by Alec Baldwin
Rodrigo came in to wake me, but I told him I’d been awake for an hour, working—because writing this book really is important presidential work. History.
Like my Fox friend Steve just said on TV, the fake media and Democrats feel better about losing the election if they can say I’m “obsessed” with Obama, using “intelligence” to put surveillance on me during the campaign. I’m not obsessed. Why would I be? I won, nobody disagrees, I won so big, especially in the electoral college, where I won 60 percent of the votes, which is the same as President Reagan and FDR won of the popular vote. The only thing I’m obsessed with is getting the truth out about how Obama and Hillary tried to steal the election by wiretapping me and are now covering it up.
They’ll keep the hoax and cover-up going today at Chairman Núñez’s House committee hearings, where Comey and the head of the NSA will testify, and I have a very strong hunch they’ll both say they have no evidence of Obama’s wiretaps on me and that the FBI is investigating “Russia.”
Which is going to make me very, very, very angry. I need to get out in front of all that. Hit them before they hit me.
“James Clapper, head of ALL intelligence, above NSA and Comey at FBI, who I could fire, states there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER POTUS colluded with Russia, where I have no investments and no deals. This story is TOTALLY FAKE NEWS and everyone totally knows it!!!”
Wow. One hundred twenty characters too long. If I ran Twitter I’d make premium memberships so people could write longer ones. No wonder it’s not profitable.
Tweak, trim, and . . . tweet, wham bam!
Which, by the way, my friend Kanye West told me really is a brilliant line for a song. He’s started calling me “Mr. President DJ Trump” when we talk. He said it was okay if I started calling him “my nigga,” but we decided I should wait for my second term. Fantastic guy, Kanye.
Feeling better. It’s still dark outside.
“The pathetic Democrats who used to beg me for money totally made up the Russian story as their excuse for running Hillary’s terrible campaign, worst ever. Gigantic advantage in The Electoral College and STILL COULDN’T BEAT THE UNBEATABLE TRUMP!”
Tweak, trim, tweet.
It’s still dark. Feeling a lot better. Rodrigo just brought me my bacon, Ovaltine, and supplements and special vitamins.
I SHOT OFF ANOTHER TWEET before sunrise about finding the traitors and leakers on “Russia,” one more during Fox & Friends about CNN’s fake polls, then another during the secret underground walk to the West Wing about the Clinton campaign’s contacts with Russia. And then while I was watching Comey testify to Núñez on the 65-inch in the room next to the Oval, I did a tweet about that, like a Trump News bulletin—how the FBI director wouldn’t say he hadn’t told Obama about the wiretapped calls Flynn made totally without my knowledge to Russia. Wow.
I was glad when Comey announced they were reopening the investigation of Hillary’s dangerous and reckless and criminal e-mailing the week before the election, last fall—the American people demanded and deserved that. But since then I’ve realized he was actually doing Hillary and the Democrats a big favor—giving them an excuse for losing, which they would have done anyway. Why did the elite and the press think Comey was so great in the first place? Because he disobeyed a Republican White House, during Bush. Who appointed Comey? Obama. Who smiled when he told me not to hire General Flynn, so I’d think he was joking and hire him anyway? Obama. Who played so cagey when I phoned him, twice, to ask if he was investigating me and then testified to the committee today, twice, that he has “no information to support those tweets,” meaning my tweets about the wiretaps, calling me, his boss, a liar, and saying the word “tweets” like they were something dirty? Obama’s man Comey.
People say it would look terrible if I fired Comey. We’ll see about that. And that I can’t possibly go back and replace General McMaster with General Flynn as national security adviser. We’ll see about that, too. A president can do whatever he wants, even if most of them have been too scared to use their full powers, like Clark Kent if he never turned into Superman.
Later in the afternoon I had my first official meeting with my director of national intelligence. “Mike,” I said, “how much do we spend on intelligence, total, all in?”
“About eighty billion dollars a year, Mr. President. And it’s Dan, sir, not Mike, Dan Coats.”
“Right! Right!” Like Mike Pence he’s from Indiana, like Pence he also served in Congress, and he could be Mike’s brother they look so much alike—plus, my head of the CIA is named Mike, too, Mike Pompei, also was a congressman. It gets confusing. “So, Dan, you were in Congress your whole life, good Republican, great Republican, you know how things work, and now you oversee all intelligence for me, including the FBI. I want you to think about how we get Comey to stop wasting time and money investigating the Democrats’ fake Russian stories. We all want that, don’t we, Dan?” He had some interesting things to say about that—I just “listened” to the “tape” again—but for now I think I’ll keep what he said private.
“Different subject. Bigger subject. A plan I was discussing with one of my sons. We’re spitballing here, okay?” I didn’t tell him I meant my youngest son, because if he knew it was Barron’s idea he wouldn’t take it seriously. “Let’s say we use twenty billion dollars of that eighty to pay twenty thousand a year to a million foreigners all over the world, the right million people, what they call ‘assets,’ they all e-mail us everything they see and hear every week in Kiev or Burma or Africa, all million of them. And then our computers process all those e-mails. That’s twenty grand a year on average—more in Europe, lots less in Africa, et cetera. Tell me that wouldn’t be a much, much better system than we have now! And when we need the rough work done, well, we’ve got a million guys on retainer to choose from to help out with that.”
He nodded and wrote some notes.
“I was talking to one of my senior advisers about this, too, because she was saying her oldest child, the one with the Disney princess name, she’s almost six, wants to be a Brownie—a little Girl Scout, not a brownie you eat—but actually, my point is, it made me think of the cookies, when we were young, Dan, remember the cookies? So terrible, really bad. And, you know, people send boxes of Girl Scout cookies to the soldiers fighting in wherever, Vietnam, Iran, and the media shows these guys opening them up and crying, and the Girl Scouts think it’s because they’re so touched, but these guys are actually thinking, ‘I’m about to get blown up and my last meal is another box of fucking Thin Mints or Samoas?’—but, anyway, Girl Scout cookies are an amazing brand, not good but very successful, and this is my point about our intelligence network, my new idea, because they sell by completely covering the territory, right? So we need, like, a worldwide CIA Girl Scout spy network, my million spies. They don’t necessarily have to be good, they just have to be everywhere.”
I HEAR THAT SO MUCH FROM MY PEOPLE—WE’RE LOOKING INTO IT, MR. PRESIDENT.
Dan said it was “a very interesting vision,” and he’s going to look into it with his experts—the exact same thing he said when I asked him if the CIA killed Kennedy or any other presidents. He said it again a day or two later when I phoned to remind him to help stop Comey’s witch hunt. In fact, it’s the same answer I got from my White House counsel and Jeff Sessions about suing the fake media for their fake stories. I hear that so much from my people—We’re looking into it, Mr. President.
By the way, Barron really is the smartest eleven-year-old I’ve ever met. He just turned eleven, which I remembered even before the Google reminder he set up popped onto my screen, because his birthday is also the first day of spring. For my four previouschildren, I tried to make sure the birthdays happened in the fourth quarter, calendar year not fiscal year—the later in the year they’re born, the better a deal it is for you, since you get the tax deduction for the whole year no matter when they’re born. My
first time out, Don Junior, I hit the bull’s-eye—December 31—and I did pretty great with two out of the next three. I love Eric, but Don Junior and I joke about how he always comes close but misses—and after his mother refused to have the C-section on New Year’s Eve, he came out right at the beginning of the next calendar year, worst possible timing taxwise. But my reasons for fall and early winter babies weren’t just financial—I always preferred to stop “conceiving” during the really hot and sweaty time, late June, July, August, even September. So we never did. I know a lot of people feel the same way.
Where was I?
Right—Obama, the wiretaps. See, I wasn’t even thinking about it for like the last ten minutes. Which proves I’m not “obsessed.”
In fact, I’m spending all of my time now doing everything I can to help Paul Ryan repeal the terrible, horrible, disgusting, scary, bad, complete, and total out-of-control failure Obamacare, and replacing it with our beautiful new plan. A plan that Ryan, by the way, strongly understands, even though it’s all so unbelievably detailed and complicated. It’s true that years ago, almost a year ago, at least four months ago, I said that he didn’t know how to win and that he’s a weak and ineffective leader—and privately I said worse!—but that was before I really got to know Paul.
By the way? One big reason I’m not “obsessed” with the other thing, once and for all proving I’m right about the wiretapping, is because that’s about to work itself out in a very interesting way, as Paul Ryan and Steve Bannon both just assured me.
I conserve presidential energy for important presidential decision-making duties by riding in Golf Cart One inside the White House whenever possible. The First Lady, who’s now 47 (not a typo), prefers to keep her figure as good as a 47-year-old woman can.
EVERYBODY LIED TO ME
I was so, so excited on Wednesday morning when I saw Congressman Núñez giving his press conferences about the intelligence proving I was right about the wiretaps. I was excited because he was totally vindicating me. The whole thing was going off perfectly. All the shows were showing it, talking about it. “Bombshell,” they said.
But I was also excited because—okay, hold on, let me paint the whole picture for you. It’s amazing.
We’re in the West Wing watching Núñez on TV giving his first press conference over at the Capitol. “There was surveillance activity,” he says, “it’s not right, and the American people shouldn’t be comfortable with this.” I’m so excited. I almost feel like I need to take one of my other supplements, to calm down. I turn off the TV and sit down with the bureau chief from Time magazine, doing an interview for their cover story about how I call out fake news no matter what. I keep telling the guy over and over, “Núñez just gave this incredible press conference, Núñez just gave this fantastic press conference,” I even read him a story about it off my phone, “Núñez is now going to the White House to brief Trump.”
Then like five minutes later, boom, Núñez is here in the West Wing to “brief ” me. It’s like I read it and then it came true, almost like a piece of magic, when the genie appears to grant your wish.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” he said. “I have just received some very important information for you that Speaker Ryan believes you should definitely know about as soon as possible. Because it is extremely important.”
“I appreciate that very much, Devin,” I replied, “since I know you are the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and therefore have access to top-secret information about things the intelligence community does. Please brief me on what you have found.”
Blah-blah-blah, he tells me it looks like Obama could have definitely, absolutely had them wiretap me.
“Well, Congressman Núñez,” I told him, “that is very, very important and interesting and historic information, also disgusting, so disgusting, which I am pleased you are putting out there, because the American public definitely has a right to know the truth and your committee must investigate it completely right away. Thank you!”
Then he walks outside to talk to all the reporters right outside here—so I’m watching him in real life, maybe 100 feet away, out my window, but I’m also seeing him live on TV, because the TV I’m watching is right next to the window.
It was another one of those truly fantastic moments as president, the best ones, where it’s like I’m in a scene from a movie about President Trump—which makes it all so much better and seem so much more real.
I can’t tell you how excited I was. I was on top of the world. It was all working.
That was Wednesday. Now it’s Saturday, only three days later. And now everything is ruined.
Everything is crap.
Everybody screwed up.
Everybody lied to me.
Right away the leakers leaked that the night before Núñez came out and backed me up, he got a call from somebody at the White House to come to the White House to look at the secret documents, so that twelve hours later he could come back to the White House to “brief” me about the secret documents. And then Núñez immediately caved. Great work, White House chief strategist. Great work, little Jeopardy! winner guy, and great work, Mr. Intelligence Committee Chairman with no more future in my Republican Party.
At the same time, Ryan started telling me he doesn’t think we should have his part of Congress, the House, vote on our health plan because he would lose, can’t get enough Republican votes. The plan’s been out there for two weeks! He said it was great! I went to the mat for it! And then at the last minute yesterday, he comes running over to the White House to tell me we’ll definitely lose.
I watched him walk into the Oval. Ryan is such a gym rat, almost fifty and so skinny. He’s the goody-goody kind of Irish kid I always hated—like Comey at the FBI, although I can also imagine Paul swiping money off the collection plates, but both of them are the same kind of Irish priest type you can’t really trust. Sometimes I think I was right about Ryan during the campaign, when I was hitting him on the Twitter. He acts so smart, even though he went to some crappy college in the Midwest, not Ivy League, not Wharton, where I graduated.
I was in the presidential chair behind the big desk, Management 101, Ryan and his pal Reince sitting on the other side. Ryan and Reince, Ryan and Reince, Ryan and Reince. They’re like two guys who run a bowling alley in Milwaukee.
“So, Ryance, you Washington experts screwed up big-league, huh? If we pull the health plan now, I’m going to look weak. Like a guy who can’t get it up and keep it in there, pardon my French, which I’m not, by the way, never was, don’t have that problem, that’s just a comparison. And because we’re talking about health issues.”
“Well,” Ryan said, staring right at me with that I’m-so-concerned face of his, “you are very disappointing. You don’t even know you’re a shitty president, so shitty, and you just can’t do this job, you freaking cocksucker. You really have no clue what you’re doing, right? You’re just a zero, some kind of joke. I hate you. You’re afraid. And you’re just . . . dumb.”
I leaned forward so fast I knocked the glass of Diet Coke onto the floor. (The springs in this chair in the Oval Office are too springy.) “What the hell did you just say? Say that again?”
Ryan jerked back and looked all frightened and twitchy. So did Reince. “I—I said I know you are very disappointed, but that we don’t know how to get two hundred sixteen, Mr. President, those two hundred sixteen votes, we just can’t do the job with the Freedom Caucus. I said we really have no clue how to do it right now, just zero way forward with some of these folks. Like I said, I hate where we are, but I’m afraid we’re just done.”
I shook my head slowly and turned away from them and just stared out the window as they got up to leave. Management 101.
Then I swiveled around. My chief of staff was on his hands and knees right by my desk. “For Christ’s sake, Reince, you don’t need to pick up the
goddamn ice cubes.”
I’m still not 100 percent sure I didn’t hear Ryan right the first time, and that he panicked and pretended he hadn’t said all those things. Trust me, I know how that goes. But my point now is that if I did hear him wrong the first time, it really shows you what the stress of this job does to you. It has been such a rough few days, so much stress, so tough.
Speaking of gym rats, Jared was in Aspen all week having fun with Ivanka, who looks so fantastic in the ski outfits, always has. Therefore neither of them gave me any help on the health plan or the wiretaps or any of it. Now they’re back in Washington but it’s Saturday, so I can’t even talk to them because of Schmo Robot, the weekly Jewish holiday. And when we do talk tomorrow, I know Jared will be thinking “I told you so” about the health plan.
The First Lady went to Mar-a-Lago straight from New York on my jet yesterday, by herself, which she’s never done before. She’s probably having fun all over Palm Beach because she’s suddenly $3 million richer, because my lawyers just got that disgusting British newspaper to settle with her and admit it didn’t have the proof she’d done what it said she’d done, which quite frankly made me lose respect for them as reporters.
HEADING OUT TO THE COURSE lifted my spirits. Also, my extra-strength supplements. And at least now with the warmer weather, when I’m stuck in Washington on weekends I can golf. By the way, I realized a few years ago that the people who claim they’re worried about “global warming” are lying, because who doesn’t prefer spring and summer to winter, right?
“I’ve got a question, Anthony,” I said to my fantastic African American secret super protection agent from the special service as we drove in my armored limo out to my beautiful club in Virginia. (Where membership includes reciprocal privileges at all other Trump National and International properties, by the way, including the Southern White House itself.) “Why does the ECM Suburban over there look different today?”