IT WAS ABOUT TO GET EVEN BETTER
The Japanese prime minister had been visiting for twenty-four hours, but this was my first real private time with him.
“Shinzō,” I said, “what do you think of Reince Priebus?”
We were walking off the green of the first hole (fifteen-foot birdie for me, par four for him) at the beautiful Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, about a half hour up the coast from the Southern White House.
I guess Prime Minister Abe didn’t understand my question.
“My Chief. Of. Staff,” I explained. The translator translated— although with that you never really know for sure, do you? “At the White House yesterday,” I said, “short guy, dark hair, balding, looks a little Japanese come to think of it, always darting around. Reince Priebus? Good man, you think?”
Mr. Abe still looked confused, the way he had the night before, when I told him my dad was German, actually conceived in Germany, so no hard feelings whatsoever about World War II. Somebody golfing with us said later that maybe he got a little weird about Reince Priebus because he thought I was trying to make a joke about his Japanese accent, how they pronounce the Rs. Which I wasn’t, although it was funny to think about. I was totally presidential all weekend, totally “dignified.” For instance, as we golfed on Saturday morning, I didn’t make one of those jokes guys do about the short distance from the first to the second hole and how tight and hard to get into the second hole is. Which the translator probably would’ve messed up anyhow.
Instead, we discussed important issues. Concerning trade, I told the prime minister a story. Even if he hadn’t come to visit me at Trump Tower when I was president-elect, just a week after my landslide victory, I told him, and even if he hadn’t gifted me then with a gold, top-of-the-line $4,000 Japanese-made driver, he probably still would have been my first visiting foreign leader as President Trump—but who knows? He smiled. He was inscrutable, like they are, but I was sure he got my point.
“Shinzō,” I continued, “you must know people who own at Trump Waikiki, right? In Honolulu? No? Beautiful 463-unit condo and hotel right on the beach, the most famous beach in the world. Most of the owners are Japanese! Right there across the bay from Pearl Harbor, but again, no hard feelings! So I’ve always wondered why was it always impossible for The Trump Organization to get anything built in Tokyo? Trade barriers! By the way, I’m told that my daughter Tiffany drives a Prius. And also, I am personally paying for your greens fees today and your lodging and meals at the Mar-a-Lago Club last night and tonight. Personally! Complimentary! No conflict of interest! Friends!”
We had a wide-ranging discussion—how America now lets Japan buy our natural gas, how we pay for the huge base on Okinawa protecting them and keep their neighbors in North Korea from nuking them, how the Mar-a-Lago Club was bestowed with the coveted Six Star Diamond Award, the top award, beyond the normal “five stars,” from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences, which gives out the Oscars to hotels and restaurants.* By the end of the eighteen holes, Prime Minister Abe was very receptive and Japan and the United States had become, maybe, probably, closer allies than ever before in history. I shot a sixty-five, including a hole in one on Trump National’s par-three fourteenth hole—which we didn’t publicize, not even on Twitter. That round lifted our spirits so much that instead of heading straight back to the wives at Mar-a-Lago, we stopped to play another nine at Trump International in West Palm. (I did even better: thirty-two, four under par.) By the way, even though Rex Tillerson and nobody else from the State Department was with us that weekend, I was a perfect diplomat. For instance, I pronounced the prime minister’s last name correctly every time, Ah-bay, not Abe like in Abe Lincoln, because I had the idea of thinking of it like ah-so, the Japanese word for “okay.” By the way, I discuss many more tricks like that in my best-selling book on international business, Trump Means Win in Every Language.
A previous bestseller—about my foreign policy negotiating skills.
My first twenty-four hours with a foreign leader as President Trump were already a gigantic success. And it was about to get even better.
At 7 p.m. at the Mar-a-Lago Club, what we call The Trump Golden Hour™ at all of our hotel and golf properties and my homes, I stepped onto the beautiful restaurant patio—and the entire crowd of ordinary Americans stood and applauded, Mar-a-Lago Club guests as well as Mar-a-Lago Club members, each dining on their individual choices from the multicultural cuisines—Continental, New World, Classical, and New Caribbean. Prime Minister Abe and his wife (and my wife, the First Lady) were very impressed by the standing ovation—and probably surprised, because of the dishonest media’s coverage of Trump. You know how at Broadway shows, when the big star first appears on stage and the audience goes crazy and applauds, before he even does or says anything? It was just like that. And at the Mar-a-Lago Club, little did the audience know about the special, fantastic live show they were about to experience at no extra charge.
Right after we sat down to dinner (strip steak for me, fish for our Japanese friends, of course), a call came in on my presidential phone, the one that vibrates in a special, very intense way. It was the secretary of defense in Washington—just a few minutes earlier, he said North Korea had fired a missile . . . at Japan! I was seated right between Mr. and Mrs. Abe. Although neither of them speaks English well, if their country was being destroyed right now, I didn’t want them to find out about it this way, by overhearing me talking to Mad Dog.
“Mad—Jim,” I asked, “did the, you know . . . oreans-Kay uke-nay okyo-Tay?”
No! he said, practically screamed, in fact, it was just a test launch of a missile, fell into the ocean, no warhead.
“So we don’t do anything, right? Fantastic. Whew.”
I was relieved—my brilliant scientist uncle at MIT always told me that nuclear was so bad, the worst, we really don’t want nuclear, even though we’ve always had the best nuclear— another one of those Cash-22s. But I also felt super excited because, after that, it became a fantastic scene from like Fail-Safe or Deep Impact, but adapted for live theater, starring me, Trump, as commander in chief, yet I could just enjoy the show. I told Prime Minister Abe the news, and then it was the two of us, the center of the action, the American leader and the obviously foreign leader, being briefed, looking at maps, nodding as translators said things. Our guys hustling around, moving chairs and candles, bringing out special digital flashlights, saying “downrange” and “PACOM” and “carrier air wing.” I loved hearing Abe call Flynn “Gen-ul-wah Fwin,” but Mike was so excited it made me kind of sad. And it was a little much when Steve whispered to me, “Surface Warfare Officer Bannon, reporting for duty, sir,” and he got so red-faced as the night wore on, I was afraid he might stroke out. Everybody in the restaurant was watching, and you could feel their excitement—because for all they knew, we were about to go into North Korea big-time! When I talked to Washington again, I got to use the Mar-a-Lago room they’d turned into a special high-tech bunker that jams all signals and beams and actually makes you invisible. When things on the patio were calming down, I asked my maître d’ to have the piano guy start playing the Mission: Impossible music and the original James Bond theme song, which made the night even better. My little press conference with Abe at the end, and then it was a wrap, as we say in show business, totally presidential and outstanding.
Unfortunately, the media coverage was a complete and total lie. First of all: We avoided going to war with North Korea, right? Nobody mentioned that. Second of all, what do the pundits and reporters always say they want? Transparency! Openness! Like my incredibly popular free tweets, like my great interview of Romney at a fantastic public restaurant, like my press conferences that get the most viewers ever—the way I dealt with that alfresco North Korea crisis at Mar-a-Lago was the greatest display of transparency and openness in American foreign policy history, as many historians are saying.
Next morning, the prime minister passed on another round of golf at Trump International, which I understood, given his scores the day before (secret, but triple digit on the eighteen), so I reminded him to use the “grip tip” I’d given him. “And one last thing, Shinzō—what do you think of my national security adviser, General Flynn?”
He smiled and shrugged and made the three little circles with his finger around his ear. I gave him a thumbs-up and told him the vice president would definitely be in touch to work out the details on trade deals and so on. “Sayonara, Shinzō,” I said, but then remembered you’re only supposed to say that when it’s good-bye forever, so I immediately added, “and we’ll see each other again, meet you halfway next time, Trump Waikiki—my treat again!” As my dad always said about me, “At least the lying little bastard is fast on his feet,” which my mom said he meant with love.
FLYING BACK TO WASHINGTON, Bannon came into the mini Oval for a while, watched the news coverage of me being the most important world leader. As they talked on the show about Flynn and Russia, I was glad Mike had had so much fun being Mr. Military at Mar-a-Lago, and I thought of The Godfather, the scene where Michael Corleone asks Tom Hagen, “Where does it say that you can’t kill a cop?” Corleone tells him, “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.” And also the scene when Michael says Fredo has a good heart but he’s weak and stupid and this is life and death.
I kind of think of Bannon as my Tom, the Robert Duvall character in The Godfather—a guy like me, like us, valuable guy, but not family. And then suddenly Steve did that mind-reading thing he does, which can be creepy. “Mr. President,” he said, “I agree with Flynn about a lot of things, but he is weak and stupid and this is life and death and nobody says you can’t fire a national security adviser after twenty-two days.”
Mike always really, really enjoyed being Trump’s buddy, my sidekick during the campaign, but as Jared and Ivanka point out, I’d only known him for like a year. “Mike,” I told him the next day, “it’s terrible what the fake media has done to you, the disgusting and I’m sure untrue stories about you and the Russians and the rest of it, but the Mike I can’t fire”—that’s what Bannon calls Pence— “says you lied to him about your chats with Sergey and so on. But I must tell you, Mike, you’ve been a major, major asset to me in the White House these last three weeks–plus, very major.” He looked so much like Fredo right then. Even though I wasn’t actually having him “killed” and he hadn’t betrayed me or the family. Yet. I don’t think. “I’ll tweet about you, okay, I’ll put out tremendously nice tweeting about you. As you know, I’m a big loyalty guy. The biggest.”
In fact, I proved that the next morning, right after a briefing in the Oval when we prevented some serious terrorism—Mad Dog, General Kelly, Jeffy, the vice president and the FBI director, some others. As the meeting broke up, I asked the FBI director to stick around for a minute. I made him sit right in front of the official presidential desk. Management 101.
“James,” I said when we were alone, very respectful, because I think he’s probably one of these guys who can’t stand it if you call him Jim, like the ones who insist on “Stephen” or “Gregory” instead of Steve or Greg, which always strikes me as a bit sissy. “So get the leakers, okay? We both hate the leakers, right? Get all the leakers, put them in jail, I’m counting on you, James. But with Mike Flynn, maybe he made a mistake, we got rid of him, okay, but we don’t need to send him out in the rowboat on the lake with Al Neri, do we?”
Comey didn’t understand. Which I found very strange, like maybe he was just playing dumb to embarrass me, because shouldn’t an FBI director, of all people, know The Godfathers, at least the first two?
“What I mean, James,” I said, “is I really hope you can see your way clear to letting this all go, letting Flynn go, investigationwise, ‘crime’-wise. He’s a good guy. I really hope you can let this go, James. I really do.”
Comey did his same old nervous headmaster blah-blah-blah protocol blah-blah-blah, with one of those I’m-sorry-but-I’m-so-pure smiles that have always pissed me off. Pardon my French.