#MakeAmericaSaneAgain! The Drumpf Effect

This is the first chapter of the novel I was working on. But then I stopped because Trump winning seemed too far-fetched to be believable.

In classic Drumpf style, the whole arena was decorated with big gold letters spelling out the word Drumpf as if in an attempt to brazenly rub his victory into the faces of the attending Democrats and Republicans alike. The stage where Drumpf would be sworn in was elevated a good 12 feet above the ground. The US Capitol building acted as the perfect background to signify his symbolic ascension to the most powerful office in the world. Subtlety was an alien concept for Drumpf.

The crowd had gathered early, braving the dreary January chill, to catch a glimpse of the great Mr. Drumpf be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. As the ceremony time drew nearer, the crowd started chanting Mr Drumpf’s name in a chilling rhetoric. “Drumpf make America great again!”, went the crowd in unison. The cultish vibes given off by the chanting was no doubt deeply unsettling for any level headed individual skeptical of the Drumpf promise. I, however, had no such qualms. Being Mr Drumpf’s campaign manager and his soon to be Chief of Staff, I was on the winning side of history.

Suddenly Katy Perry’s song, Roar started playing from the depths of my jacket pocket.

“I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire
’Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar”, rang my phone.

My daughter had set the song as my ringtone. She was not happy that Trump had won and had sought to embarrass me at every turn. Sighing I looked at the screen. Donald Drumpf, read the caller ID.

Are the preparations ready Mikey?

Yes, sir. Everything has been arranged as per your specifications.

The music too?

Yes sir. I have appropriated the track you requested.

Appropriated, huh? Fancy word. No wonder I keep you around eh, Mikey boy?

I would like to hope that my proficiency of the English language is not the only reason for my continued employment.

Its one of the reasons. I tell you, this will be one hell of an inauguration. I just can’t wait to see the look on crooked Hillary’s face. It’s going to be great. Great, I tell you.

I’m sure she’ll be humiliated, just like we planned. We’re just waiting on you now, sir. The secret-service will pick you up from your hotel in approximately 10 minutes.

I feel so important! The secret service picking me up! You know as a kid I always dreamed of being President. I never thought I would actually manage to bullshit my way in though! Those stupid voters, I tell you. They’ll believe anything I tell them. Stupid, I tell you, stupid!

Now remember sir, today is a big day. The whole world will be listening to every word you say and the media will minutely dissect everything you do and say. You need to stick to the speech on the teleprompters. This is too big of an event to go off script, sir.

Don’t you worry, Mikey boy. They love me!

Yes sir. That they do.

Putting the phone back in my pocket, I turned to the assembled team awaiting my instructions.

The president is on his way. Get the preparations underway!

While the team scurried away to execute their assigned tasks, I let myself a moment to take it all in. This was it! I had manged to reach the pinnacle! Winning had never felt so good. In a campaign that started off solely as a means to garner some publicity for the Drumpf brand, the wholly unexpected victory felt really sweet. I never believed for even a second we would actually win. I don’t think even Mr. Drumpf was ever serious about winning.

In the distance I could hear the band playing rudely snatching me away from my moment of contemplation. The President had arrived! I radioed Mark, my deputy, to let off the fireworks announcing his arrival. The crowd went wild in the glow of the red, white and blue sparks adorning the sky in geometric patterns. I carefully made my way towards the Presidential motorcade.

Looking good Mr. President.

You know what Mikey boy? I’ll never get tired of hearing that.

Which bit sir? Addressing you as President or the comment on your immaculate attire and presentation?

Why both of course!

Yes of course! Let me walk you to the platform, sir. As I said, everything has been arranged exactly according to your specifications. Europe’s Final Countdown will play as the platform raises you to the stage height. A hundred white doves and flag colored helium balloons will be released as you ascend to the stage. It will be a glorious speech.

That’s great! Good to hear, good to hear.

I’ll use the back elevator prepare everything on the stage. Good luck.

Luck’s for losers, Michael. I’m no loser.

The crowd went wild as Mr Drumpf slowly rose up to the stage. The hit song Final Countdown acted as the ominous soundtrack to the symbolic act of Drumpf literally rising to power. Brilliant snow-white doves flew over the Capitol building as Mr Drumpf took the stage. Some would call the overt display of opulence gaudy and not keeping in line with the sobriety expected from Presidents, but Mr Drumpf did not care. He could never really grasp the concept of subtlety.

“Good morning America!”, his squawking voice boomed over the huge speakers. Cheers broke out. “Its a great day, isn’t it?” More cheers.

“Today is the day America starts being great again!” Wild cheers and clapping broke out across the crowd. The people started chanting his name again. Drumpf stood at the lectern, a sly smile draping his face as he waited for the crowd to calm down. If there’s one thing Drumpf excelled at, it was working his supporters up into a frenzy.

“A real American family will be moving into the White House today! Not a Muslim supporting non-American! The White House will once again be restored to its shining white glory after 8 years of being darkened by a family that never was truly American!”

Those words roused me from my meditative slumber. Shit. This is going to be bad. I quickly pulled the phone out from my pocket and called Helen Hickery, the campaign’s Press Secretary and soon to be White House Press Secretary.

Did you hear what he just said?

“Yeah. Damage control will be hard on that”, Helen replied from her position in the back of the stage working the teleprompters. “He never sticks to the agreed upon speech! I sometimes wonder why we even bother with teleprompters!”

When has anything ever been easy in this campaign? He speaks like a lunatic fueled by bottles of Vodka. I want you draft possible media questions along with acceptable answers. Try to frame the answers so that they draw the spotlight away from anything suggesting that the White House is only for white people.

That’s going to be really difficult.

I know.

But technically he never outrightly said anything about the White House belonging to white families.

He never says anything outrightly. Just implying it is bad enough.

Do we really need to bother though? He’s won the election and his supporters clearly have no problem with abject racism.

Its his inauguration speech! Of course it matters! We still need to build diplomatic relations with other countries. People in other countries aren’t so forgiving of his racism. There’s the re-election to worry about too! We cannot alienate the black population from the first couple of minutes into the presidency itself!

Well, as the alt-right white nationalists garner increasing support around the world, that’ll become less and less of a problem.

“Just get the job done”, I said cutting the call, getting a bit annoyed with her.

Truth be told, I was never truly comfortable with the message our campaign publicized. Racism and bigotry were not my cup of tea. It was all I could do to keep from shouting at Helen for her casual racism. The Drumpf campaign had a capacity to attract the worst. By a stroke of debatable good or bad luck, I was thrust into the heart of the most toxic political campaign to ever rear its ugly head in any developed nation.

It all started a couple of decades back when I was still working as a plumber in New York City. As fate would have it, the company I worked for was contracted by the Drumpf Tower to carry out all maintenance work. I was happy fixing broken pipes and leaky faucets when on a chance occasion my superior sent me to Drumpf’s penthouse mansion to fix a plumbing issue. It was common for the staff of Drumpf Tower to be routinely called in to work at Drumpf’s mansion sized apartment. That chance assignment changed my life forever.

I arrived at the doors of his apartment located on the top three floors of the hotel and rang the bell. A gruff voice emanated from the intercom system.

Who is it?

“The plumber”, I replied docilely.

“About time!” said the voice with an air of annoyance.

I walked into the house and was greeted by a series of portraits depicting Drumpf in a variety of poses and settings. The portraits were all adorned with golden frames. There were gold embellishments everywhere! The furniture had gold trimmings, the ceiling had gold designs on it and the silverware on the coffee-tables was in fact, goldware. I could tell that Drumpf was fond of gold. A person could probably scrape off enough gold from the mansion to set his family up for generations.

Going into the master bedroom, I saw a large painting of Drumpf adorning the wall directly in front of the bed. It was inscribed with the words- “I’m very handsome, you know. Very handsome”. I thought the picture might serve as motivation for Drumpf every morning as he got up from bed. That should have tipped me off to what I would be getting myself into, but I didn’t think of it much at the time. I noticed that oddly there were no pictures of Drumpf with any member of his family save for his daughter Ivanita. Not even pictures of him with his his wife Melanie. That struck me as a bit odd, but I would soon find out why. Drumpf had an unhealthy fascination for his daughter Ivanita.

“It’s in there” said Drumpf pointing towards the bathroom. “Its a disgusting mess”

The golden toilet in Drumpf’s master bedroom had clogged up and was overflowing from the accumulation of a steady pile of shit over the years. Toilet water had flooded the whole of the bathroom floor and was threatening to leak out into the main bedroom. I went in with my rubber boots, wading through the floating bits of excrement to the source of the problem. With a plunger in hand, I unclogged the toilet and set about cleaning the bathroom. I do not know what compelled Drumpf to offer me a job seeing me work. Perhaps he was so impressed with my ability to mop up literal shit that he thought I would be good at mopping up metaphorical shit too.

“You’re quite good at that, cleaning up shit”, he said.

“I’ve had experience” I replied confidently.

“You seem like a hard working fellow. How would you like to work at a real job?”

Ever since that smelly day 20 years ago, that’s what I have been doing. Mopping up shit for the Drumpf organization. On the good days, I would only handle the business side of the shit. All the shady deals and questionably legal investments. On the not so good days, Drumpf had me running errands of a shit stinking to the high heavens. One of my main jobs was to license the Trump brand to companies and then carefully pull out once the project in concern had attracted enough investors. I slowly rose up the ranks to become Drumpf’s chief shit cleaner. Every time an illegal business dealing went south, I was there to clean up all traces of illegality before the cops could investigate.

When Drumpf launched his political campaign, he chose me as his campaign manager because he knew I was the perfect man for the job. The campaign started off like any other scam of his, with the primary goal of driving up the value of the Drumpf brand. Drumpf knew that he would have to resort to a lot of underhanded tricks to survive at least till halfway through the primaries, which is why he had me as his point man. Much to the surprise of Drumpf and the team we ended up winning the Republican nomination! And now the Presidency itself. I think this was the most successful scam Drumpf ever ran.

“Mike! Mike!” the radio crackled. Helen here.

Is it done?

Yes

Ok bring it to me. We need to be ready before the press get a hold of him. Delay all interviews till after the ceremony.

Roger that.

Drumpf was still going on.

“I get so much attention in the media. They love me. I don’t even have to do anything! They follow my every move. They’re jealous. they wish they could be me. They wish they had my money. I’m a billionaire you know. And now I’m a President too! What are they huh? Barely a millionaire, I tell. Barely a millionaire. Of course they’re jealous. Folks let me tell something that I dont often say, they’re jealous of my looks too. They wish they had a wife as beautiful as Melanie or daughter as hot as Ivanita. They’re jealous! And that is why those people will always be against me. But as long as I have your support, we will make America great again! We will stop Mexicans and Muslims from entering America. We will bring jobs back from China! We will cut taxes. Together we will make America great! Just believe me folks. Just believe me.”

With that Mr Drumpf ended his speech. The Drumpf supporters, most of whom had painted their faces with the Drumpf campaign logo, broke out into a rapturous applause. The chanting began again. Drumpf Drumpf Drumpf went the crowd in synchronized unison.

“Mr. Drumpf”, a word please. I called out as I walked up over to him. “We have a problem.”

“The media is going to bombard you with questions regarding your recent comments on the Obama Presidency. I’ve had Helen draft a list of talking points that should help you plausibly deny ever having suggested that the White House should belong to white people.”

I don’t need that Mikey. That’s exactly what I wanted to say.

But Mr.Drumpf, we cannot risk alienating the liberals from the first day itself!

I’m the President! I’ll do what I want!

Yes, sir. Ofcourse. I’ll just leave the talking points with you, if you decide to go through them for reference.

What’s next on my schedule?

You will be having lunch with the Obamas.

Ah well, best get over it then. You can go spend some time with your family. I won’t be needing you till the dinner party tonight.

Thank you sir.