The Day of the Donald (14 page)
Read The Day of the Donald Online
Authors: Andrew Shaffer
Tags: #FIC031000 Fiction / Thrillers / General
W
hen the panda was fifteen yards away, Jimmie’s fight-or-flight instinct finally kicked in. He crouched low and dashed to the edge of the seated area just as a chair flew over his head. Thankfully for Jimmie, the panda was of a single mind. It may not have been moving fast, but there was a deliberateness to its path of destruction. The panda was headed straight for the president of the United States and his entourage.
Although Trump had finally given up on his speech, he refused to yield the podium. “I’m not letting some Chinese push me around!” he shouted.
A phalanx of Secret Service agents formed a semicircle around the president, weapons drawn. They were decked out in black suits that had to be hot as hell on a day like this under the sun. They were probably a bit tougher than Jimmie and not likely to complain like he would about such things. That was why they were guarding the president and Jimmie was watching helplessly from the literal sidelines.
They didn’t fire at the panda. There were too many civilians behind the creature, standing around with their phones raised. Like Jimmie, they’d seen that the interloper wasn’t just randomly attacking people. It was heading straight for a single
target. So out came their phones to Periscope and YouTube and SnatchCatch it to the world.
Vladimir Putin emerged from the shield of Secret Service agents with a shotgun. Where he’d picked up a shotgun was anyone’s guess, but he had one.
“Stand down, Americans,” Putin hissed. “This is between me and woman bear.”
Upon seeing Putin’s receding hairline, the giant panda charged forward at full speed. Jimmie had only seen pandas sitting around in zoos, napping and occasionally eating shoots and leaves. He’d never seen a panda drop to all fours and go from zero to sixty in two seconds.
Before Putin could raise the barrel of the shotgun, the panda hit him like a semi plowing into a Smart electric car.
The shotgun went flying as Putin was slammed into the ground. The giant panda rolled him over onto his stomach to assume a more dominant position. Then the beast pawed at his back, ripping Putin’s shirt clean off. The sow raked its massive claws across the Russian’s exposed flesh, drawing blood.
The Secret Service agents exchanged glances with each other, unsure whether to intervene.
Trump held up a hand, as if to say,
Let the fight go on
.
The panda put one paw on the back of Putin’s skull and pressed down with all its weight. A great cry of anguish issued forth from beneath the beast. Jimmie flinched. The Russian president was being crushed to death live on social media. This was certainly a first in the digital realm.
Putin struggled to get out from under the panda, but it was useless. The sow had to weigh at least two tons. That was a lot of shoots and leaves.
After another minute, Putin’s arms and legs stopped twitching.
The panda stood on its hind legs and roared in victory.
Jimmie saw that Putin still had some fight left in him, however. The Russian president inched his hand down the side of his leg, where he found a six-inch bowie knife hidden underneath his dress pants.
The panda didn’t look down until it was too late. Putin rolled over onto his back (or what was left of it) and hopped to a standing position. It was a feat of athletic prowess that Jimmie had only seen before on the WWE. The panda cocked its head in confusion at the shirtless, bloodied man attempting to stand toe-to-toe with it. Despite Putin’s impressive stature, the panda towered several feet over him.
Before the panda could react, the Russian president ran the knife up through the bear’s ribs and straight into its heart.
The panda staggered backward on its hind legs, with the handle of the knife sticking out of its chest. It flailed its arms about and howled in pain. It took a few more ragged breaths before stumbling forward, right on top of the man who had struck it down. Two tons of dead weight fell on Putin, crumpling him like he was an empty can of Trump Cola.
July 1, 2018, 7:49
AM
Dorset:
The race for the White House was a wild one. On the Republican side, you battled it out with more than a dozen other serious contenders—
Trump:
I would hardly call them “serious.” There was only ever one serious candidate for the Republican nomination. His name was Donald J. Trump.
Dorset:
You certainly garnered the majority of votes. Still, Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, gave you a run for your money late in the campaign.
Trump:
Lying Ted Cruz? Don’t get me started on that guy. We all saw what happened to him in the end. Terribly sad. I knew he was a liar. I take no pleasure in being right about him, you know. I wish he’d been caught sooner, but he’s behind bars now.
Dorset:
I’d like to ask you about that. After you were sworn in, one of your first actions was to have the FBI reopen the Zodiac Killer case. Within a matter of weeks, they had arrested a suspect in the series of grisly killings that took place in California during the late sixties and early seventies: Ted Cruz.
Trump:
Brilliant work by the FBI.
Dorset:
The Zodiac Killer’s first confirmed murder, a double homicide in Solano County, was in December of 1968. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary in December of 1970.
Trump:
Being born in Canada doesn’t preclude someone from being a serial killer. It does preclude them
from being president of the United States of America, but that’s another story entirely.
Dorset:
I’m asking if it makes any sense that he’s the Zodiac Killer, given that all five of the murders law enforcement attributed to him occurred before he was even born.
Trump:
Ask the jury. I wasn’t in the courtroom. I didn’t see the evidence.
Dorset:
You really believe a jury could legitimately convict somebody for murders that couldn’t be committed without a time machine?
Trump:
I have faith in our justice system. Answer me this: Since Lying Ted Cruz has been locked up, has there been another Zodiac Killer murder? No, there hasn’t. I rest my case.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
T
hursday was declared a day of national mourning for President Putin. Trump excused all White House employees for the day so everyone could honor the late Russian president’s memory in their own way.
As Putin’s body was flown home to Russia, Jimmie hit up the Leonardo DiCaprio triple feature at the nearby megaplex. Putin had once described the actor as a
muzhik
. A “real man.” It was only fitting that both Putin and DiCaprio had gone out fighting bears—Putin at the White House and DiCaprio while filming
The Revenant 2
’s impressive live-grizzly attack scene (shot in one take, for which DiCaprio picked up a much-deserved posthumous Oscar).
It was while watching DiCaprio get torn apart by the pack of thirty-two hungry grizzlies that Jimmie finally concluded there was no way Putin could have had anything to do with Lester Dorset’s death. The Russian president had gone down fighting a two-ton panda. Putin was a real man. It was utterly inconceivable that he would murder a reporter by pushing him from a roof in the middle of the night. That wasn’t the way of
the
muzhik
. Lester Dorset’s killer was still out there. One suspect down . . . two to go.
June 25, 2018, 8:16
AM
Dorset:
You had some strong words for Jeb! Bush during the primaries.
Trump:
He’s a wimp. He has weak, limp wrists. A tiny voice. Low energy. He might be suffering from a medical condition. Have you heard of this? “Low T”?
Dorset:
Low testosterone levels. Some doctors say “low T” is exaggerated as a medical condition—that it’s natural for men’s testosterone levels to drop as we age.
Trump:
You know who doesn’t suffer from low testosterone levels? Me, that’s who. My doctor said my levels were off the charts. Literally so high they would need to recalibrate the testing equipment.
Dorset:
That sounds potentially dangerous.
Trump:
I should find a way to take my excess and bottle it. I could charge a fortune for it. You’d buy it.
Dorset:
Uh . . . I don’t know that—
Trump:
You’d buy it. Come on. Besides, who would you rather have in the White House? Somebody with too much testosterone or a wimp like Jeb! with too little?
Dorset:
I’m not sure if testosterone levels equate to sound governance. We’d have to check to see if any studies have been done.
Trump:
You don’t need a study to tell you that it takes “high T” to do what I do. It takes a pair of big balls to be commander in chief. When Jeb!’s finally drop, he’s welcome to come out of whatever Florida swamp hole he’s been hiding in and come at me like a man. I will fight him any day of the week. Except on Sunday. Sundays are reserved for golf and
Game of Thrones
.
Dorset:
You’ve been almost as critical of Jeb!’s brother, George W. Bush, as you were of Obama.
Trump:
The Iraq War was a disaster. How many trillions of dollars did we sink into that waste of time? If we’d gotten some oil out of it, it might have been worth it. How hard is that? Throw some empty jugs in the Humvee. He made the same mistake his father made with Kuwait. To quote
The Art of War
, “Never get into a land war in Asia.”
Dorset:
You’ve been very vocal about the need to “bomb the shit out of ISIS.” The United States’ use of unmanned drones in the Middle East has increased dramatically under your leadership.
Trump:
We’re bombing the shit out of them—their training camps, their weapons stockpiles, and so forth. All from the air with our little toy planes. Since I took office, not one American life has been lost overseas.
Dorset:
While that’s made you wildly popular with the American people, it’s brought condemnation from some quarters. Drone warfare is still warfare. The
Guardian
’s George Monbiot has said the US is “fighting a coward’s war.”
Trump:
The
Guardian
? How typical. Of course the Brits would call us names—they’re still nursing their wounds from when we ran them out of town in seventeen-whatever. They’re a nation of cowards, I tell you. They make France look like goddamn Sparta.
