A TRUMP CHRISTMAS CAROL, Part Three
The bell struck Three.
Trump, again in his White House bed, looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not.
As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Hillary’s spirit, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Trump bent down upon his knee, in his bed no more; the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom, hate, and misery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which made it difficult detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it seemed so naturally surrounded. Its face was a pale grey.
“Bannon?” whimpered Trump. “Steve, did Saturday Night Live let you borrow that costume?”
The Phantom answered not, as it would only speak with The Hollywood Reporter, but pointed onward with its hand.
Trump turned and faced here he was beckoned to. The sounds and bustle of Manhattan suddenly enveloped the President, and he was standing next to a group of well-dressed businessmen. Trump advanced to listen to their talk.
“No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, “I don’t know much about it, either way. I only know he’s done.”
“When did they call it?” inquired another.
“Early. Oh earlier than Ten, I believe.”
“Amazing, how embarrassing?” asked a third, taking a long, douchey drag from a vape. “What a loser.”
“I thought it’d never end.”
“God, I know,” said the first, with a yawn.
“What has happened to his money?” asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.
“I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large chin, yawning again. “Valueless now. Who would do business with such a hateful loser? He has less than me now — that’s all I know!”
This pleasantry was received with a general laugh. “Me too! The Loser!”
Trump retreated, and pleaded with the nationalist Phantom. “Who is the man they speak of? Who is the loser?”
Again, the Phantom did not answer, but only gestured with a pale finger beyond where the President stood.
In that moment, they were no longer on the streets of New York, but in a crowded, jovial auditorium. Upon the stage sat an assortment of newscasters and pundits.
“We have never witnessed a more total defeat,” said CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “This made Walter Mondale look like a winner.”
“Well, should we be be surprised?” continued Doris Kearns Goodwin. “History tells us disappointing leaders should expect disappointing elections. Taft, Quincy Adams, Carter…need I go on?”
“But what will history say of this one?” asked the moderator. “How will he be remembered?”
“Oh jeez,” said Chris Matthews. “As the worst. Obviously, the worst. A loser.”
“Well,” said Goodwin, “certainly a loss like this will not likely be repeated. The embarrassment, the shame that he must feel. I don’t want to get to far ahead of myself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Chris is right.
The crowd erupted in a cheer. “Loser! Loser! Loser!”
Trump placed his tiny hands over his ears, trying to drown out the roar. He closed his eyes, and at once he was again in a new place.
The Spirit stood silently next to him. They were in an airport terminal, where people were crowding around a few small TV’s. The people were cheering, hugging, crying for joy, and yet the great space was silent, as if Trump himself was deaf.
The Phantom rose his pale finger to the television.
“Steve,” pleaded Trump. “I mean, uh, whatever. Before I draw nearer to the TV to which you point, answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”
Still the Ghost pointed upward to the TV by which they stood.
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Trump, not sure where this bigly language was coming from. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Trump crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the TV, TRUMP LOSES: LOSER’S PRESIDENCY ENDS.
“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!” he cried, tightly clutching at its black robe with his little hands, “Spirit! Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be is man. I need this self-affirmation, or what would I be? Why show me this, if I am past all hope?!”
The Phantom gave no reaction.
Holding up his baby hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, Trump saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress. At once, it shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a golden bedpost.
And the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, as morning sun poured through his window. Time to make amends in!
Trump called out as he scrambled out of bed. “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Hillary Clinton! Oh you nasty, wonderful, beautiful woman!”
He danced about: “Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, Hillary; on my knees!”
“I don’t know what to do!” laughing and crying in the same breath; he opened the door of his room, and cried our down the bannister. ”I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”
“Mr. President?” replied a confused pair of Secret Service agents.
“What’s today, fellas?” said Trump.
“Today!” replied one. “Christmas, sir.”
“It’s Christmas Day!” said Trump to himself. “I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night! Of course they did!”
“Sir?” said the other. “We can hear you.”
“Tell me boys, do you know of the McDonald’s on 17th and Penn?”
“Uh, yea.”
“Go there, and pick up six Egg McMuffins!” Trump merrily tossed a wad of money down to them, held in a gold clip. “No, seven — two for me! It is Christmas, after all!”
“Uh, but sir…”
“Go! And take the change for yourselves, you great, great guys!” he grinned widely.
“But sir, we can’t.”
“Go now, and be merry, boys!”
“Sir, we are literally forbidden from doing that…”
A few short hours later, Trump sped down the streets of Washington in his motorcade, bags of McDonald’s in his teeny grasp. The lights of the long line of cars flashed brightly on the snow that had fallen during the night, but none shown as brightly as the light from Trump’s eyes.
By the time the motorcade reached the Old Naval Observatory, Mike Pence had been warned of Trump’s approach. He and has family stood in front of the door, dressed for the day.
“A merry Christmas, Mike!” said Trump as he exited the limo, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, and he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Mike, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Mike!”
“Smoking bishop?” asked a confused Pence. “Uhh. That’s all very nice, Mr. President, but you’d need an act of congress to raise my salary…and my family is doing fine. But thank you. Are you feeling alright?”
“Oh, sorry, not sure why I said all that,” said Trump, raising the bags of McDonalds. “Well, anyway, I brought you kind folks breakfast — eat with me!”
“Alright, Mr. President. Uh, thanks,” Pence turned to his family. “Let’s all go eat with the President.” His confused family obeyed and shuffled through the door.
“Tremendous,” said Trump, and he clasped Pence’s shoulder as the walked across the threshold. “And tomorrow, after we celebrate today, let’s get down to the business of running this country Mike. I want to take a more active role, and I want you to help show me how. I think we can do it, and do it well — hell, I’ll even delete my twitter! Whattaya say?!”
“Wow, well, I’ll be, Mr. President,” Pence smiled for the first time that morning. “That’d be swell.”
Old Trump was better than his word. He did it all, even deleting his twitter, and infinitely more; He became as good a friend, as good a president, and as good a man, as the good as the great country knew, or any other older city, town, or borough, in the good old world.
And while he did lose the next election, as was likely due to shifting demographics that favor Democrats and a hungover liberal backlash from 2016, it was indeed close; and even Trump’s harshest critics could not but notice a change in him - and the loss mattered not to him. Some people laughed to see the alteration, but he let them laugh, did not tweet, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He lived out the rest of his days in merriment, at last self-affirmed, and garnered more praise than he had ever known. His charities became some of the world’s greatest, and his name among the most beloved. No one, not a soul, would have called Trump a loser in those days, as he won something more special than any money or power could buy.
And while we all do not have the same means as he, let us all learn the same lessons, and pray the same be said of us — all of us! Try hard not to be a troll. And also, as always, Merry Christmas, and God bless America!
