The New York Times reported yesterday that, in a recent telephone call with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, President Donald J. Trump made an off the cuff announcement of classified military intelligence about the locations of two U.S. nuclear submarines off the coast of North Korea. This exchange came after numerous news sources also claimed that, during his May 10 Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, Mr. Trump shared codeword-classified information about the terrorist group ISIS gathered by Israeli intelligence.
While Mr. Trump didn’t technically violate U.S. law – a president has the authority to unilaterally declassify and share any information our government possesses – he is not immune to doing violence to our national interests and straining America’s relationships with our most important allies in the process. To update an old bromide, loose lips really can sink ships – even ships of state - when those lips are attached to a head of state without the mental faculties to put them to prudent use.
These incidents aren’t even the foreskin of the iceberg of screw-ups and missteps committed by the newly minted 45th occupant of the American presidency. The unvarnished reality is that fate (apparently aided by Vladimir Putin) put the nation’s fortunes in the hands of an imbecile. Forrest Gump Trump has the impulse control of a hummingbird with Attention Deficit Disorder. His higher order reasoning is governed exclusively by emotion, and he guns every intellectual challenge through the prism of his own ego. On top of all of this, there is no evidence that his level of emotional maturity surpasses his shoe size. In short, he is a special needs 11 year old trapped in the body of a septuagenarian narcissist with the constitutional prerogative to start a world war.
I admit that these are hardly new or unique observations. Five nights a week Rachel Maddox entertains millions with an allegorical dance of the seven veils showcasing the latest Trumpian cock-up du jour. CNN’s Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper have become national poster boys for apoplectic disbelief as they listen nightly to administration spokes-liars try to pretzel reality into something that makes the President look less like the intellectual doorstop he clearly is. In fact, if there is a single morsel of certainty shared by the majority of Americans in this tumultuous moment in history, it is that we have a leader who was one of the kids who was never allowed to use the sharp scissors during Art Class in elementary school.
Where I am different than other observers is that I’m not in despair over having a chief executive who positions grapefruit-colored livestock on his head to camouflage the helmet he’s required to wear to prevent self-harm. Quite to the contrary. I see Mr. Trump’s lack of mental acuity as a financial opportunity for America. If we play our cards right, his sea-level I.Q. could be our ticket to settling our national debt and restoring our collective economic fortune to a prosperous keel.
What we need to do is monetize Donald Trump’s native stupidity. Since he seems to enjoy sprinkling Top Secret secrets into his telephone calls – let’s establish a 1-900 pay by the minute White House tip line! Foreign leaders could call in and for, say, $1 million a minute, they could chat with the Donald about the back nine at Mar-a-Lago or what have you, while he thoughtlessly dribbles tidbits of valuable intelligence into the conversation. He’s going to do it anyway, let’s turn a profit from it! For an extra million at the end they could have a transcript of their call automatically emailed to them by the NSA. Payments would be via American Express, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal or Bitcoin.
And that’s only the beginning of the gravy train. Since no one has been able to wrench his smart phone out of Donald Trump’s Tinker Toy hands, why not sell sponsorships for his Twitter feed? Corporations could pay $25 million for 24-hour exclusive rights to advertise their brand name at the start of every presidential tweet. To sweeten the pot, we offer a money back guarantee that at least one of his tweets during their sponsorship period will be outrageous or controversial enough to generate national news media hysteria. (A ridiculously safe bet, if you ask me.) Think about it, “#realDonaldTrump, brought to you today by Ex-Lax...” KFC alone would buy weeks of sponsorships! And tell me you can’t see the natural synergy between the “#realDonald…” and every company that makes feminine hygiene products? For an extra price you could even have the President record a few second long video intro. “When I grab a pussy, I definitely want it to be clean! Use Summer’s Eve, the official douche of the Trump White House…”
After that, we ramp up, “Trump’s ‘Top Secret’ Lotto!” We make two lists of numbers, from 1 to 10,000. The CIA could put together a list of 10,000 codeword-clearance bits of intelligence, with each bit assigned its own specific number. (We just show the public the numbers, not the secrets.). The second list would consist of 10,000 third world dictators, Russian oligarchs, sketchy international financiers with ties to terror groups, and a host of other world class ne’er do wells. Players would pick a number from each list for each ticket they buy. Then, every day the White House randomly schedules a telephone call between the President and a baddie. If Mr. Trump calls the right baddie and reveals the right bit of intelligence, you win millions of dollars! Jackpots from days with no winners (if there are any), would roll over until someone wins! Say goodbye to Powerball and MegaMillions!
And if we go just a little farther afield, the opportunities are virtually endless! What about a smartphone game app called, “Kellyannagrams?” Players would be given random, verbatim quotations by the counselor to the President, and they would have 60 seconds to use the letters from Ms. Conway’s quote to form an actual, coherent, truthful statement! Tell me that’s not the next Internet addiction waiting to happen?
Let’s not forget the GOP-controlled Congress. Since they’re already selling out to big special interests and industries, why not make it a profit center? At the start of every Congress, we could auction off every representative and senator to the highest bidders! Each Congressman and Senator would get a percentage of the winning bid (to wet their beaks and incentivize them), and then they would be legally bound to vote as their owners command. For a secondary profit stream, we could create “VoteBay,” a version of eBay on which corporate overlords could auction off their lawmaker’s vote on specific pieces of legislation. The revenue from the winning bids would be split 50-50 between the U.S. Treasury and the corporations. Cha-Ching!
Frankly, for the first time since January 20th (“The crowd was huge, huge I tell you…”), I’m actually excited to have Donald Trump in the White House. I can’t even imagine how uneventful – and unprofitable – it would have been to have Hillary Clinton there. Ugh!