I NEED A TV IN THE OVAL
Reince reminds me of the nice kid in high school who manages the sports team but the players never hang out with. He actually trots around the White House, runs down the halls, I guess to make it look like he’s dealing with important emergency situations as my chief of staff. Somewhat cute, somewhat sad. “With Reince around,” Bannon says, “you really don’t need a dog here.” Yesterday when Steve and Kellyanne and I walked out of the Oval, Reince suddenly popped out of one of the boardrooms and ran up right behind us. Steve barked like a dog and said, “See Reince run! Run, Reince, run!” and we all cracked up.
By the way? No dogs in the Trump White House. The breath, the drool, the funguses, the parasites, the disease, the feces, the claws, the barking. Never. I haven’t touched a live animal since I was eleven years old. For me it’s what they call a core principle.
Anyway, this morning, on Day . . . one-two-three-four, Day Four of my administration, at 8-something, almost 9—I know the time because I’d just switched from Fox & Friends during the final ad break to Morning Joe—Reince ran into the little private “dining room” next to the Oval Office, which has a television, tiny, unbelievably small, but at least it means I don’t have to go all the way upstairs to watch. Ordered a 65-inch this morning, also getting a big, big, big crystal chandelier. A president needs a TV in the Oval, he really does.
Multitasking in the Oval Office: watching fantastic Steve Doocy and the other guy and the blonde on Fox & Friends while my aides and “experts” brief me.
“Mr. President,” Reince said, “one of . . . those calls just came into the switchboard.”
On the first Sunday, the president of Belarus had tried to call me directly at the White House but didn’t go through the State Department, so the operator refused to put him through. Very bad. Belarus is actually an important little nation, which most people don’t know, right between Germany and Russia, now independent, very independent, strategic. Bigger than England. According to Mike Flynn, who knows Mr. Lukashenko, he felt very disrespected. So I told Reince: Always let me know whenever a call like that comes through.
“Who is it? Presidente Piñata calling back to say he’s coming after all?” Jared arranged to bring the Mexican president up to talk about the Wall he’s paying for, but he just canceled. It reminds me of what a lot of people in the construction and hospitality industries say about workers of certain backgrounds who call in at the last minute and say “Sorry, boss, mañana.” (By the way, Piñata is actually the president’s name, so I’m not being “racist.”)
“No,” Reince told me, “it’s a guy who is supposedly Kim Jong-un and his translator from the UN. The call did originate on the Korean peninsula, translator on a second line in New York, but the duty officer in the Situation Room thinks it’s almost certainly not the Supreme Leader of North Korea.”
“‘Almost certainly,’ huh?” It was Presidential Decision Time. This could be my chance for the most important peace deal ever: Trump saves the world on Day Four. “I was ‘almost certainly’ gonna lose to Hillary, remember? Put him through! But go get Steve, I want a grown-up in here.”
I’ve done business with the Koreans, and right away I really thought I was hitting it off with the guy. Warmed him up at first, told him getting rid of his uncle, brother, and some of the disloyal generals—boom—that was very smart, very necessary, showed everybody he was boss. I said it’s great he’s young, at his age I built my first hotel and started Trump Tower, and I also told him my first movie star crush as a kid was a Kim—Kim Novak. Then I turned a little tough. “None of us want the nuclear, right, Kim, Mr. Kim, Supreme Leader?” I said. And he agreed. “You’ve got, what, twenty nukes?” I asked. “And can shoot one all the way to Japan, maybe, on a good day? And I’ve got like six thousand—” Bannon held up four fingers. “Four thousand warheads, the finest missiles, all aimed at you if I want—kaboom, sayonara! Not that I do want that. At all. So let’s talk, let’s figure out what makes us both happy campers.”
He spoke Korean, and then after a couple of minutes his translator suddenly referred to me as “President-erect Trump, you velly erect.” I realized it was my son Eric doing his Oriental voice. The “Kim” guy was a Georgetown buddy of Eric’s, an actual South Korean who works in marketing at our magnificent Daewoo Trump World condominium property in Seoul. “You got me!” I said. Reince and Steve were a little P-O’d, but I told them they shouldn’t be—it was a good dress rehearsal for the real thing.
THAT PREMIERE WEEK I took my first flight on Marine One and Air Force One, up and back from Philadelphia. I’m sure for other presidents having the use of a big private jet is one of the most amazing parts of the job—the thing that really makes them almost feel, temporarily, like a Donald Trump. Air Force One was fine, but again, like the White House, I don’t own her. The 747 is a much, much more old-fashioned model than my Trump 757. The engines aren’t Rolls-Royce, like on my beautiful 650-miles-per-hour T-Bird, and of course it doesn’t have the very famous 24-karat gold bathroom fixtures. They say Air Force One can fly over a nuclear blast and survive. We’ll see.
I was only in Philly for an hour, giving a pep talk to the Republicans from Congress—I guess for those guys a couple of nights out of town at a Loews is a real treat—but I also used the time in flight to sign papers, so many papers, all the executive orders and what not. Although I do like saying “by the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America” out loud. A lot about being president reminds me of what my very underrated Oscar-nominated friend and supporter Gary Busey told me about being a movie star. “You do your art for twenty minutes, and then instead of kicking back the rest of the day, all these dweebs you barely know are yakking at you and shoving documents at you.” Gary wants to be ambassador to the Virgin Islands. I’d love to make that happen for him.
Some of the papers you sign really matter. I spent the whole flight back to Washington reading the big one—every word, thousands of words. It was the one “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” Who wouldn’t want that, right? And I should get a little credit, quite frankly, for having made the ban nicer than some people wanted it to be—no ban on people from Indonesia or Turkey, no ban on people from Saudi Arabia or Dubai, which between them is like half the Muslims in the world. Although why would anybody from Dubai become a terrorist? Fantastic place, no dirty factories, although I love manufacturing, everything brand-new, especially the Trump International Golf Club, biggest clubhouse in Dubai, which I’ve been told my sons are officially opening next month, and coming soon will be the Trump World Golf Club, designed by Tiger Woods, one of my close African American friends. Love the Tiger. “You’re grrrrreat!” I tell him whenever we get together.
As we landed at Andrews, I congratulated my team for writing up the executive order without even one mention of Muslim or Islamic or Arab or whatever. Very smart. I asked if that was modeled on the voter ID thing, right, where the laws the Republicans passed in the states never actually mention blacks or Mexicans, they’re just, “Hey, we want better vetting at the voting booth.” Reince and Kellyanne and everybody just smiled. Because if they said anything, they know the dishonest PC media might use it against them somehow. I get that.