I NEVER PANIC

As Rodrigo brought in my breakfast, he was shaking his head. I thought it was still because he was upset about what happened last night when Ted Nugent and Kid Rock and Sarah Palin came over for dinner—the mooning on the Truman Balcony, the fingering the baked Alaska, the two missing saucers, et cetera.

He was still shaking his head as he picked up the empty Doritos bags and Diet Coke cans from my bedside table.

I looked at the Filipino proverb on my breakfast tray, which he now includes every week or so, in the language the natives there call “Tag Along” and also in actual English. A sleeping shrimp is carried away by the current.

“Are you saying I should get out of bed, Rodrigo?”

“No—but I saw on Fox News that you have been fired as president, my friend, oh, really sad, because of what those women said in the New York Times about sex.”

I was so surprised that Ovaltine and bacon bits sprayed out my nose all over my newspapers. “You mean Bill O’Reilly, Rodrigo— nobody fired me, nobody can fire me.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. President, that’s what I said—I’m sad for your friend Mr. O’Reilly, because he’s out at Fox News.”

Bill was actually more of a colleague than a friend, like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan weren’t really “friends.” But for the elitists and liberals and fake media, getting O’Reilly was like a dress rehearsal for getting me—“We can’t destroy Trump, so we’ll destroy the next best,” a tall guy in his sixties on Fox all the time, a well-known guy from the New York suburbs but so successful in Manhattan the Manhattanites hate him, a controversial guy with a sense of fun who doesn’t put up with PC and always calls a spade a spade, almost never literally. They were all fantasizing about whacking me when they whacked him, that I can tell you, 100 percent. Last night when I heard the news about O’Reilly, it did make me call down to the Secret Service and tell them we needed to permanently close the sidewalk outside the White House for security reasons, and I did get short of breath for a couple of minutes, although the White House chief usher was wrong and inappropriate when she very loudly said she was sure “the president seems to be having a panic attack.”

I don’t panic. I never panic. I didn’t panic from 1990 to 1992 when I did not go bankrupt. Ask any member of my family, anybody who knows me or ever worked for me. “Trump does not panic,” every one of them will tell you, I promise. Anybody who ever might have seen me panic, such as when I was little, is dead now—such as my father, who died on a fantastic summer Friday a week after my birthday in 1999, when I was single, such a great time in my life, although “bittersweet” because of the funeral, although he was extremely old and totally out of it by that time. Instead of panicking, I always eliminate the problems that are trying to make me panic.

I’m not panicking now. It wasn’t panicking to change my mind about China or Syria or NATO or being nice to North Korea or anything else. In fact, I didn’t really change my mind at all, now I can reveal that—my current positions were always my true positions, but winners don’t show their cards, winners are unpredictable, winners keep the losers off guard. Also, it’s like on every season of The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice and in all movies—to keep people interested you need what they call “an arc,” with the hero doing surprising things and going through plot twists. Entertainment 101, which is really just a different name for Leadership 101 and Marketing 101.

I’m not panicking about the Russia hoax or about the disgusting “intelligence” leaks or about the fake polls. I’m not panicking about Mike Flynn betraying me, because he knows loyalty, and the section of the Constitution that lets the president pardon anybody for anything, which is amazing, and why I sent Mike a message today—“Stay strong, you’ll be fine, promise.” And I’m not panicking about the dishonest fake media and archaic rules in Congress and all the so-called judges and pathetic Democrats and bureaucrats in the “deep state”—which, like most people, I’d never even heard of until now, so scary—all of them “colluding” to stop me from making America great.* I don’t believe they all hate America, the way Bannon thinks, because many of them are really just like Ivanka but without money or nice clothes or Trump genes, but they do all hate the idea that I’ll succeed, so they’re willing to keep America in terrible, terrible shape so that Trump looks worse. But I will win, I will win, I will win—or as my dad used to say so loud the neighbors could sometimes hear, “Sieg ist mein,” which means the same thing.

My amazing son Barron just put a countdown clock on my phone, a “widget” he calls it, that shows me all the time how many days I have left in my first one hundred days—I’m down to nine.

I’m not panicking—I’m focusing. Very, very different. If you panic it means you’re scared. When I need something important to happen quickly, I command, I make demands, I make other people panic if necessary, make them scared, the people who work for me and the people against me, so then they do whatever has to be done—and therefore Trump doesn’t need to feel scared or humiliated. And the people around me will always feel much more scared and humiliated than I ever will, which is actually the next best thing to never feeling it yourself at all. Management 101 and Leadership 101. ME-dership 101!

MITZI: Presidential to-do list

Invite Kanye to Southern White House to discuss Trump rap album, advance warning for club members.

Focus is why Jared and other people have been very nicely offering to stop a terrible Enquirer story about Joe and Mika if they’ll publicly apologize to us.

Focus is getting Obamacare repealed now and replaced by whatever. “You’re not ‘moving on’ from repealing and replacing,” I told Ryan and Priebus. “You’ve got nine days, two weeks tops—or else, Reincey.” Which scared him, but I noticed actually made Ryan smile.

Focus is why I told my financial and economic guys weeks ago we need to announce our fantastic tax plan before the hundred days are up, biggest tax cut in the history of this country and one of the biggest ever anywhere in the world—almost no taxes. What the plan has to do, right away, I told them, is get rid of all the taxes that are there only to hurt the successful people—the “alternative” tax, the terrible new tax on stock market winners that pays for collapsing Obamacare, the tax that takes away the money you want to leave to your kids when you pass away, et cetera. I have another idea, which my financial guys are too scared to propose this time around. After any American is murdered by an illegal immigrant or a terrorist, the victim’s family would never have to pay taxes of any kind again. Even sales tax, because we’d issue cards that say TAX AMNESTY: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT MURDERER VICTIM, which they’d present at the cash registers, or enter a code if they shop online, although in any case, no more taxes, ever. But even before we do that, our tax and economic plan is going to make America like it was when everybody lived in nice homes and almost nobody got murdered and the dads who didn’t do the dirty work always wore ties. But our plan will also make America like you’ve never seen it before, like on The Jetsons.

AFTER I ANNOUNCED we were about to announce the amazing tax plan, my financial and economic guys claimed to my face that I’d never told them about the hundred-days deadline—which is so not true that I laughed as hard and long as I’d laughed since one of Tillerson’s people mentioned a real African president named “Omar Bongo.” My economic guys got the message and while I was still laughing rushed out of the Oval and got right to work on it, since they knew they’d screwed up. They finished the plan in a few days, which is all they needed—as anybody who’s ever paid for a term paper the night before it’s due knows.

The rush also made it more exciting for everybody. We were ending our show’s first season, one hundred days, thirteen weeks, and excitement is so important in any finale episode—like on Day Ninety-Seven when I said I was going to pull out of the Clintons’ disastrous trade deal with the Mexicans and the Canadians, which everyone knows destroyed our economy. “No more NAFTA”—and everybody got excited! Ivanka said she had a strong feeling the president of Canada and the prime minister of Mexico would both call me the next day literally begging to make a better deal—and that’s exactly what happened, boom, boom, one right after the other! (I’m glad to know now that Ivanka inherited some of my “special” mental powers. I think Barron is developing them, too. On Easter Sunday I was kind of talking in my mind about North Korea’s nuclear to my brilliant MIT uncle, Professor John Trump, who died right before my first appearance on 60 Minutes, before I was forty, so sad. Suddenly Barron says that I’m like Professor X, the star of X-Men—or Professor X and Magneto combined, which Barron says would be the best. I need Barron around more. So smart.) Anyhow, on Day Ninety-Eight, Trudeau and Piñata both called and caved and said they’d change NAFTA to make America first.

On Day Ninety-Nine I realized we’d done nothing at all on one of my very important promises during the campaign—that we would sue all of the lying women who lied that I “assaulted” them. Unfortunately I can’t do this by an executive order, because what didn’t happen didn’t happen when I was a private citizen, which also means I can’t use my White House counsel or the Secret Service or FBI on it. Ivanka begged me to wait until 2018 to announce it, but I told my personal lawyers to start all the background work, investigating if it was Hillary or Obama or both who hired those disgusting women to come forward and tell their lies. By the way, I’ve never “sexually assaulted” any woman in my entire life. Sure, once they give me the sign, I’m no sissy, because, quite frankly, most women want that Robert Mitchum–Jim Brown type of man, which is a major reason I’ve always done so well with the ladies. But according to the women I know, other women these days are being brainwashed by PC to call everything “assault,” which is so unfair and disgusting.

On the morning of Day One Hundred, when I got my weekly Filipino proverb along with my bacon and Ovaltine—Ang umaayaw ay di nagwawagi, ang nagwawagi ay di umaayaw, which is a lot of words for “Succeed or die”—I decided to call the president of the Philippines, where it was like dinnertime the night before. I love that international time travel thing. To be quite honest, it’s military leverage we have over Kim Jong-un if it ever did come to war, a thing that our generals and “intelligence” and other presidents have never realized we could use to our advantage. America First also means we get the days first, because it’s still Friday in Korea when we’ve already moved on to Saturday in America. Which reminds me of a picture book I had when I was young, The Relativity Express, Christmas gift from my MIT genius uncle, Dr. John Trump, about a train that travels so fast it goes back to cowboy times, which gave me the idea in fifth grade of traveling to the early 1900s and buying up certain real estate for nothing because none of the sellers would know their properties were going to become super valuable. After I found out that kind of time travel was impossible, I lost interest in science.

Rodrigo told me that President Duty-Free speaks English, which was great. And it turns out his first name is also Rodrigo, which is spooky, but made me feel like we were friends right away. Good guy, great guy, wonderful energy—told me his last name is actually Dirty Tea, very polite about that, but that if I ever called him Duty-Free again, he might “mistake” some of our Manila embassy staff for drug dealers. He was joking, and we had a good laugh—but I told him I very seriously loved the fantastic, unbelievable job he was doing with his drug problem and wanted him to teach us how to stop ours. He made shooting sounds, like we did when we were kids—“Pkew! Pkew! Pkew!”—which was very funny. He also said he hoped I wouldn’t start a war with North Korea—or at least let him know in advance so he could get out of the Orient ahead of time! Funny, funny guy. Great chemistry, so I invited him to both White Houses, and told him when he comes my senior steward and special international minority adviser would fix him some bull’s penis soup with chicken toenails and crickets—which my Rodrigo swears they actually eat, which does make you wonder.

Around the end of the first one hundred days I also made everybody excited when I said Kim Jong-un is a smart cookie and tough and that I’d be honored to get together with him. Xi said that’s how to get him to do what you want, duh, but I also really think Kim is a smart, tough young guy. Like the good Arabs, Ahmet Ertegun in Turkey and General Sissy in Egypt, like Putin and Xi. I enjoy these guys because there’s no bullshit involved, no fake “principles,” it’s all totally honest—and unlike the Europeans and the pretty boy gym rats who run Canada and Mexico, they don’t try to make it like I’m not as smart or sophisticated or nice as they are. It’s related to why I was so attracted to my wives—none of them speak English perfectly, so it was never like they would be judging me.

By the way, speaking of not judging, you know who else I’ve developed great relationships with? The leaders of Africa and South America, who supposedly don’t like America. Well, they like me, which means they’re finally learning to like America. It’s been secret until now, Ivanka and Jared made me pinky swear I’d keep it secret, but every month or so I do the FaceTime with Bob Mugabe, who’s been head of Zimbabwe for thirty-seven years, just about the longest in the world, which is so impressive, and he speaks perfect English. Also Nick Maduro, the head of Venezuela, not such good English, but he sells us oil, so much oil, as much oil as Saudi Arabia, which most people don’t know, and he also understands Venezuela could be a beautiful resort country again. We have good chemistry, Bob and Nick and I.

Even though the “first one hundred days” thing isn’t in the Constitution or the laws or other rule books at all, just a totally meaningless test the fake media fabricated to make Trump panic and feel bad, like it used to do about my fingers and hands, now even the pundits and professors are saying I had the most memorable first one hundred days since FDR—somebody showed me the articles, the headlines. And to celebrate we had a tremendous rally on Day One Hundred in Pennsylvania, where I beat Hillary last fall even though no Republican had ever won Pennsylvania. I felt so great, so phenomenal—and I think the new supplements made my Superman feelings last a lot longer than usual, even though Ivanka, who walked by just now as I was saying this, reminded me to “write” that all my pills and capsules are totally natural and organic vitamin-type things.

When I asked Reince why we hadn’t started scheduling two or three rallies a week, like I’d ordered, he claimed he thought I’d said one every two or three weeks. “Two or three every week would be a lot of rallies, Mr. President. An awful lot.”

“Right? Right! Exactly! You saw how happy those people in Pennsylvania were on Saturday, all one hundred thousand of them shouting ‘Trump! Trump! Trump!’ The people love the rallies, Reince. They need the rallies.” The only problem with Pennsylvania was the Secret Service dogs sniffing for explosives—I actually saw them right around my podium. “But as we do more rallies,” I reminded Reince, “don’t forget the new dog protocols, okay?” The canine teams need to go in and be gone at least twenty-four hours before Trump arrives—and I don’t care if that means more uniformed Secret Service overtime. No dogs.

Believe it or not, until now there was never an official American commander in chief uniform! For the time being I only wear it privately—such as here in the Southern White House, doing what Ivanka calls my “mindfulness practice.”

I was on a roll again, so I kept the action going a few days past Day One Hundred, making it all look totally off the cuff, surprise, surprise, surprise, keeping the excitement up—like saying how I might raise the gasoline tax to pay for new everything, highways, bridges, airports, airplanes, ships, missiles, tanks, lasers, computers, the best, all brand-new, and how I might break up JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and all of the big banks.

And then right at the end of the first one hundred days, the very end, Day One Hundred Five, whatever, Ryan and I guess Reince came through in the clinch on repeal and replace, we won, couldn’t be done and I did it, back from the dead, we had a beautiful party out in the Rose Garden.

MITZI: Presidential to-do list

I felt so great, so incredible, so amazing, so fantastic, so out- standing, literally unbelievable. So truly, extremely, absolutely, unbelievably, tremendously phenomenal, the best. The best, the best. Just the best.