Donald Trump stepped down from his Mercedes-Benz Style EC145 Luxury Helicopter, his Gucci Oxford shoes clicking on the sun-bleached pavement. The wind from the spinning rotor blades whipped his tie around and flattened the oddly downy, brownish hair on his head, like an old cat that hated being petted. He squinted critically in the Midwestern sun, surveying the flat, alien landscape.
It was the second day of his “exploratory” visit to Iowa as a potential presidential candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012. His narrowed eyes quickly calculated the net worth of the landing pad and field around him. His net worth was much, much greater. So much greater, in fact, that it was hardly even worth mentioning to his personal assistant and newly appointed political strategist, Gary Busey, standing beside him.
Still, it needed to be said. “My net worth is so much greater than this landing pad and field, Busey.” Gary nodded and licked his lips. Trump looked up, visualizing a gleaming, faux gold leaf-wrapped skyscraper stretching high into the sky where he stood. He stuck out his lower lip and nodded pensively at the image. He would come back to that later – for now, he had to attend to less pleasant business.
In the middle of the field, about a hundred yards from the helicopter, a large group of people huddled under a festival tent. Trump eyed the moist-looking grass between him and the crowd.
“Busey,” Trump said, snapping his fingers. Gary Busey flinched and darted to the other end of the landing pad. Moments later, he pulled up in a golf cart customized with off-road tires. Trump climbed on, next to his twitchy-eyed assistant.
The crowd loudly cheered his approach. “We love you, Donald!” some of them called to him as he arrived. They all wore bright, impeccably clean T-shirts with some version or another of an American flag on them, waving matching miniature signs on sticks that read: “VOTED FOR RONALD, VOTING FOR THE DONALD!” Busey stopped the golf cart and got out. Trump noticed nobody had put anything down over the naked grass under the tent. He stayed in the cart.
He noticed a young Mexican laborer carrying a crate of water bottles over to a fold-up table. Trump put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Amigo, over here. ¡Aquí!” The boy stared at him with horror.
Seeing that the laborer was ignoring Trump's energetic gestures for him to come over, the crowd started shouting at the boy. Finally, having seen enough, damn it, two beer-bellied men marched up to the laborer and dragged him to Trump by his armpits. With the help of the two eager volunteers, Trump awkwardly climbed up on the boy’s shoulders, his long legs dangling just a foot or two from the ground.
“That’s better,” Trump said as he guided his human steed into the crowd. He spread his hands and puckered his lips as he spoke, “Now, as ordinary – some might say quite unremarkably average – voters, you must have many questions for a wildly successful, immensely wealthy business man and real estate magnate like me.”
The people in the crowd blinked and stared at him. Their little flags on sticks stopped.
“Birth certificate,” Trump reminded, gesturing again with his hands.
They nodded vigorously in recognition of the signature campaign position, faces immediately brightening. An elderly man in a plaid shirt asked the first question. “Mr. Donald, what would be your first decision as president?”
Trump pursed his lips thoughtfully. He contemplated the question. “Well, Mister – what’s your name?”
“Gary Jones.”
“Well, Mister Jones, first of all, my net worth is obviously much, much higher than yours." He put his hands together in a steeple. "I mean, let’s be fair, you probably shop at Wal-Mart, and I only wear top-of-the-line Trump Signature suits and dress shirts. So there's that.”
The man looked suddenly disoriented.
“But the first thing I would do as president is impeach Barack Obama.”
The crowd shouted and cheered. Mister Jones smiled and clapped his leathery hands together. “Now that’s what I like to hear.”
A middle-aged man with a pink, round face emerged from the crowd and leaned in close to Trump. He was holding a thick book in his arm. Trump leaned down from his human perch to hear the man.
The man glanced conspiratorially to either side and, with a knowing glint in his eye, whispered in Trump’s ear, “I only have one question, and I hope you’ll understand me. Who is John Galt?” The man pulled his head back and looked Donald Trump in the eyes with grave sincerity. He leaned back in and repeated, “Who. Is. John. Galt.”
Trump patted the man on his shoulder and whispered back, “John Galt is a personal hero of mine, as is author and brilliant economist Ayn Rand. I admire John Galt for creating Galt’s Gulch, where the productive members of society can finally escape the socialist parasites all around us. Even still, my net worth is much, much greater than his and, despite his being in a bestselling book, he has never written a bestselling book, as I have.”
The man backed away, wordless and wide-eyed. He pointed portentously at Trump as he disappeared back into the crowd.
“Next question,” Trump grunted, uncomfortably shifting his weight on the beleaguered Mexican boy’s shoulders.
A woman in a tan shirt printed with oversized Declaration of Independence lettering on it stepped forward. “Donald, how will you bring unemployment down?”
Trump thought for a beat, then snapped his fingers and put his hand out to his side without looking. Gary Busey frantically unfolded a piece of paper with his scribbling on it and put it in Trump's hand. Trump consulted the paper. He nodded, remembering what it said.
“Well, Miss – what’s your name?” he said, his lips desperately trying not to touch his teeth.
She began to speak, but Trump stopped her with a raised hand.
“Don’t worry about it. The way I’ll tackle unemployment – which is really only a problem for people with a net worth as low as you, who haven’t sold bestselling books and made multi-billion-dollar real estate deals like me, is by laying off an additional 500,000 people. By executive order or whatever. That way, businesses will be able to cut their costs enough to be able to begin hiring again.”
The woman nervously chewed on her lip. She wanted to applaud, but something didn't seem right about that answer.
“Unlike Barack Hussein Obama, whose socialist, communist policies are bankrupting America with out-of-control taxing and spending for Planned Parenthood and NPR.”
“All right!” the woman shouted, clapping vigorously with the crowd.
Trump was emboldened by the enthusiasm. He had them in the palm of his well-moisturized hand. “I mean, this guy…” he began, his mount groaning as the boy's knees began to buckle, “This guy has a very dangerous anti-colonial attitude that he got from his Kenyan father, while in Kenya, with the Kenyans.”
The people roared their approval. The surge of energy was riot-like. Trump soaked it in. “I mean, could you imagine what this country would have been like if the Founders had that kind of radical, anti-colonial mindset?”
A man in the back couldn’t contain himself. “He isn’t even a citizen!” he barked.
“Well, you know we’ve been investigating that.” Trump removed a silver-plated Cross pen from his jacket pocket and jabbed it into the Mexican boy’s ribcage. The boy straightened abruptly.
"I have serious doubts, serious, serious doubts that Obama was born in Hawaii. In fact, right now, all my current and former wives are fanning out across the islands of Hawaii with a specially trained squad of investigative lingerie models to uncover all the records that Obama is hiding from the American people. I can’t reveal too much right now, but I can tell you that we’ve already discovered some very interesting stuff. Very interesting stuff.”
His audience stood in rapt silence.
“Well, I suppose I could mention that my team has yet to find any evidence that contradicts the possibility – the very real and frightening possibility – that Obama may have led a band of jihadists in a failed attempt to overthrow the Nigerian government when he was 11.”
The woman in the Declaration of Independence T-shirt spoke up. “I saw that in an email my brother sent me a few weeks ago! Have you been getting the same emails?”
“I don’t need to see those emails to know. I mean, I went to Wharton and did very, very well. But your brother is right to be suspicious. These things have not yet been disproven.”
The young laborer under Trump finally gave out, collapsing in a heap. Trump’s Gucci Oxfords landed on the grass.
“OK, looks like it’s time to go,” he said, angrily looking at his shoes touching the Earth. He quickly climbed back in the off-road golf cart, followed by Gary Busey in the driver’s seat.
“So, Mr. Trump, are you actually going to run?” shouted a skinny man in Oakley wraparound shades.
“That’s a great question,” he replied, absently checking his BlackBerry. “Make sure to tune in to the next season of Celebrity Apprentice to find out. In the meantime, let me give you a little taste of what’s to come in the new season. John McCain may or may not get into a slap fight with Amy Winehouse over what to name their team's food truck.”
Cries of “We love you, Donald!” rose up from the crowd again.
Donald smirked and waved goodbye as Gary Busey drove them back to the helicopter. As they stepped off onto the landing pad, Trump turned to his assistant. “What’s next, Busey, another goddamned country diner?”
“Yes, sir. The media’s going to be all over this one, and they expect you to follow the Iowa diner tradition for candidates.”
“I don’t care. You’re shaking the hands and flipping the pancakes for me this time. I’m not getting near that fucking grill with this Donald Trump Signature suit.”
With that, the two climbed back on Trump's Mercedes-Benz Style EC145 Luxury Helicopter, and it began to lift off. The helicopter quickly climbed into the air, and began heading in the direction of the crowd that had enthusiastically greeted him just a short while earlier. As they passed high above the adoring throng, Trump looked down through the long window of the passenger cabin, barely able to make out the tiny little "VOTING FOR THE DONALD" flags waving furiously below.
He could feel his net worth growing already.