Chapter Five

Hammer Time

Jimmie searched for glimpses of the new golden exterior of the White House through the buildings as his car drove up Connecticut Avenue. “Traffic on Sixteenth is restricted due to the glare issue,” his driver said.

They inched through traffic, and—there it was. The gleaming columns, the burnished eaves. The word “TRUMP” spanning the facade.

It was all too beautiful to be real. People actually lived here?

Not people, he thought. The Trumps.

The first family, like others before them, had moved into the White House’s Executive Residence, which was sandwiched between the East and West Wings. From what Jimmie had read, there had been some chatter about building an entirely new residence on the grounds. A Trump Wing, financed entirely by Trump himself. However, Trump had ultimately decided against a new structure. The return on his investment would be nil—he couldn’t take it with him when he left office. Donating it to the federal government was a ridiculous proposition even for the most altruistic philanthropist. Instead, the real estate mogul had overhauled the existing residence. Trump had even gone so far as to move the bedrooms to the third floor so that he could turn the second floor into one giant State Dining Room.

“We’ll do a lap before we pull in,” his driver said. The car circled the grounds, giving Jimmie a firsthand look at the new features he’d only seen on TV.

Turning down Constitution Avenue gave Jimmie a great view of the fountain. The Haupt Fountains may have been nice, but they were nothing compared to the Bellagio Fountains that Trump had shipped in from Vegas.

Through the cascades of water, Jimmie could see the new White House golf course on the South Lawn. Eisenhower had a putting green; Trump had an entire eighteen-hole course designed by Jack Nicklaus. From what he could see, the ninth green had almost recovered from its trampling during the 2018 Easter Egg Roll. President Trump had asked all the children to wear golf spikes, but it turned out most kids didn’t have them. A week later, Trump launched his public-private initiative to provide golf shoes to underprivileged youth. It would have gone over better had he not slashed funding for science education a month earlier.

The car finally let Jimmie out near the surprisingly unassuming staff entrance. As he waited in the line to pass through the metal detectors, Jimmie looked over the large sign showing items he was forbidden to bring inside with him. The list now included hair dryers, after an event last month in which Trump had to be evacuated from a rally after a blow-dryer-armed protestor had gotten close enough to give Trump’s hair a nearly fatal tousling.

“Any liquids, perishables, electronics, flammable material?” asked the guard as he unzipped Jimmie’s backpack.

“No, sir,” Jimmie replied. “Except—well, notebooks, which could be flammable. They’re paper.”

“What’s this?” asked the guard, pulling Jimmie’s microcassette recorder out of the bag.

“That’s just my tape recorder,” Jimmy said. “I’m going to be interviewing the president.”

The guard nodded in understanding, placed the tape recorder on the table, and then smashed it to pieces with a hammer.

“Whoa! Hey! Come on, man! No!” Jimmy wailed. “Why did you do that? That recorder survived the Playboy Mansion!”

“No outside recording devices,” the security guard said, trying on Jimmie’s backpack. “This is nice. Is it new?”

Jimmie nodded. “Could I have it back now?”

“No backpacks allowed, sorry,” the guard said. “You can buy it back later on eBay, unless you’re outbid.”

As much as Jimmie wanted to grumble about it, he knew that the heightened security measures were warranted. Even though most dissenters were fleeing the country, the occasional protestor still slipped through the iron gates with a can of white spray paint to “take back the White House.”

Dissidents didn’t have a leg to stand on, though. Trump had won the election in a landslide. Some commentators believed the “landslide” was more than just a metaphoric natural disaster. Jimmie had heard the 2016 election called the biggest single natural disaster in world history. Donald J. Trump, they said, was a meteor that was going to wipe the human race off the face of the earth. Trump had been in office for more than eighteen months now, and the human race was still going strong.

Trump was either the savviest or the luckiest president in history. His day-one repeal of Obamacare left millions of unemployed Americans uninsured. Without health care, they were dying in record numbers. The resulting drop in the unemployment rate sent the Dow skyrocketing.

To give him credit, he’d created jobs as well. Construction of the Keystone XXL Pipeline employed thousands. The Keystone XXL Oil Spill cleanup employed thousands more.

Trump had found creative ways to fund federal programs while lowering taxes. Who else would have thought to pay for FEMA’s budget by suing the Catholic Church over property damage caused by acts of God?

And for every environmentalist who was furious about Secretary of the Energies Sarah Palin’s “frack ’em all” policies, there were three consumers thrilled with the money they were saving at the pumps and on their heating bills.

Whether Trump had actually made America great again was a moot point—he made America feel great again. And if that meant that Jimmie would need to bid on his own backpack to get it returned to him? That was simply the price of greatness.