophe of bells. They are many.
1968 steps out in a sharp grey suit, dusting himself off. 1963, 1861 and his four sons, 1941, 1526, and so many more, stepping over Donald’s worn-out body.
“Do you think it’s over?” asks 1968.
“Oh, don’t be so naive,” 1861 hisses. 1941 spins and spins around Done Donny.
“Look, I’m exhausted. I don’t know whose choice he was,” says 1526, cutting Done Donny’s remains with a sharp side-eye, “but next time, can we use someone who wears us more...discreetly?”
“Next time? So it’s not over?” asks 1968.
“What do you mean, over?” 1862 squints, confused.
“OVER! FINISHED!” ’68 tenses.
“Over and over and over and over…” 1941 sings, slowly twirling ’round and ’round.
“Over for now,” says 1865.
“Over the river and through the woods…”
“No! I mean. I mean...is this the end of it?” ’68 begs. The men stop. 1941 still turns.
1526 admires himself in the mirror, smirks at ’68, and turns around. “See him?” he smiles slyly, points to ’41. “That’s all history right there.” ’68 sighs in growing frustration.
“Look. Pay attention, man. It’s all circles! We go around and around and we’re moving and some people call that progress. It’s not progress. It’s just a turn.”
“But—”
“Old as earth and all her spinning.”
“But it’s—” he takes ’68’s hand, spinning him around and around and around and around and...
Nick Seabrook, political scientist, author of Drawing the Lines: Constraints on Partisan Gerrymandering in U.S. Politics
“Mr. President, I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of the road. Almost 300,000 Americans are dead on your watch from this fake pandemic that you’ve somehow still mismanaged. Rudy’s hatchet job on Hunter Biden didn’t work out because, and I know this may come as a shock, Hunter Biden isn’t actually running for president.”
“He’s not?”
“No, sir. You became only the third POTUS in American history to face an impeachment trial in the Senate, your trade policies have been disastrous for American consumers, your approval ratings are underwater, and you just lost the largest popular vote and electoral college landslide against an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover.”
“He made great vacuum cleaners, though. Solid American job creator.”
“Sir, your presidency has been an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions. Historians are already ranking you as the worst chief executive in American history, and 11 different states are preparing to file criminal charges against you the moment you leave office.”
“Give me the real numbers.”
“Our TV ratings are through the roof.”
“Boffo.”
Ken Liu, novelist, author of The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
TEXT ON SCREEN: MANY, MANY EONS LATER.
Our view is dominated by a golden, indeterminate light. The heart of the Sun, dying in senescence? The wisdom of all humanity, preserved in amber? Or perhaps time solidified like sweet, thickened honey?
The camera pulls back, back, back. The golden light shrinks, coagulates, struggles to resolve into focus. We’re gazing upon the ruins of Earth: concrete rubble, twisted poles of rust, pulverized glass. Humanity has fled to the stars, and all our works are falling into disrepair, to be devoured by entropy.
Creepy-crawlies skitter and scatter. The golden object at the center of the scene is finally in focus: a golden toilet.
Stephen Graham Jones, novelist, author of The Only Good Indians
EXT. POSTAPOCALYPTIC LANDSCAPE – BRIGHT DAY
Burgess Meredith is picking through all these library books by touch, since his precious glasses have just broken, but then:
By a complete stroke of luck, he finds ANOTHER pair of glasses!
Celebration. A jig is danced. He’s got time enough at last, AND specs!
He picks up the nearest book, and, close up, it’s got Trump on the cover, in Superman pose: This is his memoir. There’s so many exclamation points and all-caps.
Burgess Meredith looks around at this wasteland he’s in. This crumbled, broken place.
He takes his new glasses off, drops them to the ground, and STEPS on them.
Aimee Bender, novelist, author, The Butterfly Lampshade and The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
I don’t know when it will happen, but as soon as there’s a whiff of weakness, he will vanish from view. People will claim they spotted him. Some will dress like him to be spotted. Reports of islands, of a mansion in Russia, of him walking the streets of North Korea, on the moon, in a nursing home, as a ghost. People will mention him offhandedly: What happened to Trump? But his name will sound different, and the whole story will start to shift, and although books will be written, documentaries made, essay upon essay trying to make sense of things, there will also be this almost irresistible pull to erase him, to make his name go away, to make him a fluke. Wherever he is, something in him, eventually, will give, and it will give spectacularly, but we will see none of it. It’s like the witch in Tangled, or Dorian Gray; I don’t know when the bill will come due, but I imagine it might come due all at once, out of view.
Tim O’Brien, Bloomberg Opinion columnist, author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald
INT. OVAL OFFICE – JANUARY 20, LATE MORNING
Camera holds on Trump, Resolute Desk behind him
Trump: Where’s the money?
Eric: What money?
Trump: My money.
Ivanka: China.
Don Jr.: Kuwait. Or Russia. Felix Sater.
Trump: You don’t know?
Eric: What money?
Don Jr.: If the money ends up with you, Dad, what about us?
Trump: Caddies. I’ve taken care of that.
Don Jr.: Caddies?
Trump: I dumped the golf courses. I couldn’t afford to keep them. The debt. I just want Mar-a-Lago and two Secret Service agents for myself. Michael Jordan bought the courses, and he’ll hire you and Eric as caddies.
Eric: What money?
Ivanka: I’m with Jared.
Trump: You’ll be fine, baby. Jared’ll get fees managing the Saudi investments.
Eric: What Saudi money?
Ivanka: This is a cultural overlay that, albeit, I can architecture.
Trump: All this money talk. God, I want a cheeseburger. Don, give me your credit card.
Ivanka: We have to leave soon. The Bidens are coming.
Don Jr.: They’re going to have Hunter with them. I just can’t.
Trump: Is Cy Vance out there somewhere? Any Black voters?
Eric: What money?
Trump: I’m going to miss the kitchen here. Room service. Pence bringing me pie.
Ivanka: We have to go, Dad.
Trump: Okay, baby. I can’t find Melania. Will you walk out there with me?
Ivanka: Arm in arm.
Trump: Always.
FADE TO BLACK
Frank Rich, New York magazine writer-at-large, executive producer of Succession and Veep
Mad Man (8 p.m. ET, OAN). Season four, episode 335: “Christmas at Mar-a-Lago” (series finale). A festive Donald joins Melania and Barron as they anxiously await news from New York while celebrating the holiday pardons granted by President Pence at the start of his one-month term of office. Guest stars: Ghislaine Maxwell, Donald Trump Jr., Jerry Falwell Jr., Antonio Sabato Jr., Cyrus Vance Jr.
Jordan Klepper, comedian
The Trump Tower escalator that goes up has stopped. Donald, the salesman, freezes. The magical steps that brought him into this world have lost their spell and turned into stairs. Stupid stairs. Onlookers below, eager to discover that night’s results, cease their clapping and lean in to make out the whispered grunts of a man whose baggy slacks have gotten stuck in the escalator gears. His voice is thin, high-pitched, and cursing some “grease monkey lowlife” for not servicing his “precious” property. The crowd grows uneasy, staring at the sweating salesman who hangs in the air, pulling his leg. The frantic grunting echoes off the building lobby’s fake marble until it is cut short by the man’s yawp and a pop. The pants have ripped, and the salesman has exploded into a shower of wooden nickels. Without hesitation the onlookers stuff their pockets with coins; the salesman thwarted by stairs is now a dull afterthought. Those in the crowd, lost and untethered, run into the city night only to be thwarted by the subway turnstiles, which have long since phased out coin payment. Weighed down with pockets full of worthless nickels, they gaze ahead, unequipped to go anywhere.
Adam McKay, director of Vice, The Big Short, Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, etc.
The Republican Revolution: Series Finale Review
By George Leeriff
From the very first season in 1980, when The Republican Revolution introduced America to a washed-up actor who charmed the country into voting itself back to the 19th century, all the way to the finale of the 14th season, where we learned that Bill Clinton was in league with Republicans (gasp!), RR has always straddled the line between camp and tragedy.
As a critic, I admit to accusing the show during the W. Bush seasons of becoming a parody of itself, or as I wrote in a 2005 review, “jumping the snark.”
But what I failed to appreciate at the time was the complex multi-season arc the famously reclusive show creator Charles Atwater was developing. It wasn’t until the 2008 season premiere when Mitch McConnell, played by an almost unrecognizable Chris Cooper, gave the famous “We will block everything Hussein Obama does” speech, or the third episode when Obama let the bankers walk away unpunished and millions of viewers screamed “Noooo!” at their TVs, that we all realized we were watching a dark, strange tragedy.
Not coincidentally, that’s also about the time ratings started to dip. After the 2007 season there were even rumors of cancellation. The common complaint was, “my real life is stressful enough. Why would I watch this?”
Then, in 2008, Atwater and his award-winning writing staff introduced one of its most entertaining characters: Donald Trump. Ratings soared, but reviews couldn’t have been worse, averaging an almost unheard of (for a hit show) 9% on Rotten Tomatoes.
So when the Home Cinema Network announced that the 40th season of The Republican Revolution would be its last, fans immediately began to speculate about one question: how the hell will they end this show? (Warning: Major spoilers ahead.)
The season finale opens rather predictably, with hotly contested election results pouring in as Trump looks to defeat a hapless career politician. His opponent, Joe Biden, a nondescript amalgam of Clinton/Obama/Harry Reid who like so many Democratic challengers before him on the show tries desperately to appeal to a mythical “middle,” seems to have a real chance at winning. But veteran RR fans have seen this storyline before, and we know how the “race to the middle” ends.
And just when I start to wonder if Atwater would dare to end this long series “conservatively,” in an ultimate act of irony, I notice something is off. We have not seen Trump. Not once. We always see Trump. And his opponent is NOT Joe Biden. It’s some guy I’ve never heard of. And the technology, the phones, the TVs look, well, futuristic.
Only when a graying, wrinkled Eric Trump gives a speech at midnight announcing that his father has won the election and thousands of antifa terrorists have been arrested “to protect freedom from those that use freedom to destroy freedom” did this critic realize we weren’t in the year 2020.
A slow-panning shot across the White House hallway of framed newspaper headlines then shows us election victory after election victory for Donald Trump. Headlines like “Trump wins 6th term in a landslide!” and “Trump defeats Marxist BLMer!” are on the nose in a way that RR has made famous (and amazingly impervious to scorn).
But I honestly don’t know whether to applaud or vomit at the penultimate scene in the finale, which features a heavily made-up, much older Ivanka played brilliantly by Anna Faris, reading a poem for her ailing father to a fawning press corp:
Our Dearest Father
Most Handsome and strong
You Defeated the Devil
You caged those that do wrong.
You made freedom free
And protected God from harm
You will never ever die
We love your smile and charm
Thank you all powerful Jesus
For giving us my Dad
Thank you to the voters
For choosing good over bad.
The ending takes another turn when Faris as Ivanka announces that, for the fourth time in a row, Vice President Tom Cotton will be inaugurated as her father’s representative in the year 2040.
Ivanka then leaves the podium, dropping her smile and revealing a vacant sadness as she walks towards us. She joins Eric and Don Jr. who, after dealing with several high-tech locks, enter an Oval Office now walled off with windows of stone.
It is then that we see, in a room filled with dusty medical equipment and old cans of Diet Coke, yup, you guessed it: the skeleton of Donald Trump seated behind his desk.
It’s RR’s series finale! What else did you expect?
The children fawn over the upright skeleton, kissing and cleaning it and trying to curry its favor. It’s over the top, tasteless, and I can’t imagine this series ending any other way.
For the past six months, Las Vegas has been taking bets on who would say the last line in the series. And we finally have a winner. Don Jr. (at 40 to 1), played by McCauley Culkin, leans in and whispers to the well-coiffed corpse of his father: “You won, Dad. You always win.”
Bravo to HCN and the creatives behind this historic series. And also, fuck you.
Samantha Hunt, novelist, The Dark Dark and Mr. Splitfoot
This “show,” whose ratings have long been in the toilet, will end there. Having cleaned up after Trump for four long years, the White House’s executive cleaning crew—perhaps those whom Trump infected with COVID-19—prepare for a new administration by bleaching the facilities and Trump’s morning tumbler of Diet Coke.
Rick Perlstein, historian, author of Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980
947 Trumpland
until, with 1,839 Americans dead (96 of them on the right, 18 from accidents and friendly fire), the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and Boogaloo Bois and Three Percenters and QAnoners finally laid down their arms at the inducement of free Hooters hot wings for life. Their hero was dead now, after all, the mysterious COVID-20 superstrain having roared from its eight-week latency to incinerate the lungs of the late president and vice president, as well 14 senators, 80 members of the House of Representatives, four of nine Supreme Court Justices, and the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Commerce, and Veterans Affairs. But the long national nightmare that was December 2020 was only beginning.
It’s true that for one brief, transcendent moment America again glowed in the unfamiliar warmth of national unity, when President Grassley—fourth in the line of succession after COVID-20 dispensed Presidents Pence and Pelosi—pinned the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Barron Trump for successfully conniving to lure, then lock into his East Room bedroom closet, the military aide carrying the briefcase containing the codes identifying the president to the commanders of America’s nuclear arsenal. (“Where’s my football!?!? Where’s my football!?!?” Donald Trump had brayed, pants-less, his half-turgid member bouncing with every eager step.) But what also still glowed was the greater part of Peoria, Illinois. The literal backfiring of Elon Musk’s much-hyped space-based disintegration ray ended up only escalating the unfortunate misunderstanding with Xi Jinping that started it all.
The ceremony honoring America’s unlikely new 14-year-old national hero had broken all records for online viewership—so it made perfect sense that the Muscovite hackers had chosen precisely that moment to shudder the nation’s entire power grid to black. That shock was what finally finished off the 87-year-old ticker of America’s erstwhile 47th commander in chief, Charles Ernest Grassley. The nation’s 48th was inaugurated that very day. Then came that unfortunate bagpiping accident—leaving President Barr no real legacy at all, once his landmark ALT-RIGHT (“A Law to Reverse Immigration Growth and Hinder Terrorism”) Act, authorizing a federal registry of Democratic voters for internment in the event of “national emergency,” got struck down in a 3–2 Supreme Court decision from Justice Kagan and Justice Sotomayor, joined in a thundering concurrence (that whole “Federalist Society,” “People of Praise” schtick turned out to be a cunning long con) from Justice Amy Coney Barrett (though she preferred to be addressed as “Subcommandante”) outlining a five-year plan for expropriation of the means of production on behalf of the international proletariat. Which left David Bernhardt, America’s 53rd Secretary of the Interior, now its 50th president, only 20 frantic days, working out of the newly combined Department of Energy and Interior’s offices at Exxon headquarters, to successfully institute his Crude New Deal via a series of executive orders.
Be that as it may. On January 20, 2021, right on schedule, in a lead-lined bunker a mile beneath the Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. (in “an abundance of caution,” as the media cliché had it), Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was inaugurated! Large tracts of Portland, yes, were now abandoned, smoking ruin—but that was the new nation of Cascadia’s problem to contend with, not the United States’ problem. And though it’s true that 48 hours into the four-day Pelosi administration, Texas had declared its independence, too, hadn’t it come limping back, Stetson in hand, one week later?
So it was that, in a another lead-lined bunker, this one far beneath a towering, abandoned skyscraper on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, the editorial board of the New York Times rejoiced:
“Our institutions, as one knew they must, have successfully endured the fraying of norms during a presidency often referred to by some as ‘unconventional.’ Legislators of good faith on both sides of the aisle rediscovered the lost art of compromise. What it proves is that the system works.”
THE END
Tony Schwartz, coauthor of Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal
Attends Biden’s inauguration
Visits New York City
Seeks asylum. Where would he go? Brazil? Russia? North Korea?
Takes over from Rush Limbaugh as the only way to stay solvent
Dies, soon. Cause: Humiliation or COVID-19 relapse
Blames everyone but himself for losing
Spends the rest of his life getting indicted and fighting to stay out of prison
Commits more crimes, possibly from prison
Keeps tweeting, even from his grave
Steve Bodow, former showrunner for The Daily Show and Patriot Act
January 20
12:40 p.m. ET
South Lawn, the White House
Marine One sits, engines revving. Melania and Donald J. Trump (who didn’t attend the noontime inauguration) walk to the waiting copter. They turn to the gaggle of cameras and wave a resentful farewell.
Melania turns again, thanks the Marine guards, and walks briskly out of the frame. She will not be seen in public for six months.
Donald, alone, boards the aircraft. It lifts off—straight up at first, and then angling west over the Potomac, before fading finally into the overcast sky.
1:32 p.m. ET
York Airport, York, Pennsylvania
An estimated 12,000 people crowd the tarmac of a small-town airport, assembled for an event publicized only through certain private Facebook groups and subreddits.
They hear the 757s roar before they spot its flag-colored fuselage: T R U M P
The as-of-90-minutes-ago ex-president’s plane touches down. He emerges to deafening cheers, then strides up to a small stage.
“You see what’s going now on in Washington, folks,” he shouts. “It’s horrific. The new president—fake president, not even a real president, lost the election if you were counting properly—huge crime. Ruining our country!”
This is how Donald Trump kicks off what he christens his “inaugural” postpresidential rally. He will hold at least one such rally every week, forever.
They will be covered wall-to-wall on GAN (Great America News, the Trump-owned cable network that starts broadcasting here, today).
And they will prominently feature live segments of another new Trump media venture: Political Apprentice—a perpetual, multiyear reality-competition show where GOP aspirants will vie, through a series of tasks and challenges, to win Trump’s endorsement for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
It is a blockbuster hit. We will never be rid of him.
Alexander Chee, novelist, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and TheQueen of the Night
Remember the weird facial tics Trump has? How they seem to resemble Mussolini's, the same eyebrow wiggles, like he practiced them in a mirror? People made videos comparing them around the time we first started seeing them in 2015 and 2016. I’ve always thought he’d meet the same end as Mussolini.
At first I thought it was an idle revenge fantasy, but we started to see him get booed in public before the mounting death toll and the push to confirm Amy Coney Barrett in the face of 8 million entering poverty since May. Without bailout money the layoffs this December will be monstrous, and after he loses he’ll still be president until January 20. This is a man who let California burn to the ground. Who ordered shock troops to Portland to seize activists in vans and spray tear gas during quarantine. Who let Russia pay bounties on American soldiers without repercussions. Who legalized asbestos again for use in construction, removed environmental protections of air and water, and seized land along the Texas border for his horrific wall. Now we’re hearing of the more than 500 migrant children still separated from their parents, the Cameroonian asylum seekers forced to sign their own deportation orders, sending them back to certain death. Even if you write this in an understated way, he’s a supervillain. If you write this as naturalistic realism, he’s still a monster.
As his administration has seemingly committed to a herd immunity strategy, this would mean hundreds of thousands more dead by the time he leaves office. What enemy of our country has surpassed this? So I wouldn’t be surprised if he leaves sooner, leaving the country, even if he successfully cheats the election. There won’t be many places he can go in America without a guard. If anything, it’s harder to believe the opposite. Because as we’ve seen, in addition to all of this, he’s not agile. He’s not so good at actually running.
Travon Free, writer-comedian, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and forthcoming Two Distant Strangers
Here’s how I would like this episode to end: Biden wins in a landslide; he and Kamala Harris give their acceptance speech in “Fuck Donald Trump” T-shirts. We cut to Inauguration Day and watch Trump leave the White House carrying a box full of leftover MAGA hats, followed by Melania and her robot body double. (Yes, there were two of them the whole time.) It begins to rain, and Melania bot malfunctions and catches fire, but they keep walking, leaving her a pile of smoldering parts on the driveway. Later that day, Jared Kushner finally (and stupidly) accepts my challenge to fight on any MLK boulevard in America; we meet, cameras rolling, and I destroy him. America celebrates, and Biden announces a SCOTUS expansion, giving us a 7–6 liberal majority. We spend the next four years trying to undo all the damage of the previous four, while Trump watches from prison with Ivanka and a still-beaten Jared.
Here’s how I think it actually ends: Biden wins and we celebrate in the streets in a moment of national orgasmic joy. Trump leaves tweeting and screaming because he’s a coward who’s terrified of prison, and we spend the next four years begging Democrats to do something about SCOTUS.
I’m putting my money on the first scenario. For the record, I suck at gambling.
— Progressives Are Going Rogue to Flip Pennsylvania for Biden
— White House Reporters Fume Over Team Trump’s “Reckless” COVID Response
— Why Anti–Trump Attack Ads Might Actually Be Helping Him
— Tax Mess Aside, Can Trump Pay Off His $1 Billion in Debt?
— News Media Begins to Contemplate a Post–Trump White House
— The Kimberly Guilfoyle Sexual Harassment Allegations Get Even Darker
— As Trump Falters, Democrats See an Expanding 2020 Senate Map
— From the Archive: Inside Trump’s Twisted, Epic Battle for Mar-a-Lago
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