You Can't Spell America Without Me

by Alec Baldwin

  “I believe they washed it this morning, Mr. President.”

  The ECM Suburban is the coolest of the cool black SUVs that always drives near me in the . . . what do you call it? The . . . cavalcade, Macy’s Day, convoy, arcade, JFK, mama’s motorcar—

  MITZI: Presidential to-do list

  Book fact-check, word for official presidential car parade.

  Well, ECM stands for electronic countermeasures, so this one SUV has these domes and pipes and antennas on top that suck in all the radio waves and Arabic or whatever and know if terrorists are trying to get Trump with a remote-control bomb or missile. The First Lady really doesn’t like me talking to our son about this, but he’s as interested as I am.

  “So when the alarm goes off in the ECM Suburban that the bad guys are targeting me, remind me how many smoke grenades they fire off?”

  Anthony smiles a little, like friends do. “Releases an initial tranche of ten devices, Mr. President. As would this vehicle. Covering our escape from the kill zone.”

  “Right. Right.” I love hearing Anthony say things like that. Just like in a movie. “And then we zoom off at like a hundred miles an hour, maybe even in reverse, then the assault team jumps out of its vehicle and pinpoints the bad guys with lasers and infrared and takes them out with like a thousand bullets a second from their machine guns, right? Like the end of Bonnie and Clyde times a million, right?”

  “That’s the plan, more or less, Mr. President.”

  And the assault team might also accidentally spray some crossfire into one of the press vans, so tragic.

  They didn’t have any of that high tech back in the JFK days, which is why Harvey, with just a cheap rifle, Harvey . . . the Lucky Rabbit, Oswald Harvey could get the president. Very lucky shot. If he actually shot him, which nobody believes. When I was fifteen, sixteen, a cadet at the military academy, the movie PT 109 came out, and everybody said that in my uniform, I looked exactly like Kennedy when he was a World War II hero.

  Motorcade.

  MITZI:

  Book fact-check, never mind the last one, cancel, cancel.

  As we passed Langley, CIA headquarters, I made a little hand gesture I now always do every time I drive back and forth to Trump National, but covering my one finger with the other hand, so nobody can take my picture through the window from a drone or whatever. It always makes Anthony smile.

  “If we suddenly came to a CIA roadblock right here, or an FBI roadblock, and a CIA or FBI guy was about to assassinate me, like they did JFK, you’d stop either one of them, right, even though you all work for the government?”

  “By any means necessary, Mr. President,” which is what he said the other times I asked him the same question.

  “Anthony, tell me about your friend in the New York office, the tall guy who’s in the First Lady’s detail all the time, the one who looks like Robert Pattinson? Jokes around with her in German?”

  Anthony didn’t flinch. But he’s trained not to show any emotion. “Agent Wilson? Excellent man, sir. Straight arrow. We trained together in Georgia.”

  I had thought the word “trained,” then Anthony right away said “trained.” Wow. Maybe he can do Bannon’s mind-reading trick. Or maybe they have a secret technology, another ECM thing, and the information comes through his earpiece.

  “He’s married?”

  “No, sir, Wilson is single.”

  “Huh. Gay?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you know what I’m thinking right now?”

  “No, Mr. President.”

  “Anthony, can I try out your earpiece?”

  “Afraid not, Mr. President. They’d fire me for that.”

  WHEN I MENTIONED TO MIKE PENCE RECENTLY HOW GOOD MY GOLF SCORES HAVE BEEN, SO INCREDIBLY GOOD, BETTER THAN EVER, HE SAID “GOOD PLAYING COMES FROM GOOD PRAYING.”

  The trip to the golf course from the White House takes forty-five minutes. Marine One could get me there in ten minutes, but Ivanka and everybody says that would look bad. My son Barron gave me a fantastic idea on the phone this morning. He knows all about boats from the Internet. He says a good speedboat, 90 miles an hour, could make the trip from D.C. straight up the Potomac to Trump National—which is right on the river, amazing views—could get me there in fifteen minutes, Barron did the math. And one of the really superfast boats, which he says go 300 miles an hour, which a president should really have anyway, could do the trip in five minutes. Visionary, right?

  It was 75 degrees when I teed off, sunny, perfect day, somebody said the nicest early spring day in Washington ever. It was like I wished for great golfing weather so hard I made it happen. When I mentioned to Mike Pence recently how good my golf scores have been, so incredibly good, better than ever, he said “good playing comes from good praying,” and that God wants Trump to succeed—that God actually sent some kind of message to the vice president that I would succeed. Well, after this terrible week when so many people failed me, I only shot two holes in one, one each on the front nine and back nine, but every other hole was a birdie or an eagle—meaning I scored my personal best, a forty-eight. I could barely believe it myself. I told Anthony to keep the news to himself for the time being, because the media would go crazy, we don’t want the distraction, the crews from Ripley’s Believe It or Not! or whatever. Maybe we’ll announce it in the summer, when there’s nothing serious going on, do a big ESPN special or something.

  The actual historic scorecard for a round (and important high-level meeting) at one of my fantastic Trump National Golf Club courses.

  When I finished, I walked off the eighteenth green away from the clubhouse, toward the Potomac. Anthony asked where I was going, I told him to radio the speedboat to bring it around for the trip back to the White House. He chuckled, thought I was joking—which then it turned out I was, kind of, I realized. “Ha ha ha,” I laughed. “Visionary stuff, seeing the future.”

  Ivanka can’t attend important weekend meetings because of the kosher thing—but out of respect for her and her family, on Saturdays I don’t touch anything made in Germany and keep the TV turned way down, so low I can barely hear it.

  IVANKA HAS SUCH A GORGEOUS SMILE

  Ivanka invited me over to their house for dinner again tonight. “Do I have to eat the ‘special food’?” She promised to order in shrimp cocktail and meat loaf from Trump International for me. When I told her I was bringing along my fantastic Oval Office PR girl Hopester as my “date,” Ivanka said family only. I figured she wanted me to spend time with the kids, who I love, even though I don’t think it’s appropriate for them to call me “grandpa.” So when I arrived, I was surprised that none of the kids were around.

  Ivanka took my left hand in both of hers and brought her face very close to mine. I was holding my breath because I hadn’t had an Altoid for a couple of hours, but I always melt when she does that. It was like when I was divorcing her mom and she told me that even though Don Junior hadn’t talked to me for like a year, she still loved me—or the way she did a few years later, at fifteen or so, telling me she was only crying because she was so happy I was divorcing her first stepmom.

  “We needed to have a meeting alone, Dad, away from the White House.”

  I looked over at Jared, who wasn’t smiling. In fact, he didn’t even look like himself. In fact, I didn’t recognize him, maybe because he wasn’t wearing his tie—and then for a split second I thought he was this popular and goody-goody senior cadet at the New York Military Academy named Bobby, an Eagle Scout, who dressed up as Dracula when I’d just transferred in, Halloween 1959, scared the hell out of me and then broke my pointer finger doing “this little piggy.”

  Then I realized it wasn’t Bobby or Jared, it was one of Ivanka’s Secret Service guys. Jared is in Iraq, getting so much media coverage, which really shows you how dumb the media is as well as unfair and dishonest.

 
“We need to really talk, Dad,” Ivanka said. She was still holding my hand. “Seriously talk.”

  I thought she was going to tell me somebody had cancer.

  “Is this about Melania getting ‘lost’ at the White House the other night?” The First Lady flew down from New York for one night to be “First Lady” at a big formal dinner with the senators, and the Secret Service had to go search for her.

  “No, Dad, it’s about the presidency. Making America great. Making you greater.”

  This again. First it was the stuff she and Jared always say about my tweets: how they wished I would let her or Hope or somebody in “comms” or one of the lawyers in Don McGahn’s office screen them. And how I shouldn’t do them first thing in the morning until after I’ve taken all my supplements and special vitamins.

  I did beam out some very strong tweets again this last week, especially yesterday morning, like when I asked why Hillary hadn’t apologized for getting all the CNN debate answers in advance from the black Democrat woman with the purple hair. Ivanka said it happened more than a year ago, and it was only a town hall with Bernie Sanders, and only one question.

  “Don’t be naughty,” I told her, “and trust me—I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  One long tweet this week I didn’t trim at all, just split it up, the one where I ordered my House Intelligence Committee to investigate the Clintons’ crooked deal with Big Uranium and Russia, plus the 20 million rubles Bill got for a speech in Russia, plus Hillary’s dopey and weak “reset” with Russia, plus all of Hillary’s praise of Russia, and the shady company Hillary’s campaign manager owns in Russia—because the “Russia story” about Trump is all a total disgusting hoax.

  “By the way,” I said, “I phoned Comey at the FBI again, told him I couldn’t get anything done unless he ‘lifted the cloud’ of the Russia stuff—your fancy phrase, baby.”

  “That’s fine, but when you tweet and talk in public about Russia,” she replied, “it just feeds the story, keeps it going.”

  “That’s what you and your smart husband said six years ago about Obama’s birth certificate! And I didn’t listen to you, and that’s why I’m president of the United States and you’re a special assistant to the president of the United States and you’re married to the senior adviser to the president of the United States! And The Trump Organization, from what I understand, from what a lot of people are saying and I hear everybody is talking about, isn’t getting hurt by having the chairman and president—the former chairman and president—being president of the United States.” Saying all of that tired me out. But in the movie it will make a fantastic scene.

  MITZI: Presidential to-do list

  Vince Vaughn—has he ever played a blond character?

  Ivanka also said she and Jared really didn’t understand why I tweeted that Mike Flynn should ask for immunity. “Trust me, Vanksy,” I told her. “You don’t want to know, okay? But I know how the law works and how politicians work, and I know Mike Flynn—know how his mind works, I mean, since I actually barely know him as a person at all, or his business dealings or any of that. But I know what I’m doing.”

  Besides, I explained again, the tweets she and Jared and the First Lady don’t like are the ones the people like the best and retweet twenty-five thousand times! The highest-rated one so far was when I attacked the judges on their proterrorist ruling, and the first runner-up was calling the news media the enemy of the people! “Baby,” I told her, “I really need to keep beaming my truth straight to the people. It’s what makes me feel real. Also, your little brother says that a Trump army of like twenty-five thousand people would be enough to do whatever we need doing in an emergency, if that ever happened, God forbid.”

  “Eric said that?”

  “No, Barron. He’s studied how it worked in other countries. In history. Such an amazing kid. Rodrigo agrees, too. Like a special presidential militia. Just in case. They’ve got it all figured out.”

  She said something about how I was sounding like Steve Bannon, that Steve was looking even worse lately even though he started wearing a tie to please me, how Steve really didn’t help out on the Obama wiretap business—made it worse—how much Mad Dog doesn’t like Steve, he’s not a team player, we barely know him, again with how Steve told Jared he was a “cuck” (which actually made me smile), et cetera.

  MITZI: Presidential to-do list

  Song, “BEAMING MY TRUTH STRAIGHT TO THE PEOPLE / WHAT MAKES ME FEEL REAL,” © 2017 by Donald J. Trump.

  “Rodrigo actually agrees with you about Bannon,” I said. “I’d asked him how he thought Steve was doing, and he told me he’d heard he wants China and the Philippines to go to war in the South China Sea, which worries Rodrigo. And did you even know that, by the way—China versus the Philippines? Then this morning, out of the blue, Rodrigo shows me another Philippines proverb on his phone, which I had him send to me—Lahat ng gubat ay may ahas. It means, ‘In every forest, there is a snake.’ I felt like I was in a sequel to Kung Fu, where Grasshopper’s grandson is president and Master Po’s grandson works for him. Anyhow, I’m taking Bannon off the VIP list for the National Security Council, okay?”

  Ivanka smiled and kissed me on the cheek as she went to get dessert. In private like in public, from behind like from the front, she is the most beautiful special assistant to the president in American history, that I can tell you.

  “Hey, Dad,” she said when she returned with my Mega Stuf Oreo sundae, “wanna take a couple of fun quizzes? On my iPad?”

  “I thought we already figured out what color my aura is. You think maybe it’s changed now because I’m president?”

  “No, these are different, more like one of those dating quizzes I had you take after Marla left? It’s really more of a serious leadership quiz.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  The first quiz was eighteen statements that I agreed or disagreed with. “‘The Goldberg Questionnaire,’” I said. “Some professor relative of Jared’s?” It had me rate my energy (highest) and how much sleep I need (lowest), asked if I’m the life of the party (whenever possible) and do people have a hard time keeping up with me (always), do I come up with so many ideas I jump from one to the other (yes!), and do I have special plans for the world (MAGA!). The second quiz was similar and longer, forty items, called the NPI. I think I rated myself a five for all of them, I wasn’t bragging, just being honest—“assertive,” “extraordinary,” “special,” “born leader,” “talent for influencing people,” “able to talk my way out of anything,” and so forth. When I got to one quiz item, “if I ruled the world it would be a better place,” I looked up at Ivanka and smiled.

  “Wait a second, Villy Vanka, you’re pulling my leg, aren’t you? Somebody just made these quizzes up so people could find out how much like Trump they are, right?”

  “Uh-uh, no, they’re actual tests, Daddy, created by professors, been around for years.”

  “So what’s my score?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. We’ve found a top expert on success and presidents who gave them to us, she’ll score them for you, teaches at Georgetown, lovely woman, Dr. Gloria Müller, ex-military, she’s got a security clearance and everything.”

  “Müller! We love the Germans. Except for Merkel. But what, ‘doctor’ like McMaster is a PhD ‘doctor’?” McMaster yaks and yaks in meetings, a lot more than Mike Flynn ever did. Mike was so respectful of the president.

  “Two PhDs, history, maybe psychology, but an MD, too, got it all, Gloria’s amazing, you’ll love her—and Dad, I have one more favor. A big one. Jared just called from Iraq and told me that General Dunford just told him—”

  “Dunford . . . ?”

  “Chairman of the joint chiefs, Irish marine, Boston accent? If you want, they’re ready to shoot some cruise missiles at Syria to punish them for the gas attack this morning, teach them a lesson. Then you announce
, ‘My view of al-Assad has changed since seeing those horrible pictures.’” She took my hand again. “Please, Daddy?”

  I’m pretty sure her eyes were watering.

  “It would make me really happy,” she said. “And make you look very strong and presidential.”

  “Sounds good, honey. McMaster mentioned the missiles to me this afternoon, ‘option on the table,’ or Mad Dog, one of them. But sure, you got it.”

  “Ooh, great! It’ll also be a fantastic way to take some air out of the Russia story.”

  “Which is a hoax anyway, right?”

  She smiled. Ivanka has such a gorgeous smile. Unlike me, she enjoys showing her teeth.

  THE PRESIDENCY REALLY IS LIKE A TV SERIES

  I had an unbelievably great, great weekend at the Southern White House, a really outstanding, fantastic, tremendously successful weekend, maybe the best of my presidency, although I’ve already had so many bests.

  First of all, I got three nights and three days down there, which always makes me an even more effective president. Plus two rounds of eighteen at my Trump International—still playing better than I’ve ever played in my life, such good scores and so many holes in one I’m almost embarrassed to keep telling you about them, like I’m bragging, so I’ll just say—I’m pretty sure one of my scores was literally better than anyone has played, anyone, ever. I swear. But now I promise not to mention my scores again. Until we do the ESPN special, which Ivanka and Jared think should wait until 2018, after the midterm election, a Thanksgiving special, which is a great idea.