Triggered

  Speaking of which, the other problem with Joe is that he’s completely out of touch. I mean, he’s like yesterday’s candidate. In fact, dress him up in a teal-colored pantsuit, and you’ll swear it’s 2016 all over again. Next to Crooked Hillary herself, Biden is the most corrupt establishment candidate ever to take a lobbyist’s checks, and he’s got an unbelievable amount of power with the swamp creatures of Washington. Give him the chance to go back to the White House, and the place will be crawling with reptiles quicker than a campaign volunteer can say, “Please, Mr. Vice President, no.” And that’s not even considering the big-money donors who’ll come rolling into DC like an eighteen-wheeler caravan or the Chinese, who have him and his son Hunter bought and paid for. Let’s not forget the fact that Hunter Biden has shady ties to China that no one seems to be able to explain to anyone, and got kicked out of the Naval Reserve for testing positive for cocaine, among other shady stuff; yet he enjoys almost complete immunity from the mainstream media. Now look, I quit drinking for a reason. I understand that some people have problems with addiction. But this isn’t about addiction. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth mentioning again: What do you think would happen if I, Donald Trump Jr., tested positive for cocaine? Do you think CNN would go live and say, “There’s probably a rational explanation for all this, let’s hear the guy out”? Probably not.

  Luckily, Biden would be the easiest candidate for my father to take apart. Think about it. If Kamala Harris can hand the guy a smackdown, what do you think DJT will do to him? Poor Joe doesn’t have the brainpower to go up against my father—and I mean that literally. His people excuse his gaffs and flubs as just “Joe being Joe,” but, I don’t know, it seems to me he’s suffering from more than just senior moments.

  Odds against being the nominee: 2 to 1.

  Bernie Sanders. Reason not to vote for him: this quote from the 1980s:

  It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That is a good thing! In other countries, people don’t line up for food. The rich get the food and the poor starve to death.

  Bernie Sanders has spent his whole life pushing for a system that has never worked in the history of Western civilization—one that has made hundreds of millions of people poor and destitute—and now he’s doing it with millions of dollars in the bank and three luxury homes to his name. For a guy who hates capitalism so much, he’s actually done pretty well in the system. Think about it: he found a niche market, developed a product—which I’ll call “delusion”—and then he sold the hell out of that product in his market. The guy is the ultimate Commie Capitalist.

  Odds against being the nominee: 5 to 1.

  Elizabeth Warren. Back in June 2018, when Kimberly Guilfoyle, my girlfriend, was a host on The Five on Fox, she and the other hosts took a 23andMe DNA test. They did it in response to the Warren heritage controversy. If you haven’t seen her—and if you haven’t, you must have been locked in a fallout shelter somewhere—Kimberly is beautiful, a perfect combination of dark Irish and Puerto Rican princess. When her test came back, those ancestries dominated her results. There was, however, a little surprise. When I heard about the results, I immediately opened my Twitter account and proposed a wager with Senator Warren: ten grand to her favorite Native American charity if she could prove she was more Native American than my girlfriend. We never heard back from her. Too bad. It would’ve been the easiest $10,000 donation I ever made. Kimberly is 6.1 percent Native American. And Pocahontas? Well, she’s got essentially no percent.

  Shortly afterward, I took Kimberly to the annual Fourth of July party at the White House, along with our friends Sergio Gor, Andy Surabian and Arthur Schwartz.

  I wanted to go because I could join my father in thanking the troops and their families who would be gathered on the lawn of the White House. I always enjoy speaking with our troops, real Americans who have given so much and have sometimes been forgotten in the perpetual wars of the Middle East. Some of the biggest heroes I have met over the last 4 years include the bravest soldiers who fought for this nation, patriots like John Wayne Walding, Rob O’Neill and Marcus Luttrell. After shaking hands and posing for photos, we found ourselves in the diplomatic room inside the White House, enjoying a quite moment and some air conditioning from the blistering heat; we were soon joined by President Trump and the First lady.

  Not surprisingly, in a room full of politicos—the topic soon turned to politics, including the looming Supreme Court nomination. Not one to keep quiet about big news, Kimberly decided to share with the room that she had just gotten back her DNA results which turned out to show she was not just that Irish and Puerto Rican, but also 6.1% Native American, part African and even part Ashkanazi Jewish.

  My father listened attentively and we soon changed topics, but it was only a few days later that he was campaigning for Matt Rosendale in Montana and also challenged Elizabeth Warren to a DNA test! Not one to be outdone, he significantly increased the ante—to one million dollars. If she took the DNA test and proved she was part Native American, my father would donate that money to a charity of her choice.

  So what’s the big deal about her DNA lie? Well, first, besides looking really stupid promoting herself as a minority, it’s a despicable thing to do. She said the subject hadn’t come up when she applied for a job at Harvard. Really? Then why, I wonder, did the university boast that it had a Native American professor? It went as far as describing her as a person of color in the Fordham Law Review. Wonder how they explained the blond hair?

  Look, ask yourself this: If Warren has no problem being a fake American Indian, why would she have a problem faking anything else: her diplomas, grades, age, the list can go on forever. And what about the people who applied for the Harvard job and didn’t get it because they told the truth? To this day, she denies that she got any benefit from doing so. In my opinion, that makes what she did much worse.

  It’s bad enough that she’s an admitted liar without a conscience, but she’s also as smug as you can be about it. Even her so-called apology at a presidential forum lately was little more than a campaign stop.

  In the last presidential election, voters despised the way Hillary talked down to them. She came across as though she felt she was better than the people whose votes she wanted. Elizabeth Warren is ten times worse; at least Hillary wasn’t literally a Harvard professor. Warren talks to people as if they’re the dumb kids in her class. Yes, she has some actual policy plans, at least compared to the rest of the Democrats, but she might as well be talking about nuclear fission. And when she tries to put on the “regular Jane” routine, what happens? Well, if you haven’t seen it, google “Warren beer video.” Her “impromptu” announcement speech on Instagram is hilarious. I’ve seen better acting in grammar school plays. By the way, Elizabeth, why’d you take the label off the beer? They wouldn’t give you product placement money?

  As I’ve said often throughout this book, I’m not a political strategist. I don’t aspire to be one, either. But still, I have to wonder who on the Warren campaign thought it would be a good idea to take the DNA test results proving she was maybe 1/1024th Native American and spin it as a victory. But I do know that whoever’s idea it was, Warren herself had to approve it. At best, this shows a serious lack of judgment. At worst, it shows total incompetence.

  Still, at least at this writing, there’s an outside chance that Warren will be the Democratic nominee. The way the Democratic Party is lurching toward socialism, I wouldn’t be surprised.

  Odds against being the nominee: 5 to 1.

  Kamala Harris. Up to now, she’s grabbed the spotlight in the debates exactly once, when she accused Joe Biden of being a supporter of racists (which I have, too, often) and against busing to desegregate public schools back in the 1970s. I’ll give her this, she set up Biden perfectly. If you remember, she told a story about a little girl in California who rode one of the first desegregation buses. When she dropped the hammer with the line �
��That little girl was me,” Joe’s reaction was priceless—as though someone had just told him his zipper had been open for the last thirty years. Unlike Elizabeth Warren’s inauthentic beer video, Harris’s words came across as an earnest, off-the-cuff attack against someone who had really hurt her feelings. But it wasn’t. According to people inside the campaign, the Harris team worked on scripting those few sentences for months, making sure the optics and the delivery were pitch perfect. That whole speech was about as sincere as a singing e-card.

  What isn’t funny is her record as California’s attorney general. She supported her state’s draconian “three strikes” law, which, according to the Justice Policy Institute, sent black people to jail at a rate twelve times as high as whites. Many of those people were nonviolent, even petty criminals. A whole generation of black men and women were sent to jail while Kamala Harris was in charge.

  Meanwhile, it’s my father who’s getting criminal justice reform passed. In December 2018, he signed the First Step Act, which rolls back harsh drug sentencing and allows for alternatives to prison such as treatment for opioid addicts and work-release programs. The bill passed Congress with overwhelmingly bipartisan support. That’s how you change things in Washington.

  Odds against being the nominee: 15 to 1.

  Mayor Pete. Look, I have nothing against Mayor Pete. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, but the optics are all wrong. He’s just done nothing to merit this kind of job. Even his own constituents have no idea what he’s done. Also, that no-jacket thing? What’s going on there? On my friend Representative Jim Jordan, the no-jacket, shirtsleeve look works. Jim comes across as just what he is, a no-bullshit straight shooter, because that’s just what he is. But on Pete, it makes him look lost, as though his mom forgot to put his pudding in his lunch box. Pete’s just not ready for prime time yet. Maybe in a couple of cycles, but not now. Besides, he’s got enough going on in the small city he runs. If he can’t manage the police and the racial discord in South Bend, Indiana, how the heck is he supposed to run the country? His town is rated a whopping 301st among the United States’ largest cities. If you can’t run a city that’s not even in the top three hundred, how are you going to run the world’s largest economy? He’s the second-to-worst mayor in the United States. Who’s the worst? Keep reading and you’ll find out.

  Odds against being the nominee: 25 to 1.

  Beto O’Rourke. Reasons to not vote for him: Irish guy who uses a Hispanic first name for effect. Waves his arms around too much. Fading badly. Wrote short stories about running over kids with his car. Was arrested for trespassing. Tried to leave the scene of a drunk-driving wreck that he caused, according to officers who were on the scene. Thinks he’s Batman.

  Okay, so maybe not the last one. But did you really need anything else after the murder fantasy about children? I didn’t even think you’d read the next ones.

  Odds against being the nominee: 25 to 1.

  Cory Booker. I don’t think Senator Booker has much of a chance, but I’ll give you a good reason not to vote for him anyway: he has an imaginary friend. Not kidding. Look it up. On stump speeches and other occasions, he’s fond of telling people about a guy named T-Bone whom he met when he first moved to Newark. At the time, Booker was attending Yale Law School. That’s after he went to Stanford, of course, and after having grown up on the tough streets of Harrington Park, New Jersey. Not. Harrington Park is one of the nicest suburbs in the state. Anyway, T-Bone, according to the senator, is a “drug lord.” Call me crazy, but I don’t think they use the term “drug lord” in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Newark. T-Bone, Booker tells his audience, once promised to “bust a cap in his ass,” which sounds like dialogue from the 1991 movie New Jack City. Look, it’s as simple as this: Booker almost certainly made T-Bone up. He created him, I guess, to burnish his “street cred.” After all, when you grow up in a town where the biggest crime is low-foam cappuccino, you need all the street cred you can get. But don’t feel sorry for the senator from New Jersey. There might be big things ahead for him. I’m thinking a TV series: T-Bone and Booker. Got a ring to it, right?

  Odds against being the nominee: 30 to 1.

  Amy “Minnesota Nice” Klobuchar. Like Booker, Beto, and Mayor Pete, the senator from Minnesota is an also-ran, so I won’t give her much ink. But I do have a word of advice for anyone who goes to work for her: Duck.

  Odds against being the nominee: 50 to 1.

  The Field. I’m not going to go through every candidate because I love the outdoors and I don’t want to see trees go to waste. So in the interest of conservation, I’ll just put them into one big pile, which I’ll call, let’s see… Oh, I’ve got it! I’ll just use their polling numbers! You’ve heard of the 1 percent? Drumroll, please… let’s give a big conservative welcome to the none percent! SteveBullockJuliánCastroJohnDelaneyMichaelBennetTulsiGabbardWayneMessamTimRyanJoeSestakTomSteyerMarianneWilliamsonAndrewYang.

  If you’ve been following the Democratic presidential primary race closely—and I don’t know why you would—you might have noticed someone missing from my name mash. That’s because I wanted to save the best for last.

  Bill de Blasio. Worst. Mayor. Ever.

  One of de Blasio’s first public events as New York City mayor came on Groundhog Day 2014. All he had to do was go to a zoo on Staten Island, meet the groundhog (whose name was Chuck), tell the people whether or not Chuck had seen his shadow, and go home. Easy, right? Not if you’re Bill de Blasio. When the zookeeper handed the animal to him, the mayor promptly dropped it on its head. Because de Blasio is about twelve feet tall, the fall was fatal. I’m not kidding; a veterinarian had to put the animal down a week later. So the first thing he did as mayor of New York was kill a groundhog. And things only got worse from there.

  The police in New York City absolutely hate the guy, and I don’t blame them one bit. He has done nothing but undermine them and make it impossible for them to do their jobs. He told his biracial son to be afraid of cops! When a police officer named Miosotis Familia, a mother of three, was shot in the head by a cop-hating parolee, instead of going to the vigil in the precinct, de Blasio took a trip to Germany. Just recently, New York cops have been targeted by people who throw buckets of water on them. Under any other mayor, those people would have been charged for assaulting a police officer. But not under this mayor. Police officers, who put their lives on the line every day, are publicly humiliated, and de Blasio shrugs his shoulders.

  By every single metric he’s a failing mayor. His school system consistently ranks as one of the worst in the country. Recently, he contemplated doing away with classes for gifted children. So he wants to put the next Einstein in with the Welcome Back, Kotter kids? Smart, Bill, really smart!

  Along with being a terrible mayor, de Blasio is a very bad politician. So while cops are being assaulted, serious crimes such as murder and rape are spiking, and his constituents live in rat-infested public housing, where do you think the mayor is? In Iowa having a corn dog. According to the New York Post, de Blasio worked from City Hall for a grand total of seven hours in the month of May 2019, earning an effective salary of $3,080 an hour. There are probably people who spent more time waiting in line at City Hall to get married than the mayor spent working there.

  Last May, he thought he would pull a fast one with a surprise event at Trump Tower announcing his version of the Green New Deal. I guess it never crossed his mind that there might be pro-Trump people in Trump Tower or that word of the event might leak out beforehand. By the time his pop-up presser was ready to go, we had the sound system cranked playing Tony Bennett’s “Stranger in Paradise” and Frank Sinatra’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Meanwhile, dozens of protestors, including a pro-Trump lesbian group, rode up and down the escalators holding signs and chanting “Worst. Mayor. Ever!”

  Now, if you’re like me, you might be asking yourself why in the world de Blasio would think he could be president. Maybe it’s because his head is so high in the atmosphere that
he’s not getting enough oxygen. Luckily, his odds aren’t great. According to the polling analysis website FiveThirtyEight, the mayor has a negative favorability rating. That mean he has a less-than-zero chance to win the nomination.

  Odds of being the nominee: less than zero.

  Unless my publisher gets hacked by Russians, this book should be on the shelves of your favorite bookstore in early November 2019, eight months before the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. In that time, candidates will make countless references to racism, sexism, transphobia, Islamophobia, and whatever the new giveaway of the day is. All they’ll do is prove that nothing has changed, that the Democrats are still obsessed with identity politics over real progress, proposing harebrained socialist plans instead of real solutions, and pandering to the fragile emotions of social justice warriors.

  It’s the same old story.

  17.

  TRUMP 2020

  IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED, I’m not exactly a Hallmark card type of guy. I’ve never thought there was much value in sentimentality, in getting all misty about the past or whatever. Bleh.