Reporter’s notes: This is a LONG-FORM satirical news magazine story.
So, if you are a TLDR aficionado I’d suggest you check out something shorter, like the GOP’s latest political platform. It has one plank, and if you’re not a Republican you have to walk it.
Otherwise, if you want to sample, nibble, graze or digest the whole thing, the waiter suggest some Mad Dog 20/20, which pairs well with some of the people in this story.
Republic America, age 246, was shot on 5th Avenue in New York City today. She is in critical condition according to a prominent Doctor of Jurisprudence at Mount Sigh-Nigh DOJ Hospital. The doctor wished to remain anonymous and had his name redacted from the medical notes and a subsequent subpoena. America had just left a luncheon at a health food restaurant, From Sea to Shining Sea, after dining on amber waves of grain and a fruited plains salad, when the shooting took place.
The alleged shooter is Donald J. Trump, formerly of Queens, New York and Washington D.C., but currently residing at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump, who we interviewed, insisted he was not there when the incident occurred, but was instead at Mar-a-Lago shredding papers with a jet engine. He also noted that he was on the phone with a far Eastern European friend of his at the time and that friend can vouch for his whereabouts.
The alleged weapon, a Glock model 19, which holds fifteen rounds, was recovered at the scene. Trump, who again insisted he was not at the scene, explained the shooting was accidental. It was noted that all fifteen rounds had been discharged from the weapon. Trump said the Glock must have been on an automatic setting.
When questioned how a semi-automatic handgun could have an automatic setting, Trump replied, “It was the perfect gun. The most perfect gun ever. You’ve never seen a more perfect gun.” When we remarked that he seemed very familiar with the gun, Trump replied, “What gun? I’ve never seen that gun before in my life. That’s an ugly gun. I’d never be seen in pubic shooting such an ugly gun. We were startled and confused by his breezy reversal of what he had just said. We do admit to our readers that we did stammer a few, “what?”, “how’s that?”, when we told Trump he couldn’t have it both ways. “What do you mean I can’t have it both ways, I always have it both ways,” he replied. After a brief pause, there was a quizzical tone in his voice as he said, “Is that you, Eric?”
We overlooked his non-sequitur question and advised Trump that fingerprints might reveal evidence of who handled the gun. Trump responded, “I’d hate to see that happen. I know many of my friends, who also don’t own Glocks, could be very upset by that and others get hurt doing things I wouldn’t want them to do. So somebody could be in harm’s way, which hurts, and those hurt are just because somebody else did things that maybe were good, but then again, maybe weren’t so good to some, and maybe, too, other people hurt then because it happens like that. But, who knows, I’m just saying.”
We expressed some bewilderment. Frankly, our statement to Trump did again include some less-than-smooth filler words, such as, “whoa,” “whaaa,” “huh?” – there might have even been a “what the hell?” in there. Trump quickly replied, “Wait a minute . . . this is Eric, isn’t it?! And who the hell taught you how to say the word bewilderment?! Oh, for Chrissake. Eric, get Don Jr on the phone right now, I need him to get me some of my financial portfolios from the storage room. Tell him to get some of those new clear ones.”
At that point, being more than just a bit perplexed, we stopped to collect our thoughts, then moved on to strongly re-affirm to Trump that we were indeed a reporter and not this Eric he mentioned. It took five minutes, but we were able to get Trump back on track and re-start the interview by asking who Eric was, wondering if he might be related to the shooting incident, and inquiring as to his relationship with Trump.
Trump replied, “Let’s just say he was part of a bad investment. Something I shouldn’t have gotten into. I should have pulled out on it much sooner. It was the worst investment ever. Nobody has done a worst investment. I do the best worst investments in the world. The perfect worse investments. Everybody says that. Now strike that from the record or things can happen that I don’t know anything about. That’s an oath and I’m a keeper of my oaths. Well, others actually keep my oaths, I don’t have to do that, they just decide to do it themselves, it’s always a mystery how that happens, but I don’t know about that because I’m just saying. Now let’s move on.”
When asked about America he insisted he did not know her. “I didn’t know her at all. I never heard of her. I never met her. From what I’ve been told she was a nasty woman. Definitely not the kind of woman I’d want to be around. She bleeds red, white and blue out of her whatever.”
After concluding with Trump, who agreed to talk again if need be, we tried reaching out to Trump’s friend to corroborate his story that he was at Mar-a-Lago at the time of the shooting. Unfortunately, we were only able to speak to the spokes-orc of Trump’s friend. We asked the spokes-orc about his boss’s relationship to Trump. “Who?” he replied. We explained who Trump was. “Oh, the Paperboy,” chuckled the spokes-orc. We inquired if that was a nickname that his boss had given Trump. “Da, da, he call him Rustoleum, too. Orange you glad you met me?” joked the spokes-orc. Mystified, we asked for clarification. “Hey, who you again?” he said.
We explained that we were a reporter investigating a terrible shooting. “You in Ukraine or something? Give me you exact address, plus GPS coordinates, we will send you something for troubles.” We assured him that it was no trouble, that it was something we do as a reporter. He replied, “Oh, no, we definitely want to send something for troubles.” Shrugging off his offer, we went on to assure him we were in New York City, not Ukraine. In delving in deeper, we asked if there were any other nicknames or AKAs that his boss had for Trump.
“What’s this AKA you talk about. Is that rifle? Are you threatening us?!” We assured him were not threatening him and explained what AKA stood for, letting him know that it was a common acronym used by the police and other agencies, such as the FBI. “What, FBI? You with FBI?!” No, we explained, again, that we were a reporter. “Ok, good. We no talk to FBI. Only Secret Service. But, lately, we no talk to them either, dey have cell phone problem. Dey should use Russian phone instead, iSpy. We get great reception with dat phone and hear real good. Sometimes so good caller get dropped.” We remarked that he must mean the call gets dropped, not the caller. “Get phone and find out. See what kind of reception you get.”
When we pressed to speak to Trump’s friend the spokes-orc explained that the person was out running a special errand in another neighborhood. Inquiries were made as to when they were expected back. The spokes-orc said they were not sure, noting Trump’s friend had “only expected to be gone for few days, but, ah, well, it take him longer than he think, so we no sure when he get back. Hey, I tell him you called, da?” When we pressed for a window of time when he might be available, if only briefly, the spokes-orc noted, “What is dat window of time you talk about? You stand by window now? Maybe I come see you.”
We explained it was only a figure of speech and we were looking to talk to the friend as soon as possible. The spokes-orc said, “Look, Trump’s friend, he not feel good, ok. Ehhh, he got a stomach problem, maybe not want talk to you.” We expressed our empathy and inquired as to the nature of the problem. “It might be something he try to swallow, ehhh, Chicken Kiev maybe.”
We noted we were sorry to hear that, with the spokes-orc snorting, “Da, sure you Americans worried much about our stomachs. Ha! We no have McDonalds no more, now all of them called Tasty and That’s It. First of all, stupid name, why not call it McMuscovich? The French fries taste like Napoleon’s doo-doo he left when he last here. And, trust me, he left a lot of doo-doo all across our place and down Steppes. “Dey got, too, something called “Borscht on a Bun,” which is nothing but bread soaked in generals’ sweat. Dey gots lottsa that. And the, what you say, the hamberders, they all ketchup, no meat. Where’s the beef?! And dey don’t serve it on a plate, no, have to eat off old, used wallpaper with ketchup already there. Cheap place.
“But, hey, at least Paperboy, he feed us good stuff that come wrap in finest paper. We eat that up,” laughed the spokes-orc, “but after we digest what in paper, some other people, they get real bad indigestion. Uhhh, maybe they get second-hand food poisoning or have problem closing window after dey go out, ehhh. When we indicated that we were totally confused and confounded by everything he had told us, he hesitated, and then said, “Eric, dat you?”
We understood that our inquiries were not going to be answered at that time and ended the conversation with a request for Trump’s friend to reach out to us when he could.
Trump was also alleged to have been with three other individuals at the time, according to witnesses. One was a man, described as smaller in stature, and wearing suit pants, a light blue shirt and a yellow tie, but no suit jacket. That man was seen at the scene gesturing wildly, screaming and yelling, while ejecting spittle like a spray gun set to OCEAN.
That man said that nothing had happened, and if it did happen, which it had not, that America had jumped in front of the bullets that Trump had not shot, and if he did shoot them why was America standing on 5th Avenue? Hadn’t Trump talked about this very thing a few years back. Who in their right mind would ever stand on 5th Avenue in New York City? That street should be deserted by now. And besides, Trump was never in New York City. He has never been in New York City. He has never heard of New York City. “Show us where this New York City is on a map,” the man stated. “Or is it so New it’s not on a map? Oh, how convenient that would be.”
One witness to the shooting remarked that they believe they recognized the man and that they thought he may be from Ohio. When we quizzed them, asking them why they thought he was from Ohio, they noted, “He’s not tan enough to be from Florida.” When we inquired further, asking what part of Ohio the man might be from, the witness said, “The crazy part.”
(Reporter’s note: we must point out a couple of things here. Our research on Ohio shows that the state comprises 44,825 square miles, of which 3,877 square miles are water. However, state officials advise us that the rate of spittle has been rapidly increasing both the water table and their water surface area since 2007, so we are confident that the man does indeed reside in Ohio. However, if we are to cover the crazy parts of Ohio, we anticipate the search for that man will be rather lengthy. So, it looks like we will be looking for a needle in a hatestack, and we will be buckeyed and blind by the time we are done. Wish he had been from Rhode Island.)
When asked what he looked like the witness remarked that he, “didn’t exactly look stupid, but I had six quarts of spittle in my eyes, so I can’t be sure. You know how spittle can blur your vision. I thought I had Hurricane Katrina swirling in my retinas. But, he didn’t look all that bright. In fact, he reminded me of a college coach I had once seen on television. We asked if that was in conjunction with a sporting event they had watched. “No,” the witness replied, “It had to do with some sort of sex scandal in college sports.” So, at this point, we understand the man is a Republican and he can fill a kiddie pool with spittle in three sentences, but that is all we know at this time.
We also received a tip about the other two subjects. A colleague of mine, a battle-hardened journalist, left me a message saying she had the names of two people that were alleged to be with Trump at the time of the shooting. With the Ohio man and these two, that made it a total of three, exactly what had been seen at the shooting. I called her back and she informed me I needed to contact a Marjorie Taylor Greene and a Lauren Boebert at the American Daughters of the National Socialists German Workers, otherwise known as ADO-NAZIS.
(Reporter’s note: no real socialists were used in the making of the above organization. It’s akin to, let’s say, an organization called Republicans for Peace and Harmony. The letters are in the right order, but on closer look they make no goddamn sense whatsoever.)
I asked for the lowdown on the two, and she gave me this:
“Well, Lauren Boebert, she is flaky.” Flaky, how so, I asked. “Her head is an industrial-grade snow globe that’s been shaken – not stirred – on a paint store mixing machine. They got the machine up to 5.1 on the Richter scale. There are things that come out of her mouth that haven’t been cleared by a brain, a lawyer or logic. Even God gave up. Said it was giving Him psoriasis.”
What about Taylor Greene, we asked. “Yeah, her. Ok, here’s how that goes. She put the bomb in bombastic. You know that old Bride of Frankenstein movie? She’s the mother of the bride. By the way, she didn’t like the groom. That’s his face after she lambasted him for three straight days prior to the wedding. Before that he looked like Mr. Rogers, but kinder.”
“I set you up for a conference call with them at two o’clock,” she said. I asked if she was going to wish me luck like she usually did. “You don’t need luck. You need an exorcist.”
Promptly at two o’clock I called and was immediately put into a conference call with Taylor Greene and Boebert. There was some trepidation on my part, my colleague’s ominous comments in the back of my mind, but I tried to put those aside. My plan was to just start in with my questions. Once the introductions were over, I immediately asked them if they were with Trump on the day of the shooting.
“We’re with Trump every step of the way,” Taylor Greene boomed out, “in complete goosestep with him!” Boebert jumped in, saying, “Hey, these jackboots aren’t just for style, they were made for walking . . . all over the libs!” I knew previously my phone had been set at a reasonable audio setting, but I violently jumped. All of a sudden the volume was at HEAVY METAL BAND DOES 20 CITY TOUR IN EAR CANAL – LAST SONG ENCORE LEVEL. After shaking out three candles worth of wax and both Eustachian tubes from my ears, we moved on to our next question, asking if Trump had a gun.
“Hey, who are you?! Are you with the Spanish Secret Police?!” Taylor Greene’s outburst stunned us. Before we could say anything, she shouted at us, “You can fool me once on that Gestapo thing, but I’m on to everyone now. I know what’s up with that whole Gazpacho rigmarole. It’s the Food Federales! You habla espresso fettuccini pierogi, do you?! You crossed a border when you tried to humiliate me back then. I know everything now, from soup to nuts. Betcha you thought because I was from the Peach Tree State you could dish up more crap. Just try sneaking that one under my noose again and we’ll see what happens! Ha!”
Before we could even come close to replying, Boebert started in, “Yeah, we know our Second Amendment rights, the right to bare our arms in public! No longer are we going to be shamed in hiding what we got!! And you know what?! The number two is bigger than the number one, so that First Amendment thingy is kaput. And you know what kaput means?!
“Well, it’s Italian and it’s in the Bible, the King Don version. It means Speak Not, Give Glory to Guns First!!! Yeah, Jesus was Italian or Sicilian or something and he built a big church in Rome. Anyway, He and a couple of buddies were at some sort of festival or something up on a hill outside their town. And they went up on some scaffolding – I think it was the stage for the band – because someone said you could see everyone’s houses from there, and then BAM!, all of sudden it hit Him like a lightning bolt. He was kaput!! So there!!! How about that!!! We will always do number two everywhere we go – in private, in public, in restaurants, schools, churches, community pools – I will do number two right in your face if I want!!!
“We’re not talking to you any more, not until our Supreme Court justices get here!!” said Taylor Greene. When I pointed out she probably meant their attorneys, Taylor Greene snorted like a celebrity coke user, “Our Federalist retainer is better than that, we get to skip the middleman! And no, we don’t call it ‘middleperson,’ we are Women for Misogynists and proud of our boys!! And just so you understand, black robes are the new white robes, but without a head accessory!! Consider yourself black-robed, as we like to call it!!!” “Yeah, kiss our rifle butts!!!” shouted Boebert.
I graciously thanked them for their time and bid them good-bye before ending the call somewhat abuptly.*
Regaining our composure, we reached back out to Trump and asked if any other people, other than his friend from out East, could confirm his presence at Mar-a-Lago (which will be referred to in the future as “The Other Crime Scene”), he replied that we could “talk to my ex-wife, no, wait, I’m still married to that one, unless my attorneys got served with some papers I don’t know about. Apparently there’s a lot of paper I don’t know about, but I want all that paper I didn’t know about back, even though I’ve never had that paper, ever. But, guess what, I may still have it somewhere. I’ll ask the kitchen staff. The sous chef would have been our best bet, but he slipped on the sill of the kitchen service window and he’s out cold in the meat locker. At the Mar-a-Lago restaurant, we asked “Morgue,” Trump said.
“Wait, are you writing this all down?” Yes, we replied. “What are you writing it on?” We explained it was a reporter’s notebook. “Give it to me, it’s mine. My attorney will sue you in the morning, oh wait, she just texted me, she sued you yesterday. She said you can pay her via Venmo. That’s the arrangement I have with all my attorneys, somebody else pays them or it’s free to me. By the way, do you have $130,000? I think that’s the standard rate.” Trump then started humming Stormy Weather. It all seemed so strange, asking us to pay his attorney to sue us and humming torch songs. We asked about it. “I’m going to keep you in the dark on that one. Like a mushroom.”
When we asked about the paper Trump kept referring to, thinking it might pertain to the shooting, he asked, “Can you keep a secret?” We assured him we could. “Well, good, I can’t. By the way, how the hell do you do that? I can’t even kept the quiet parts from being said out loud. My buddy, Vlad, he’s always kidding me about that. Says, I leak like a sieve, but I’m not sure what a sieve is. Vlad says in his language it means ‘May Day Parade in D.C. next year’. Loves me for it,” he said. “Everybody does.”
“Anyway, the paper I get has these special watermarks that make it real valuable. And let me tell you, you wouldn’t believe how much I get for that paper. It’s top stuff, and that’s no secret, everyone says so,” Trump chuckled. “Heck, Jared got two billion for just a dozen sheets of it. I get the stuff wholesale from a few places. And I get it cheap, real cheap, for a steal you might say.” When we asked who Jared was, he replied, “Some guy who stole my girl.” He wouldn’t talk about it further.
We asked where he got the paper. “Can you keep a secret?” Yes, we replied, again. “Well, I can’t.” We noted he had mentioned that before. We went on to strongly assure him we could keep a secret. In fact, we noted that we could keep a secret as well as any reporter, including Bob Woodward, and that was true even when our notes are accidentally left on our publisher’s desk and are turned into a book the following year. “Good. Well, I get my paper from the CIA, NSA and DOD.” Incredulous, we tried to confirm what he was telling us. We noted he was talking about getting his stationary from the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Department of Defense.
“Well, you can call them that. I know them as Consolidated Income Assets, Now Selling All and Deals on Documents.” We asked how we could confirm his assertion. “Well, follow the windows. Or food poisoning. Like what I thought was going to happen to that broad on 5th Avenue. Apparently oath keeping isn’t what it used to be. I thought she was going to get a steak with ketchup and a little something extra on the side. What the hell was her problem?”
We explained that it was a health food restaurant, you’d expect things like salads to be served there, we said. “Oh, like McDonald’s,” he replied. We continued on, though, and asked if we could meet with him personally to get some corroborating evidence of this, seeing this as an opportunity to then spring some hard questions in person about the shooting. “Sure, no problem. Meet me on 6th Avenue tomorrow.” We double checked with him, asking if he hadn’t meant 5th Avenue. “Forget 5th Avenue, that place is a ghost town right now. And, in the meantime, you should connect the windows.”
We gently corrected him, noting the phrase is “connect the dots.” “Have it your way, but it’s going to take a lot longer, besides, how many people have you seen fall out of open dots? Dots are for dopes. Windows are for winners. It’s like Vlad’s Windows Operating System, everything is fine until your personal screen goes blank. Hehehe.”
We again expressed our complete and utter confusion at what he said, again using our best professional reporter’s clipped wording, which by that point amounted to, “Huh, whah, who ahhh, whoa . . . duhha?” Trump screamed, “That settles it! Eric, it is you! I knew it. Get off the goddamn phone and put Don Jr on! I swear you’ll get the torture of a thousand paper cuts if you don’t. And, believe me, I’ve got reams of paper. The best paper. The perfect paper. Paper that people have never seen before. You’re going to get paper cuts so bad your fingers will be screaming and begging for mercy for years. You’re going to get Pulp Fictioned, dammit!”
Being very intrigued by this special paper he had, which we surmised could make for a great story, we did our most persuasive best to convince him we were not Eric. It took some time, but we finally got him to re-focus on the paper. We asked if anyone else, besides the kitchen staff and the sous chef with the toe tag, knew about them. He noted there might be a few other people that knew.
We started by throwing out Eric’s name, does he know, we asked “Nah, he has a condition that pretty much rules it out.” Intrigued, we asked what it was and he told us. We were incredulous at what he said, although that was becoming a normal state of affairs for us. How could it be Dopamine, we asked. Our tone was tinged with a little shock. We noted that’s what your body makes for the brain.
We could hear the irritation in Trump’s voice, “No, I didn’t say that and it’s actually true,” His statement was punctuated by an absolutely tremendous clap of thunder on his end, and weirdly, we thought we smelled sulfur. They must be getting bad weather, we thought. “It’s Dope-A-Me,” Trump said. A bit nonplussed, we asked if that is really recognized as a medical condition. “Look, I don’t know if doctors recognized it, but everyone else does,” Trump said. He sensed that we were still skeptical, so he went on, “Hey, everyone learns to not touch a hot stove burner after the first time, right?” We agreed. “Well, his fingers are like black keys on a Steinway. You’d swear he’s a Chop Sticks virtuoso at the steak grill.”
We inquired if anyone else had seen the paper. “You mean besides the front desk, landscaping crew, maintenance department, housekeeping, all the valets on the day shift and most of the ones on the night shift, the FedEx guy and the golf pro? And, then there’s the guest list,” he noted. We were flabbergasted. We figured we could eventually track down all the employees, so we zero in on the guest list since it probably would be a bit harder. Who on the guest list, we asked. “What you mean who? I said the guest list.” We were almost struck dumb. We quizzed him, “Everyone?” we intoned, surprise mounting in our voice. “Yeah, but I don’t know if the Russian and Chinese guests can read English. So I don’t know if they knew what they were looking at. But, I’ll tell you this, I had to use the Jaws of Life to pry it out of their hands.”
I inquired as to where he was storing all this paper, was it just in the storage room he mentioned before. “What paper?” he said. A little startled, I said all the paper he had told me about. “There’s no paper. I don’t have any paper. I’ve never said anything about paper,” he said nonchalantly. Mr. Trump, I intoned, I know you told me you didn’t have the paper and never had the paper, but you did tell me about the paper. You were kind of alluding to them without saying you had them. You know, kind of a wink, wink, nudge, nudge, kind of thing, I told him.
“That’s the problem with the mainstream media,” he said. “They hear what people say, but when those people who said those things say they didn’t say those things and don’t know anything about what they said because they said they didn’t say them and then the media, well . . . I wouldn’t know, I’m just saying.” And his voice kind of trailed off from there. I sputtered that he had told me about the special paper he had, the ones that were worth a lot of money, the ones you wanted that Don Jr guy to get from the storage room. “No papers,” he said.
We were reeling from all of it. Alice in Wonderland was at a fucking day spa compared to this. Up was down. Left was right. You put your pants on one arm at a time. He was slipperier than the Gambino Family’s tax lawyer, and they probably hired that guy based on Trump’s recommendation. Hell, Houdini was just a locksmith working out of a storefront compare to him. But, I was starting to catch on. I was starting to crack the code. But slowly.
Ok, so you don’t have any expensive paper anywhere, I mused out loud, and then I tried an end around, a little razzle-dazzle. Hey, I said, maybe you made copies of the paper, trying to crack the nut open on this denial puzzle. “Copies?” Trump evasively answered. Yeah, you know on a copy machine. “What kind of copy machine,” he replied. Did he mean what brand? I quickly typed in copier manufacturers on my laptop. You know, I said, like a Xerox, or Hewlett-Packard, maybe Ricoh, how about Sharp, Toshiba or Canon; I was trying to think on my feet, and rattled off as many manufacturers I could see. You have any one of those around there, I inquired.
“Cannon . . . we use Cannon,” he said, but like he was drifting in a different direction. “Didn’t have to pay for that deal,” he brightened up. “Does everything we want, never have a problem. Does stuff that nobody thought would be done in a million years. Heck, we can probably even get the originals like we wanted.” And then he was off to the races, his Canon this, and his Canon that. Canon, Canon, Canon. He was just shooting his Canon off, and he wouldn’t stop. Sarcastically I said it sounds like his Canon does everything, but write the documents and file them for you, too. “Nope, does that, too,” he said. Great, I told him, but do you have copies? “Of what?” he said. I was utterly exasperated, my thoughts just shredded, jammed and crumpled together, like paper in Trump’s whacked out, out-of-control, eager-to-please, Canon. If I ever have to buy a copier I’m going to get anything but a fucking Canon.
I decided to try a different tack. Ok, so you don’t have any expensive paper anywhere, I said. Could you tell me about the paper you don’t have, the paper that you’ve never had, the ones you never saw, but want back. Where isn’t that paper, we inquired, where would it never be. We gently pressed him at first, and then challenged him as we built up steam. What’s the big secret about this paper, or maybe it’s not a big secret at all, you’re just making it out to be a secret, we pushed. Just run-of-the-paper mill paper, the only watermarks on it from a leaky pipe in a storage room, we said. No, it’s only ordinary, everyday paper any regular, old Joe could pick up anywhere, we went on, a taunting tone in our voice. And voilà, for whatever reason and just like that, he opened up. Like a flood.
“Well, I don’t store any paper I don’t have in the storage room. Some aren’t stored in my desk in the top two drawers on the right side and the bottom drawer on the left side. I don’t have any on the nightstand under my copy of Mein Kampf. I don’t have any in the hamper that’s only for my tighty whities. There’s none in the housekeeping linen closet on the second floor. There aren’t any posted on the bulletin board in the pool locker room. We don’t have any to put in the sleeves of the restaurant menus. We don’t have any to put on the pillows instead of a mint. There aren’t any in those frames on the back of the hotel room doors that hold the instructions on how to exit in an emergency.” There was a pause. “Did you ever try to follow those instructions? I had my daughter Tiffany try it once. Haven’t seen her since.” He trailed off again.
“My God, you’ve just about carpeted the place with them!” we exclaimed.
Have you ever been on a call and said something that you knew was not taken well? There is a steely silence, a heaviness that permeates the electronic air. This was one of those times. Finally, after a handful of seconds, he said, “We don’t put paper we don’t have on the carpet. I’m too organized to put the things I don’t have on the carpet. Only a slob would do that.” Got it, I stammered, you probably get tips from Martha Stewart on how to decorate and organize things. This time there was disdain in his voice. “I don’t take tips from Martha Stewart, other than on stocks.”
Wow, we thought, you’d have to classify this paper thing as being nutty than hell. But, while it was as intriguing as could be, it was still kind of a distraction. We still had to get to the bottom of the shooting, the thing we really came for. We had to get the goods on him and his companions for the wounding, possibly even the killing, of America. We just didn’t think this paper trail would lead us there.
We pressed him about speaking to his current wife and the ex-wives, thinking they might give us some insight, maybe let something slip. He told us his current wife was getting some last second surgery to open her eyes, so she might not be available. “The damn things are as thin as my excuses. Just slits, really. The other day she confused me with a security agent. ‘Darling, there you are,’ she said, but her vision is so bad she started walking toward the agent. Her hearing is going, too. I spoke up very clearly and told her I was right there, but she kept strutting over to the agent. I was practically shouting by the time she got to the other side of the ballroom. If that security agent hadn’t held her hand I don’t know if she would have ever made it out of there.”
I remarked that his security personnel were swell people. “Yep, but a little strange,” he said. In what way, I ventured. “Well, they wear their sunglasses all the time, even at night in the dark. Between their sunglasses and my wife’s lousy vision it’s no surprise they’re always bumping into each other. Sometimes they run into each other so hard it almost impossible to untangle them. By the way, I never wear sunglasses. Not even when there was an eclipse of the sun. Looked right into it. And I’m not blind.”
“I don’t know if surgery will help, though,” he went on. “The doctors aren’t sure if they can do anything to correct it. But, they said they would be happy to take the money and try.” Trump cackled, “Good luck getting the money from me, or paper for that matter, that would be like squeezing Lauren Boebert’s head for thoughts. All you’d get are Whoopee Cushion sounds.” We didn’t mention that we had talked to Boebert. Our frontal lobe was still expanding from the aftershock of the explosions, so, we thought the better of it.
Incredibly, a couple of minutes later we swore we distinctly heard what sounded like flatulence. We let it pass. But, then some flatulence passed again. And then it happened again. And again. And then again. We were starting to wonder if Trump was toying with us after that Whoopee Cushion comment. It felt a little awkward to ask, but awkward was starting to be the norm, so we politely inquired if someone was indeed passing gas. “Yeah, they are, but it ain’t me,” Trump said a bit defensively. “It’s one of my attorneys. Rudy.” Realizing he may have summoned the attorney to confer with while we spoke, we asked if he needed to talk to him. “How the hell am I going to do that, he’s over in the ballroom.”
“By the way, that reminds me. I’m going to have to shoo him out of there. We’re having a big event there tonight.” I inquire as to what the shindig was about. “Got a Russian couple doing a one-year wedding anniversary party. They tell me that’s the paper one. In fact, they asked me to stop by and kind officiate the thing. Can’t believe what they’re paying me for it. Ready for this, $130,000,” he said. “The standard rate,” we both said at the same time. I noted that was a lot of money for a one night fling. Damn if he didn’t start humming Stormy Weather again. “Yeah,” he said. “They can afford it. They’re big in construction or something. Window installations, I think. Doesn’t really matter, though, when push comes to shove, the moneys all the same.”
Moving on in the conversation seemed the right thing to do. So, we asked if we could speak to his ex-wives. “Well, the one might be hard to reach, but you might be able to dig her up – bring a sand wedge and $50,000 dollars. Once again we were totally confused, and all we could do is stupidly sputter and stutter, “whaaaat,” “ah,huh,ah,” “ooooh,” “whadda,” “ho duh,” huh, hell!,” We finally spat out that he couldn’t possibly expect us to pay for information. What kind of people expect that, it just wasn’t ethical! He exclaimed, “Ok, ok, Eric, it is definitely you! Forget Don Jr, put Ivanka on the phone right now! I swear, Eric, I know where you live. I’m going to renovate that penthouse on top of your neck so the blinds never open again!!”
It took fifteen minutes this time, with quite a bit of explaining, but we once again were able to calm him down and assure him that we were not Eric, but a reporter covering the shooting on 5th Avenue in New York City. Unfortunately, we were a bit unnerved and tripped ourselves up by reiterating that we do not pay for information, and then we indignantly noted that only sleazy tabloids that carouse with lowlifes would go to such depths.
Trump screamed like someone had stolen one of his egos and bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Eric, you cardboard cutout. If you don’t put Ivanka on the phone right now I’m going to send you to live with your mother! Do you understand what I’m saying?! Whadda you think about that. You know my friends, Eric, the ones that don’t have Glocks, they’re going to stand you up on 5th Avenue and you’ll look like a 36-hole golf course when they’re done! You’re going to look like the LIV tour championship. Holes, divots, headstones and all!! I’ve got one word for you, Eric, one word – Saudis!!! You got that, SAW-DEES!!!”
We quickly and quietly ended the call without saying good-bye, since we didn’t want to rile him up any more than we had. We also didn’t want that Eric fellow to be harmed any more than was probable, feeling that ending the call at that point be best (ten points for dumb slogan recognition – First Lady Category). Our hopes for a scoop, though, seemed to be right out the window.
However, as luck would have it, not thirty minutes later Trump’s friend did call. Our heart began to beat fast and furious. We realized that this may be our only chance to get the information we needed to scoop the story of the shooting. We had to get it right. We decided to be bold and go with a very direct approach. We simply put it to the friend about the incident with the shooter: “It’s Trump on 5th Avenue with the Glock, isn’t it?!” There was a pause and then a low, slow sigh.
“Eric, is dat you?”
*Editor’s notes: The reporter was less than candid about the Taylor Greene and Boebert conversation. He didn’t end the call as he stated. Instead, completely unnerved, he hurled the phone out the window like a Cy Young award-winning pitcher throwing a two-seam fastball with great movement on it.
In an unrelated incident, but on the same street, a Russian diplomat was struck and killed by a blunt object roughly the size of a deck of playing cards, which had struck with the velocity of a meteor entering the earth’s atmosphere and with great movement on it.
Interpol is investigating the latter as part of a series of deaths related to structural features on buildings. In the best tradition of American journalism we have reported in more detail about those two incidents in our Both Sides of the Street feature, under the Would You Believe . . . ? section, page 56.)