Donald Trump Meets His Pop Again
A dream he hoped would (and wouldn't) end.
On the third night of his second presidency, Donald J. Trump couldn’t sleep. He pressed the magic button that would cause an aide to scurry in with a cold Diet Coke™ and a bag of Cheetos™, and tried to think of something typically momentous to decree on Truth Social. Hours before, one of his spies had related that an intern to an aide-de-camp’s aide had apparently suggested that it had been churlish of Mr. Trump to mock former President Biden’s old-guy’s walk in the President’s Room. His new attorney general had advised against Mr. Trump ordering the young lady executed, though, and he wasn’t at all happy.
He went back to bed, and dreamed for a few minutes of being in a little skiff rowed by the late queen of England, an incredible woman, but woke up, to his amazement, in his father’s study in the Jamaica Estates, Queens, colonial-style house in which he’d spent his early years.
“Wow,” the president gasped. “I thought you were dead, Pop.”
The elder Mr. Trump beamed mischievously in a way that Donald had never seen in life. “Well,” he said, winking, “on some planes I did. In June 1999. And how that’s for a pisser? Missing the dawn of the new whatchamacallit by six months, not that the friggin’ dementia would have let me enjoy it.
“Will you have some brandy with me, Donny?”
Boy, was this weird. His own pop didn’t know that President Trump had never tasted alcohol?
“A cigar then,” Mr. Trump said, winking again. “Cuban. You can’t get a better cigar.”
“I’m good,” President Trump said, hoping the dream — if a dream it was — would end, and that it wouldn’t.
The elderTrump beamed at him in a way the president couldn’t remember him ever having done. “I know you are, son. I know you are. That’s why I wanted to have this little powwow. Since ’99, I’ve had a lot of times to think things over, son, and to come to regret the hell out of the the dad I was to you kids. So demanding! Always telling you to be tougher, and meaner! Teaching you that only losers felt compassion.” He shook his head sadly and sighed.
“If you hadn’t taught me that stuff, Pop, I wouldn’t be the incredible success I am, though.”
“An incredible success in some ways,” Mr. Trump said. “But a failure in a lot of other ways, Donny. Let’s face it. Insecure as hell. Always either bragging or whining about how unfairly you’ve been treated. Heartless as all-get-out. Incapable of love. A rotten husband. A rotten father — just like your old man, and just like my own old man was. A fraud. I mean, honestly, son, that whole Apprentice thing? I know how you’d lost most of the millions I left you. And there you were pretending to be a business genius! I’ll admit to you, Donny, that made me laugh.
“But listen to me! I’m not here to make you feel bad. I’m here because I know what a big part I played in your being the jerk you are, and to try to make up for that, to help you see how lucky you are. Seventy-seven million people voted for you even though you screwed the hell out of the pooch the first time around. Why not try to get some joy out of that, Donny?”
The president heard himself give voice to something he’d never imagined himself saying to anyone, “But I’m a loser, Pop. Taylor Swift's Eras Tour sold more than 10 million tickets to149 shows across five continents.”
Fred Trump leaned over and grasped his son’s shoulder for the first time ever. The president, biting his lip to keep form bursting into tears, tears being for losers and the weak, wanted to put his hand on his dad’s arm, but it was as though his own arm was paralyzed.
“You’re almost 80, Donny. That’s old enough to have realized that always comparing yourself to someone else is a shit-for-brains’ game! I watched the friggin’ inauguration! For the love of Pete, that wasn’t a loser’s butt all those big muckety-mucks were kissing! It’s not going to get better than that, Donny. It can only go downhill.
“And this ‘God saved me so I could save America’ business? Donny, for crying out loud! Isn’t that just a little…much?”
“I didn’t write that, Pop. Blame one of my speechwriters.”
Mr. Trump shook his head sadly and has a sip of brandy. “Never accepting responsibility, Donny. Never — what’s that new phrase you hear all the time? — manning up. Those things don’t suggest strength, son. They suggest its absence. And all this getting retribution, all this getting even horseshit. Forget it, son. It isn’t going to make you feel better. Scaring the Mexicans and what-have-you, making them worry that somebody’s going to bang on the door in the middle of the night and throw them into the back of a van. What that Episcopal bishop, Mariann — just like your big sister! — Whatever said at the inaugural prayer service yesterday?That was damned good advice, son. Better advice than you ever got from your old man. That’s for sure!”
That his dad’s eyes had filled with tears was more than the president could bear. He jumped off the little sofa, threw his arms around his father, and began sobbing so hard it was a wonder he didn’t make his dad’s ashtray fall of the desk. Mr. Trump’s reciprocating the embrace and saying, “I love you, son,” in a voice the president had never known to quaver made the president sob all the harder.
“As it stands,” Mr. Trump said, “pretty nearly half of the country hates you, Donny, and when it finally dawns on them — God, when did America get so stupid? — that you’ve been conning them, you’re going to lose the other half too. So do something that’ll make the whole world love you, son.”
“Like what, Pop? All I’ve been good at is making people scared of me.”
“Spend on medical research the money you were going to waste on deporting people who are working their asses off to give their kids a better life. Cure cancer and not just the USA, but the whole world will love you for it.
“Or maybe that’s a bridge too far? At the very least, get your head out of your butt about global warning. Let’s say there’s only a 20 percent chance of the scientists being right about the danger. Would you put your grandkids — my great grandkids — on a plane that had a 20 percent chance of crashing?” It occurred to the president that he could probably go up to 50 percent if it meant a few hundred million more in his pocket, and the thought made him shudder with shame.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” were the kindest words Fred Trump had ever spoken to his son.