WITH GREAT WEALTH COMES GREAT QUALITY

So now we’re completely done with the flashback sequences, totally back to now—Friday, January 20, 2017, Inauguration Day. Earlier this week I finally picked the last member of the cabinet, I honestly can’t recall right now which one—one of the second-stringers—Department of Transportation Safety, maybe Mining and Agricultural Services Department, one of those, you can look it up. But all my direct reports are hired and I’m done.

Speaking of my cabinet, after the photo deal with the Obamas at the White House, just as we were gathering in the Capitol, one of my cabinet guys giggled—I won’t say who, don’t want the PC police coming down on him, but he is a naughty little pixie. I made him show me the text he was looking at on his phone. “Congratulations on being part of America’s first un-nig-uration!” and then it has one of those Japanese cell phone cartoons: a monkey with his hands over his ears. I disavowed it then and there—“Hey,” I said. But it’s also free speech, which is a very important Trump issue. And it’s their culture, and it’s important Alabama historical material, so it belongs here in the book. If I pulled a Nixon and erased things that aren’t necessarily PC, then the unfair media would be hitting me for that, right?

All of the presidents except the original Bush, who’s ninety-two and supposedly too sick to make the trip, attended my inauguration—even Jimmy Carter, who’s also ninety-two and could have used his cancer as an excuse. In fact, Carter was the very first to RSVP, which I feel was his way of apologizing for saying during the campaign that Trump “rejects the most important moral and ethical principles on which our nation was founded.” Bill Clinton came with Hillary, of course, which they had to do, or else she would have looked even more like a tired and unwell loser grandma. (Bill: so thin, so pale, I said, “Hey, buddy, start eating steak again, for crying out loud.” Poor Bill—that diet, that wife. Good chance that as president I’ll be asked to speak at his funeral, which will be a great honor. Also probably Carter’s and the old Bush’s.) When Hillary arrived for the ceremony at the Capitol, the crowd actually booed— I didn’t hear it, because I was still backstage, but Kellyanne sent me one of those video jiffies of the footage, which I’m actually watching right now on my phone. The way it repeats over and over is what makes it funny. I had to force myself to stop watching it.

Then there was my speech. Remember when Obama surprised everybody by singing “Amazing Grace” at that very sad black funeral in the South? People loved that. Loved it. My idea was to end my inauguration speech by saying, as I did, “America will start winning again, winning like never before.” But then suddenly the music would come up and I would start singing—“We . . . are . . . the . . . champions, no time for losers, ’cause we are the champions of the world!” Boom, people are going wild, applauding, screaming, crying. Would’ve been amazing. But Mike Pence literally pleaded with me not to do that, because it turns out the guy who sang it originally was gay.

My fallback idea was to end the inauguration speech with the lines, “I will never, ever let you down. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. See how they run, like pigs from a gun? Everyone is listening to you now.” Then, cue the U.S. Army band, music up, and I sing “I am he as you are me and we are all together!” and repeat it over and over, easier to sing than the Queen song, clapping my hands, everyone joins in, then I’m like, “God bless you, and God bless America!” Boom, the end, totally upbeat after Bannon’s “carnage” stuff earlier. But Ivanka didn’t get the Beatles reference, so in the end I decided to play it straight. As it turned out, people said the speech was one of the five best of all time.

Next time, 2021, I’m going to put back in the line Ivanka and Jared cut from this one: “I’m the richest president America has ever had—which I don’t say to brag about being wealthy, but because the next five richest presidents are Kennedy, Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Andrew Jackson—three of the four on Mount Rushmore plus Trump plus Trump 1.0 (Jackson)! As the proverb says, ‘With great wealth comes great quality, the best.’” And my second inaugural will definitely have more pizzazz, more like Super Bowl halftime, maybe I sing “My Way” from the open door of Marine One as we hover over the Capitol dome, a couple of U.S. Marines on either side of me firing American flags at the crowd out of T-shirt canons. That was actually Barron’s great idea. Kellyanne says one of the marines should be an African American gal. Fine.