Until Donald Trump publishes the ultimate account of his entire four or eight or one-and-a-half years in the White House, the definitive chronicle will be You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year As President Donald J. Trump. Trump was elected because he was the most frank presidential candidate in history, a man eager to tell the unvarnished truth about others’ flaws and tout his own amazing excellence. Now he levels his refreshingly compulsive, un-PC candour at his landslide election victory as well as his role as commander-in-chief and leader of the free world.
There are intimate, powerful, mind-boggling revelations on every page. You are there with him during his private encounters with world leaders, a few of whom he does not insult. You are there at the genius Oval Office strategy sessions with his advisers. You are there in his White House bedroom as he crafts the pre-dawn Twitter pronouncements that rock the world. And, of course, you are there on the golf course as Trump attempts to manage the burdens of his office.
President Trump explains each of the historic decisions that have already made America great again, and how he always triumphs over the fake news media. You’ll learn what he really thinks of his cabinet members and top aides not related to him, of the First Lady and the First Daughter and the additional three or four Trump children. Included at no extra charge is a lavish and exclusive portfolio of spectacular, historic and intimate colour photographs of President Trump in private – inside the White House, inside Mar-a-Lago, at Trump Tower, and more.
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1
YOU ACTUALLY CAN’T SPELL AMERICA WITHOUT “ME”
CHAPTER 2
I HAD TO DO IT MY WAY
CHAPTER 3
THIS IS AMERICAN HISTORY
CHAPTER 4
I WON, I’M A WINNER, I’M THE WINNER
CHAPTER 5
WITH GREAT WEALTH COMES GREAT QUALITY
CHAPTER 6
THE ACTUAL LEGAL TAKEOVER OF THE GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER 7
I NEED A TV IN THE OVAL
CHAPTER 8
IT FINALLY FELT REAL, LIKE A MOVIE
CHAPTER 9
I’M THE PRESIDENT
CHAPTER 10
I FEEL LIKE A NEW MAN
CHAPTER 11
I LIKE TOUGH
CHAPTER 12
IT WAS ABOUT TO GET EVEN BETTER
CHAPTER 13
THE SO-CALLED RUSSIA STORIES
CHAPTER 14
IF I ACTED “PRESIDENTIAL” I’D LOSE MY SPECIAL POWERS
CHAPTER 15
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE UNDERSTAND
CHAPTER 16
A GOOD TEST FOR COMEY
CHAPTER 17
THEY SAID IT ON THE NEWS
CHAPTER 18
THE BAD POLLS ARE PROBABLY MOSTLY OR COMPLETELY FAKE
CHAPTER 19
EVERYBODY LIED TO ME
CHAPTER 20
IVANKA HAS SUCH A GORGEOUS SMILE
CHAPTER 21
THE PRESIDENCY REALLY IS LIKE A TV SERIES
CHAPTER 22
I NEVER PANIC
CHAPTER 23
I HAD TO “KILL” HIM—
KILL IN QUOTATION MARKS
CHAPTER 24
THE “SPECIAL COUNSEL” IS TOTALLY RIGGED
CHAPTER 25
EVERYONE NERVOUS EXCEPT ME
CHAPTER 26
IS JARED A FREDO?
CHAPTER 27
WE’RE BOTH STRONG AND KNOW THE SCORE
CHAPTER 28
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME, HERE’S THE TRUTH
CHAPTER 29
WE’LL ALL LOOK BACK AND LAUGH ABOUT THIS
CHAPTER 30
CALL HIM FLIPPER
CHAPTER 31
IT’S A CRAZY WORLD
CHAPTER 32
SO MANY, MANY SECRETS TO KEEP
CHAPTER 33
ROUTE 66
CHAPTER 34
MAGA
CHAPTER 35
MY NOBEL PRIZE
CHAPTER 36
SHLIMAZEL
CHAPTER 37
ANG BUHLAY AY MAGANDA
CHAPTER 38
WAS THAT ALL A DREAM?
CHAPTER 39
ALL FAKE
CHAPTER 40
HOORAY PRESIDENT TRUMP, HOORAY PRESIDENTE TRUMP, HOORAY PRESIDENT TRUMP IN RUSSIAN WITH THE CRAZY BACKWARD 3
CHAPTER 41
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
COPYRIGHT
I REMEMBER THE day this all began, the “journey to the presidency,” as my daughter Ivanka calls it. It was a really, really fantastic day, one of the best days of my entire life. I’ve had so many great days—the day my mom finally made my father stop calling me “the Grouchy Little Homo,” the day my net worth got bigger than his, the day of my first 60 Minutes appearance (before CBS News was fake news), the day The Apprentice got 28.1 million viewers, the days each of my five children were born, including Tiffany. So many phenomenal, incredible days.
It was in January 1986, the day the space shuttle blew up, so tragic, but I was in a fabulous mood. My first casino in Atlantic City was doing unbelievably great, making so much money, and I’d just made a great deal to take it over and make it more successful by renaming it Trump Plaza. I was in my thirties, and I’d just met one of my future wives, Marla Maples, who was twenty-one, maybe twenty-two, and at that time a nine-plus in the looks department, to be perfectly frank. I was in Palm Beach, my wife Ivana was doing her thing, and I drove my Rolls-Royce over to The Breakers hotel to visit the legendary genius Roy Cohn, my extremely tough lawyer and personal friend. Roy kept a suite at The Breakers, which had recently refused to let me buy two penthouses and combine them, the morons, because they’d now be so valuable as historic residences. In the dozen years I’d known Roy, he had taught me about the importance of maintaining a strong, great suntan all year long, but I remember that day he was very pale, I guess he was sick by then, AIDS, sad, so I decided to cheer him up by driving him down to Mar-a-Lago for a tour of the place.
I’d just closed on Mar-a-Lago—it was such an amazing deal, one of the best deals I ever made, not the biggest but one of the most outstanding. I bought it for a fraction of what I’d offered only a few months earlier, because I told the owners I’d acquired the whole beach directly behind the house and could totally block their view with a new building, which basically meant selling to me or nobody. (That wasn’t completely true, but they were weak and scared—to be perfectly honest, like so many people born into money who aren’t Trumps, and even some who are.) And one of the sellers, the B-list snob actress Dina Merrill, was such an unbelievable un-PC-word to me. In fact, by the way, since they were technically a foundation, letting me take them to the cleaners, even though I hadn’t actually closed on the beachfront lot, people told me it was probably some kind of fiduciary crime on their part.
Anyway, there I was with Roy Cohn, who respected me greatly, at Mar-a-Lago, the most beautiful, amazing, prestigious home in Florida, one of the most beautiful and prestigious in the United States or the entire Western Hemisphere, probably in the whole world. Which I now owned, for almost nothing. It was totally empty, except for the Hispanics and the African Americans—great people scrubbing off the mold and hatcheting the lizards and so forth.
“My Xanadu, right?” I said. Roy understood I meant William Randolph Hearst’s house in my favorite movie, Citizen Kane, because like me, Roy was very smart, Ivy League but not a phony. He mentioned that Marjorie Merriweather Post, the Shredded Wheat and Honey Bunches of Oats heiress who built Mar-a-Lago, had meant it to be used by American presidents as a Winter White House. Most presidents, then just like now, couldn’t afford extremely nice homes of their own, not even to rent.
“YOU KNOW WHAT, ROY?” I said. We were standing on one of the beautiful marble verandas—it’s covered in fifteenth-century Spanish tiles, that’s the 1400s, when Spain and those people were on top, each tile now worth $25,000, half a million pesos apiece—and I was looking out at the ocean, not in a sad way, but more kind of a wise way. “It’s really a shame that Donald Trump can’t ever be president,” I said. “Not that I’d necessarily want to be. My life is better than a president’s in a lot of ways, much better. In most ways. Did you know Reagan only makes two hundred grand a year? But what I hate is that because of that one law I can’t be president, only because of that stupid, ridiculous law.”
Roy was rubbing one of the carved stone griffins, the weird little gay royal dragon things all around Mar-a-Lago. “What ‘law’? You mean the problem with that punk in Atlantic City? Don’t worry about him. Forget him. He’s gone. He doesn’t exist. Literally.”
“No, no,” I said, “because of my mom. Because she’s from Scotland.”
Roy explained that all these years I’d had it wrong—a foreign parent doesn’t mean you can’t become president. Article something, clause whatever.
“Wow,” I said. “Wow. And in a few months I turn forty. You know what that means.”
“You’re dumping Ivana? Fine. Don’t tell her until after we get the new postnup drafted and signed.”
“No, it means I’ll be old enough to run for president! Nothing stopping me! Mar-a-Lago could actually be my Winter White House someday, Roy!”
“You can be elected president now, Don. The minimum age is thirty-five, not forty. Same article, same clause.” Even with the AIDS, Roy had a very brilliant legal mind.
At that moment, I saw a whole new direction my life could go, all kinds of new angles I could play. Roy died a few months later, but people have told me he actually died much happier after he knew he had cleared the way for my greatest deal and greatest achievement of all—that he was my mentor, and I was his John F. Kennedy, if Joseph Kennedy had been gay and Jewish and his son had been Protestant. Proud that someday I would, you know, make America great again. But also so I could prove once and for all, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Trump is an important man the world should never ignore or laugh at. A great American winner at business? Sure. A sexy guy who attracted a thousand beautiful ladies, supermodels and entertainers and many others? Definitely. More importantly, a highly intelligent and strongly trustworthy leader who people really, really, really admire, who millions and eventually billions of people would really, really, really love and respect forever.
HE WAS MY MENTOR, AND I WAS HIS JOHN F. KENNEDY, IF JOSEPH KENNEDY HAD BEEN GAY AND JEWISH AND HIS SON HAD BEEN PROTESTANT.
That was the day, almost thirty-two years ago, when my brand was just beginning to become a very hot brand, long before it was the hottest brand in the world, I realized that you actually can’t spell America without me. Literally. Which is so amazing when you think about it.
THE CHAPTER YOU just read was written personally by me, Donald Trump. I swear it, on the life of my youngest daughter. What you’re reading now, I am also personally writing. This entire book: me, all the words and sentences and larger sections, the paragraphs, the chapters, all mine, not “as told to” or “with” some pathetic low-life parasite ghostwriter.
This Trump book, unlike my many previous excellent Trump books, which were typed up by subcontractors who interviewed me, is being created 100 percent by me. It will be, if I can be completely honest, the best one. It already is.
There are many reasons I’m writing it myself. But the basic problem is trust. Who can we totally trust? Family. And by that I mean children—and maybe grandchildren, too, my oldest is ten, so I can’t say for sure—but not wives or adopted children because, sorry, they don’t contain your genes. Although I’ve heard you can inject people with your genes and make them related to you by blood, which is interesting. Genes, someone once told me, probably Dr. John Trump, my brilliant uncle at MIT, are like computer chips that give you a kind of Bluetooth connection mentally to your children, a kind of remote control over them. It’s how you own your children and grandchildren the way you own your homes, which is comforting, and why you love them.
But back to trust. I trusted the third-rate clown who “wrote” my phenomenally best-selling first autobiography, The Art of the Deal, and gave him many millions of dollars—but then thirty years later, because nobody had ever heard of him since, as soon as I ran for president he betrayed me. “He’s a Judas,” a lot of my Christian supporters said, which was true, and I like hitting back, but “Judas” seemed a little rough. Some of my supporters say that a lot about the people who hit me—even about people like John McCain, who’s Protestant, and Paul Ryan, who’s Catholic—and I always wonder if that makes my son-in-law Jared Kushner feel bad, or even Ivanka, who’s now technically one also. I’d asked Steve Bannon, my campaign CEO and first White House chief strategist, if he would arrange to have them turn down the “Judas” stuff a little. Not good.
WHO CAN WE TOTALLY TRUST? FAMILY. AND BY THAT I MEAN CHILDREN—AND MAYBE GRANDCHILDREN, TOO, MY OLDEST IS TEN, SO I CAN’T SAY FOR SURE—BUT NOT WIVES OR ADOPTED CHILDREN BECAUSE, SORRY, THEY DON’T CONTAIN YOUR GENES.
Then I trusted a nice lady at The Trump Organization, former ballerina, used to be gorgeous, who helped write a few of my recent bestsellers—including Trump: How to Get Rich, Money Does Buy Happiness, The Amazing Magical Miraculous Mr. Trump, and Everyone But You Is a Loser. So I let her write my wife’s little speech for the Republican convention. By using Michelle Obama’s convention speech for that, she didn’t betray me on purpose—my top security guy, Keith, spent a few hours alone with her making sure, believe me—but she did give the dishonest hater disgusting fake media an opportunity to embarrass me and, sure, my wife, on the day of my nomination. Although as Ted Nugent said to me when that blew up, he goes onstage at every concert and plays songs by Chuck Berry and Sam & Dave and the Temptations and Jimi Hendrix and so on, and everybody thinks that’s totally okay.
Since this will be my greatest and most important book yet, there was another problem: What “professional writer” could I trust to understand and truly love Trump? Sean Hannity volunteered to write it, and I believe Sean does love me with the kind of total loyalty I rarely see in high-net-worth individuals who aren’t related to me. But I’m sure that like almost all successful people, Sean hires ghostwriters to write his books. Plus, with his show to do every night, which is extremely important for our country, he wouldn’t be able to do what I needed—be around me all the time, in every meeting, seeing and hearing it all, taking notes. Then the lawyers told me that any outside writer would have to get the top, top, top security clearance, too, which would make the lying, fake media go crazy—although, about that, Bannon said “a feature, not a bug,” which is true and funny, but Ivanka convinced me it wasn’t worth the fight.
Everybody thought they’d convinced me to drop the idea of doing this book. Can’t be done. Too hard. Too many other things on my plate, all the making-America-great things. Even though they also all agreed I have been making America great in so many ways for years, quietly, sometimes anonymously.
“Wait until you’re out of office, Daddy,” Ivanka said, “when you can say everything you want to about Ryan and Merkel and the Clintons and everybody else, and you’ll get paid even more.”
“That’s Mr. President-elect Daddy to you,” I replied, with a little pinch, as usual, “but do the math, baby. After eight years, I’ll be almost eighty. I know you say ‘eighty is the new forty,’ but I don’t want to wait that long to bring out the true story.” And I probably won’t want to stay in office any longer than that, although as Jared said, Mike Bloomberg got the system in New York fixed so he could stay mayor for an extra four years. And a friend told us that a friend of his in Europe, the president of Belarus, which is an actual European country, did the same thing, so he’s been the elected president there for twenty-two years and counting. So anything’s possible. And Trump specializes in doing the impossible. And then I’d be the first U.S. president in like a century, since FDR, to go more than two terms. That would be very special.
If you tell Trump he can’t do something, that makes him do it. Like my MIT uncle Dr. John Trump, PhD, taught me, “Every action causes a much, much bigger reaction against it.” The other great thing about me is that if I have a problem with one of my businesses, I always step in and fix it myself. (For instance, that’s what Roy Cohn was referring to in the previous chapter, concerning the dishonest person causing the problem when I was building my casinos in Atlantic City.)
So for this book, I decided I really had to do it myself. I had to do it my way.
Incidentally, that’s my favorite song, “My Way.” I love my Native American friend Wayne Newton’s version, which he sings for me every time I see him, almost whispers it in my ear, so fantastic. (Which means I’ve had the opportunity to examine that very expensive face of his up close. Whoa.) I was going to print the lyrics to “My Way” right here until I found out how they screw you for that, even though you can read them for free on the Internet. Unbelievable! So why would I pay thousands of dollars to the composer, the very overrated Paul Anka, who wouldn’t even perform at our great inauguration?
Hold on, before I forget.
VOICE MEMO: Presidential to-do list
Write songs, words, not music—have them recorded by Nugent, Meat Loaf, the Jackie girl from the inauguration, Kanye et cetera.
Okay, I’m back. You see, I’m actually saying this book right into my phone. It’s amazing. I talk, I create it, it types, talking is writing nowadays, which is so great. And the beauty of this is that the computer in my phone doesn’t need a security clearance, and it won’t put in words I would never use or betray me or quit, like the ghostwriters. I own this phone.
My brilliant ten-year-old showed me how to push a button on the screen to make it tape my conversations whenever I want, even when it’s in my jacket, and then later turn those recordings into words, too. So you, the reader, will be right here with me, wherever I am as President Donald Trump—in the Oval Office, in the foreign countries I visit, inside the underground command rooms, flying on NASA’s secret presidential rocket to inspect our secret bases on the moon, which Alex Jones tells me definitely exist. I’ll be reporting my inside story “in real time,” as Jared calls it, which I like because that also means it’s the opposite of fake time. “You could do it in present tense,” he said, “which would make it more exciting to readers.” Right, I told him, exactly. Because I knew that “present tense” means words that express an action or state in the present moment and are used concerning that which is true at the time of writing or speaking. Examples include: “I am talking into my phone from my amazing apartment at the top of Trump Tower, and the people on the street down below look even smaller than ants, more like ticks or lice,” or “It is so fantastic being president-elect of the United States of America.”
I’LL BE REPORTING MY INSIDE STORY “IN REAL TIME,” AS JARED CALLS IT, WHICH I LIKE BECAUSE THAT ALSO MEANS IT’S THE OPPOSITE OF FAKE TIME.
Writing my president book by talking makes it possible for me to do it, but if I’m being honest, which I always am, the idea of doing the whole book all by myself was at first … made me … seemed like … oh, what is that word the phonies always use? That fake positive word when they don’t want to admit they feel scared or stupid—right, okay, dot-dot-dot: Writing a whole book by myself seemed like a serious challenge.
I had one of the girls bring me a few of the recent president memoirs, which are unbelievably long. And, I’m sure, if you read them, which probably nobody does in those cases, unbelievably boring. My very intelligent youngest son did the arithmetic—Bill Clinton’s book is like four hundred thousand words and even the one by George W. Bush is two hundred thousand. Give me a break! What are they trying to prove? And by the way, it shows those two guys have no business sense whatsoever, because publishers do not pay you a nickel more for writing more. They pay you per book, so get ready for the first sequel, probably in 2018, You Still Can’t Spell America Without Me!
I HAD ONE OF THE GIRLS BRING ME A FEW OF THE RECENT PRESIDENT MEMOIRS, WHICH ARE UNBELIEVABLY LONG.
But I’m not a “professional writer,” one of my family members warned me, although at first I thought she was saying “professional fighter.” Oh, I told her, I guess you’re the house expert on what makes somebody a professional or not, but I wasn’t a professional TV star until I decided to become one of the most successful of all time, was I? I wasn’t a professional politician until I decided to become the most successful of all time. But then Barron, who’s not just my youngest son but I also think quite frankly my smartest one, told me the secret truth: I’ve already written more than thirty thousand tweets, and each tweet is twenty-five words, which means like a million words in the last few years. So I’m actually a very, very successful writer with millions of readers and years of experience. Jared says he has a guy—one of the European guys who did such great Internet work for us during the campaign—who’ll make me an “app” that automatically eliminates most of the quotation marks I use to spice up the tweets and turns the exclamation points into periods. I told him okay, but I also want another app that turns any word I say into all capital letters if I want, just by my thinking it. Which I bet the Pentagon has.
We’re going to auction this book to all the publishers after I’m finished. Did you realize most of them are foreign-owned now? Which is very, very interesting. Very. Anyhow, my “floor,” as we say in business, is $60 million, because that’s what Barack and Michelle Obama are getting for their two books. And by the way, this book, my book, the Trump book, is now out before theirs, even though Obama was president before me. The First Lady has an approval rating even higher than mine, ridiculously high—this is her honeymoon period, good for her—but frankly I don’t think a publisher will pay all that much for a book by her. I’m not saying that just because of the funny English, or because she’s not angry like Michelle, with a million opinions about everything. The American people like Melania because she’s very beautiful and she’s with me, but also because she doesn’t say much, so why would they want to read a book by her? It’s a sad “Cash-22.” If you don’t know it, that’s a word Steve Bannon uses, meaning a real-life good news–bad news joke—like, say, a guy who could get literally any woman any time but can’t because he’s being watched every minute, like he’s in prison—that’s a Cash-22.
Millions of people are now buying this book—you did, right?—for the same reason people voted for me and the same reason that even the haters can’t stop reading about me and talking about me and thinking about me and actually dreaming about me. Because I’m not a phony, and I’m totally honest in a way nobody else in this position has ever been.
I promise everything here is 100 percent true, so true, all of it. People are already telling me it may be the truest book ever written. It is the unauthorized, uncensored inside story of me by me—thanks to technology, from my brain to my mouth to your eyes and ears and brain directly. It’s like you and I are making out and I’m just shooting information into you, shooting streams of thought and my true “me” into you. (Although if you’re a man, it’s like we’re merging and sharing power in a sci-fi movie scene, like Obi-Wan Kenobi talking directly to Luke Skywalker from heaven.) I’m going to tell you things they don’t want me to say as president, not in the speeches or the press conferences or even on Twitter—and I can do that here because I’m not writing as the president, okay, but as Donald Trump, just another American citizen who also happens to be president, so … freedom of expression, First Amendment, totally honest, no holds barred, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, all for you and us, the great American people.
I WOKE UP at dawn, like always. But where was I?
No monogrammed Ts, not on the sheets, not anywhere!
Then I remembered: It was the 20th of January. Ivanka and Jared convinced me I had to obey “tradition”—meaning the night before my inauguration I couldn’t stay in the Trump Townhouse at the Trump International Hotel, which is the biggest hotel suite in Washington and probably in America, 6,300 square feet, with its own entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue and a six-fixture master bath including a steam shower. No, I was in Blair House, behind the White House. With my beautiful wife, the First Lady–elect, I was in Obama’s guesthouse, behind the mansion, like in the White House slave quarters. Kind of unbelievable, right?
It was my final morning as Donald Trump, private citizen—yes, unbelievably rich private citizen who built the world’s largest and greatest business of its kind, private citizen already more famous than anybody on earth ever, according to some professor’s analysis. But even so, I knew my life would change forever when I became Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and Leader of the Free World, even though they tell me that last one isn’t an official title anymore. I felt the way you feel right before you get married the first time—about to stand in front of a big crowd, most of the people don’t really know you, old words you have to say, promises you mean when you say them to the minister or judge or whatever. Except becoming president really is forever in a way marriage isn’t, unless you marry somebody extremely rich or “legacy famous,” like Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who by the way wanted to date me in the 1970s, but she was already fifty.
Starting around lunchtime, I would be officially equal to or better than John F. Kennedy, George Washington, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, all of the Roosevelts. (By the way, I knew Reagan, consulted with him at the White House. People say he had a sixth sense that I would eventually be one of his successors. Congratulations, President Reagan, you’re welcome—even if you already had a touch of the Alzheimer’s then, I’ve now proved you right!) I never really understood what people mean when they say after some big win, a huge score, “Oh, it ‘humbles’ me, I feel so ‘humbled.’ ” Such phonies. I still don’t get it, but I guess something like that is what I felt the day of my inauguration. It did feel big, very, very big, the biggest ever, the biggest possible.
STARTING AROUND LUNCHTIME, I WOULD BE OFFICIALLY EQUAL TO OR BETTER THAN JOHN F. KENNEDY, GEORGE WASHINGTON, RONALD REAGAN, THOMAS JEFFERSON, ABE LINCOLN, ALL OF THE ROOSEVELTS.
I was coming off a tough two years of running for president, of course, but also, believe it or not, a very tough two months as president-elect. There were a couple of really great days since the election, but only a couple. Such as—I think it was a Tuesday … hold on, I’ll have one of the girls look it up. I want to be accurate. This is American history.
I’M BACK. So this next part is like a flashback, okay?
It’s December 19, 2016, a Monday morning, Christmas decorations all over Fifth Avenue. I’m in my incredible penthouse apartment on the 66th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan— actually the 66th, 67th, and 68th floors: one for me, one for my beautiful wife, and one for our son, who I guess is probably my final child, which feels sad, almost like somebody died.
Trump Tower is legendary because of tenants like Donald Trump and The Trump Organization and Donald J. Trump for President Inc., but also because it’s where Johnny Carson and Liberace lived and where Batman had his offices in The Dark Knight Rises, Wayne Enterprises. Also, while I’m thinking of it, Trump Tower disproves all the bad and unfair things people say about me. “Trump doesn’t respect women”? The very first tenants in Trump Tower were Buccellati, great jewelry for women, and Charles Jourdan, great women’s shoes. “Trump discriminates against the African Americans”? Michael Jackson lived on the sixty-third floor, same four-and-a-half-bath unit where I put my own parents. And Baby Doc, president of Haiti, black guy, had a beautiful place on the fifty-fourth floor. “Trump doesn’t like the Hispanics and Latinos”? The owner of Jose Cuervo tequila owns three apartments! “Trump doesn’t have a big heart, doesn’t understand prison reform”? We’ve had many criminals living in Trump Tower, people who’ve paid their debts both to society and The Trump Organization, and a couple actually served their house arrest sentences in their apartments!
So, anyway, I’m president-elect, it’s December 19, 2016, Christmas season, beautiful, et cetera, and I stepped into my large private elevator with one of my Secret Service guys, the African American one, Anthony. Kanye West had visited me the week before, and I’d already asked Anthony a few times how much he’d love to “date” Kim Kardashian if he could—by which I meant a beautiful star, not a white girl, because I really am the least racist person I know, and besides, I don’t believe Kim totally counts as white. Anyway, that morning instead I mentioned to Anthony I’ve lived in the apartment since 1984.
“Wow, sir, almost thirty-three years in the same home.”
“And it looks exactly like it did when I moved in—same furniture, same beautiful marble, same everything, which is why I love it. I was Don Junior’s age when I moved in, and now his oldest child is the same age as Barron, so it’s like my own children are now the same age as me. Crazy, right?”
“Yes, sir. Kind of extraordinary.”
“‘Extraordinary’—good word, Anthony, very articulate word. Very high class.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Long word.” I counted. “Six syllables. As they call the parts of a word. You know, I’m Ivy League, I’m super intelligent, I know almost all of the words, except like some of the scientific ones, definitely all of the important ones, but the phonies, a lot of them, use too many long words like ‘extraordinary’ just to sound intelligent and rich. At Wharton I knew this guy James, you weren’t supposed to call him Jim, come to think of it also an African American, very Sidney Poitier—‘Good evening, Donald’ and so forth. Not that you’re a phony, Anthony—I mean, you really look a lot like Obama, but, you know, unlike him, with the white mother, I’m sure you kept it real growing up, the gangstas, the crack whores, all that; lucky to be alive and have a good government job now. Right?”
I enjoy talking to African Americans. I did extremely well with them in the election, about a hundred times as well as the pundits and fake polls said I would, which the media never wrote. Kanye told me he has almost as many followers as I do, which I don’t really get, because he almost never tweets. I’m not saying he’s lazy. But maybe the African American audience just isn’t as demanding as my followers are.
We got off on twenty-six and I went to my office.
It was the day of my massive, massive landslide victory in the electoral college, which is the actual election that really counts and makes you president. Which was great, because I got a hundred more electoral votes than anybody ever thought I could, more than a hundred more. As many people know, I actually won the popular vote, too, even though the popular vote is just what in business we call a top-line number and really doesn’t mean that much. Kellyanne Conway, my first counselor to the president, told me that in this whole century, in fact, the person elected president doesn’t