You Can't Spell America Without Me

by Alec Baldwin

  Right after we sat down to dinner (strip steak for me, fish for our Japanese friends, of course), a call came in on my presidential phone, the one that vibrates in a special, very intense way. It was the secretary of defense in Washington—just a few minutes earlier, he said North Korea had fired a missile . . . at Japan! I was seated right between Mr. and Mrs. Abe. Although neither of them speaks English well, if their country was being destroyed right now, I didn’t want them to find out about it this way, by overhearing me talking to Mad Dog.

  “Mad—Jim,” I asked, “did the, you know . . . oreans-Kay uke-nay okyo-Tay?”

  No! he said, practically screamed, in fact, it was just a test launch of a missile, fell into the ocean, no warhead.

  “So we don’t do anything, right? Fantastic. Whew.”

  I was relieved—my brilliant scientist uncle at MIT always told me that nuclear was so bad, the worst, we really don’t want nuclear, even though we’ve always had the best nuclear— another one of those Cash-22s. But I also felt super excited because, after that, it became a fantastic scene from like Fail-Safe or Deep Impact, but adapted for live theater, starring me, Trump, as commander in chief, yet I could just enjoy the show. I told Prime Minister Abe the news, and then it was the two of us, the center of the action, the American leader and the obviously foreign leader, being briefed, looking at maps, nodding as translators said things. Our guys hustling around, moving chairs and candles, bringing out special digital flashlights, saying “downrange” and “PACOM” and “carrier air wing.” I loved hearing Abe call Flynn “Gen-ul-wah Fwin,” but Mike was so excited it made me kind of sad. And it was a little much when Steve whispered to me, “Surface Warfare Officer Bannon, reporting for duty, sir,” and he got so red-faced as the night wore on, I was afraid he might stroke out. Everybody in the restaurant was watching, and you could feel their excitement—because for all they knew, we were about to go into North Korea big-time! When I talked to Washington again, I got to use the Mar-a-Lago room they’d turned into a special high-tech bunker that jams all signals and beams and actually makes you invisible. When things on the patio were calming down, I asked my maître d’ to have the piano guy start playing the Mission: Impossible music and the original James Bond theme song, which made the night even better. My little press conference with Abe at the end, and then it was a wrap, as we say in show business, totally presidential and outstanding.

  Unfortunately, the media coverage was a complete and total lie. First of all: We avoided going to war with North Korea, right? Nobody mentioned that. Second of all, what do the pundits and reporters always say they want? Transparency! Openness! Like my incredibly popular free tweets, like my great interview of Romney at a fantastic public restaurant, like my press conferences that get the most viewers ever—the way I dealt with that alfresco North Korea crisis at Mar-a-Lago was the greatest display of transparency and openness in American foreign policy history, as many historians are saying.

  Next morning, the prime minister passed on another round of golf at Trump International, which I understood, given his scores the day before (secret, but triple digit on the eighteen), so I reminded him to use the “grip tip” I’d given him. “And one last thing, Shinzō—what do you think of my national security adviser, General Flynn?”

  He smiled and shrugged and made the three little circles with his finger around his ear. I gave him a thumbs-up and told him the vice president would definitely be in touch to work out the details on trade deals and so on. “Sayonara, Shinzō,” I said, but then remembered you’re only supposed to say that when it’s good-bye forever, so I immediately added, “and we’ll see each other again, meet you halfway next time, Trump Waikiki—my treat again!” As my dad always said about me, “At least the lying little bastard is fast on his feet,” which my mom said he meant with love.

  FLYING BACK TO WASHINGTON, Bannon came into the mini Oval for a while, watched the news coverage of me being the most important world leader. As they talked on the show about Flynn and Russia, I was glad Mike had had so much fun being Mr. Military at Mar-a-Lago, and I thought of The Godfather, the scene where Michael Corleone asks Tom Hagen, “Where does it say that you can’t kill a cop?” Corleone tells him, “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.” And also the scene when Michael says Fredo has a good heart but he’s weak and stupid and this is life and death.

  HE LOOKED SO MUCH LIKE FREDO RIGHT THEN. EVEN THOUGH I WASN’T ACTUALLY HAVING HIM “KILLED” AND HE HADN’T BETRAYED ME OR THE FAMILY. YET.

  I kind of think of Bannon as my Tom, the Robert Duvall character in The Godfather—a guy like me, like us, valuable guy, but not family. And then suddenly Steve did that mind-reading thing he does, which can be creepy. “Mr. President,” he said, “I agree with Flynn about a lot of things, but he is weak and stupid and this is life and death and nobody says you can’t fire a national security adviser after twenty-two days.”

  Mike always really, really enjoyed being Trump’s buddy, my sidekick during the campaign, but as Jared and Ivanka point out, I’d only known him for like a year. “Mike,” I told him the next day, “it’s terrible what the fake media has done to you, the disgusting and I’m sure untrue stories about you and the Russians and the rest of it, but the Mike I can’t fire”—that’s what Bannon calls Pence— “says you lied to him about your chats with Sergey and so on. But I must tell you, Mike, you’ve been a major, major asset to me in the White House these last three weeks–plus, very major.” He looked so much like Fredo right then. Even though I wasn’t actually having him “killed” and he hadn’t betrayed me or the family. Yet. I don’t think. “I’ll tweet about you, okay, I’ll put out tremendously nice tweeting about you. As you know, I’m a big loyalty guy. The biggest.”

  In fact, I proved that the next morning, right after a briefing in the Oval when we prevented some serious terrorism—Mad Dog, General Kelly, Jeffy, the vice president and the FBI director, some others. As the meeting broke up, I asked the FBI director to stick around for a minute. I made him sit right in front of the official presidential desk. Management 101.

  “James,” I said when we were alone, very respectful, because I think he’s probably one of these guys who can’t stand it if you call him Jim, like the ones who insist on “Stephen” or “Gregory” instead of Steve or Greg, which always strikes me as a bit sissy. “So get the leakers, okay? We both hate the leakers, right? Get all the leakers, put them in jail, I’m counting on you, James. But with Mike Flynn, maybe he made a mistake, we got rid of him, okay, but we don’t need to send him out in the rowboat on the lake with Al Neri, do we?”

  Comey didn’t understand. Which I found very strange, like maybe he was just playing dumb to embarrass me, because shouldn’t an FBI director, of all people, know The Godfathers, at least the first two?

  “What I mean, James,” I said, “is I really hope you can see your way clear to letting this all go, letting Flynn go, investigationwise, ‘crime’-wise. He’s a good guy. I really hope you can let this go, James. I really do.”

  Comey did his same old nervous headmaster blah-blah-blah protocol blah-blah-blah, with one of those I’m-sorry-but-I’m-so-pure smiles that have always pissed me off. Pardon my French.

  War-gaming is part of my responsibility as commander in chief, which I take very seriously, extremely seriously, unbelievably seriously—and as Ivanka says, I’ve got unbelievable “visual intelligence.”

  THE SO-CALLED RUSSIA STORIES

  Ivanka and Jared each asked me yesterday, separately, if they could read what I’ve written so far.

  “Not until I’m all done,” I said. “Nobody but me reads it until the fall. I told your stepmother the same thing. And her ‘advisers.’”

  Actually, when I told the First Lady she couldn’t read it, she thought I was saying she wouldn’t be able to understand it, because of her English. Which made me chuckle, which made her say that not letting her read my boo
k is like how I don’t take my clothes off in front of her. It was just regular husband and wife stuff, and I forgave her before she returned to New York at the end of the weekend. (By the way, getting ready for bed in private is much, much more romantic in my opinion. The dark is romantic. I once asked Hugh Hefner about this, and he totally agrees—Hugh Hefner!)

  “With the book,” Jared said, “I just think you need to be especially careful concerning Russia.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” I told him. “I had a chat about it with McGahn [my White House lawyer]. I totally get that as president, regardless of any information I may transmit orally or in written form, I am not thereby waiving my executive privilege from disclosing to Congress or any court or tribunal information or records that may someday be requested or subpoenaed. I get that, Jared.”

  “Good,” he replied.

  “I’m almost not even mentioning Russia in the book. Except if I make peace with them.”

  “Great,” Jared said. “That’s terrific. I’m pleased. Ivanka will be, too. Everyone will be. Because for posterity, you know, as we’ve discussed, if you don’t mention the untrue allegations, then when people read your book in ten years or twenty years, they’ll think it was nothing. Because it is nothing.”

  “Right. I get that. Hardly any Russia in the book at all. Maybe one tiny chapter. Maybe not. I haven’t decided. We’ll see.”

  But he brought up the “posterity.” This is history. This is history. I can’t ignore it. If I left Russia and Putin out completely, the media and the historians would say, “Oh, look—Trump was hiding something, he was a puppet, he was scared.” I’m not, I’m so not. In fact, it’s the opposite: Other people are hiding so many things, other people are puppets, other people are scared.

  So let me use this opportunity to lay out all the facts and come clean, once and for all. Not in a tweet. Not in an off-the-cuff answer at a press conference with the fake media, who are like assassins always trying to take shots at me. Here in a book.

  Yes, the president of Russia, incredibly popular with his people and very tough with his enemies, said a few times that “Trump is a genius.” Which gave the pathetic Democrats and the disgusting fake media an opening to start all the Russia talk after they blew the election, even though I don’t know Putin at all. Until I was president, I hadn’t even talked to Putin; I still haven’t met him. I have no deals in Russia, zero investments, I’ve only been to the country for a couple of days for the great 2013 Miss Universe pageant that was held there. All the stories are based on zero proof, nothing but made-up facts by sleazy political operatives, all of them unverified and unverifiable. It’s all a total ruse, a giant hoax, completely phony, 100 percent fake. Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn, who I guess had business dealings in that part of the world, worked for the campaign and, in Flynn’s case for the Administration, very, very briefly, ridiculously briefly—because I fired both of them, and I’m almost certain I never even met that dopey Carter Page, the weak one who smiles all the time like the worst liar ever. I agree that all the prominent Russians who’ve been dying this year, like one a week, including the businessman I mentioned earlier, my personal lawyer’s relative Alex (or Ivan or whatever)—Ukrainian, not Russian, but still—is weird. (My Secret Service guy Anthony says not to worry, but he’ll ask about Geiger counters in the White House and Mar-a-Lago kitchens.) What is definitely horrible are the disgusting leaks by the “intelligence community,” who are acting like the secret police in Russia when it was really bad, or Nazi Germany, and need to be prosecuted and locked up.

  I AGREE THAT ALL THE PROMINENT RUSSIANS WHO’VE BEEN DYING THIS YEAR, LIKE ONE A WEEK, IS WEIRD.

  By the way, even if I’d wanted to have super top-secret private chats with Putin every couple of days on the famous “red phone,” the hotline between the Oval Office and the Kremlin, which could be great, it turns out I can’t. There is no red phone! Very disappointing. I wondered if maybe the “intelligence” guys were just keeping it from me because of the fake Russia stories, the way my dad used to lock up his secret stuff—which, just to keep me on the ball, he always claimed were my “adoption papers” and “IQ scores.” But Ivanka and Jared confirmed it’s true—no red phone at all, just an e-mail hookup, what the military calls the MOLINK. I thought they were making some kind of army joke, that Russians or presidents who use the system are gay, but it’s short for Moscow Link. When I asked if it was used often, the colonel giving me the tour told me no, hadn’t been used for years until last Halloween— when Obama sent Putin a message warning him that if they messed with the presidential election, America would consider it an act of war. Then I was sure he was joking, yanking my chain, hazing me. (But Ivanka looked it up on her Wikipedia—it’s true! Isn’t it amazing how scared the Democrats were of me winning? And setting up in advance their fake “Russia” excuse for losing?) My end of the MOLINK isn’t even in the Oval Office—it’s downstairs in the Situation Room, and runs from there over to the Pentagon and then to Russia. Which means it really is like how my dad used to lock things away and always kept the car keys in his pocket.

  So that’s what I have to say about Russia. The bottom line is, I don’t really pay much attention to the so-called Russia stories about me and my campaign, because I’ve got so many, many more important things to deal with as president.

  IF I ACTED “PRESIDENTIAL” I’D LOSE MY SPECIAL POWERS

  When I was president of The Trump Organization, growing it into an exceptional global business, among the world’s best according to many experts, no executive of mine would dream of embarrassing me. And I don’t mean just my children—I mean the people without any Trump genes whatsoever. So now as president of the United States, why do my guys second-guess me in public all the time? Especially the generals I hired for the non-general jobs—who I hired because I thought their whole attitude was loyalty, chain of command, obeying orders, yes, sir. So why does Homeland Security put out an untrue report about our ban on terrorist immigrants, claiming that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity”? When I announce we’re deporting the baddest hombres back to Mexico in like a perfect military operation, why does my Homeland Security general have to say, “There will be no use of military in this”? One of the big Trump foreign policy principles, even before I was in politics, was that I would’ve taken all the oil from Iraq on our way out—so when my defense secretary goes to Abu Dhabi, why does he have to say, “We’re not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil”? And also say on the same trip, we won’t tear up the Iran deal, as I’d promised we would, because “we have to live up to it and work with our allies.” As soon as I hired him, Mad Dog became Tame Dog, Nice Dog . . . Scooby-Doo? At least Mike Flynn never contradicted me—and then as soon as I give General McMaster Flynn’s old job, why does he go all Hillary and announce that “radical Islamic terrorism” isn’t a nice thing to say?

  Wow, I just realized: At The Trump Organization, I wasn’t only the president—I was also chairman. I’m going to have my White House lawyer look into whether or not we need a constitutional amendment so I can be president and chairman of the United States. I’m pretty sure we can just go ahead and do it by executive order, or maybe have Congress pass a bill to make it more official.

  Speaking of making the government run more like a great business? In the executive order that’s about to change the cabinet guys’ titles, we’re also going to tweak the White House branding. If the failing establishment doesn’t want The Trump Organization to acquire the complex to make it as beautiful as it should be and lease it back to the government at cost for a limited period, fine—but we can still give the place some Trump flavor. Here’s an exclusive sneak preview of the new logo that’ll be going on every White House letterhead and Web site and sign and piece of merchandise very soon:

  Rodrigo told me he loves the new logo, by the way, especially the gold version. He al
so told me “Filipino” isn’t racist, it’s what you’re supposed to say—even though it also always sounded to me like an SUV model, a cheap one, “the new . . . Chevy Filipino!” By the way, Trump is very, very popular among the Filipino Americans, amazingly popular, way beyond the other Oriental and minority communities—who, by the way, also voted for me much more than they did for Romney, which the fake media has covered up. As a White House employee, Rodrigo says he doesn’t vote on principle, but his father and brother-in-law voted for me, although it was in California, so it didn’t count. Sad.

  Exclusive preview of our new White House logo.

  AS A BUSINESSMAN I was never like other businessmen, including being much, much more successful than 99 percent of them, but did anyone ever complain I wasn’t “businesslike”? No, apart from a few incompetents and cheats whose ridiculous bills I negotiated. I wasn’t like other people on prime-time TV, because every word they say is scripted for them and their shows never last for fifteen years, but nobody ever said I wasn’t a huge star. Now I’m president—but because I’m different from any president ever, at least since log cabin times, the pundits and phonies and haters and elitists and fake media complain I’m not “presidential.” Which is offensive. To be perfectly honest, that’s almost like a racist thing to say.

  I prove them wrong over and over, of course. I can be presidential. It’s the easiest thing in the world to be presidential. When I gave my first big speech to Congress, with the bouncing electronic ball added to my teleprompter screens (my invention, already applied for a patent), literally everybody was like, “Oh, look, he said ‘our children will grow up in a nation of miracles’! Trump is so presidential, very presidential, completely presidential, he’s amazing!”