“I’m issuing all these executive orders, but there’s no funding for any of them. They’d just sit there if I didn’t find creative ways to fund them. Whoever thought about opening a Chase business card for the United States before? I was the first to do it. We’re getting a very, very good rate, too. Plus Amazon rewards!
“Unfortunately,” Trump continued, “there’s this little document called the Constitution-”
A chorus of boos momentarily drowned Trump out.
“Settle down, settle down,” he said, raising his voice. “The Founding Fathers can’t hear you-they’re dead! What do they care if the entire legislative branch is a joke?
“The pressure’s on Congress now. I shouldn’t have to go begging to them every time I want a few billion bucks or want to declare war on a bunch of tea-drinking pansies. If they don’t give me the authority I want, maybe I’ll just give it to myself. What do you think?”
Cheers from the audience. Jimmie glanced around to see who among the press corps was cheering-turned out, nobody. It appeared Trump had filled in the empty seats with ringers outfitted in Trump gear. One woman three rows behind Jimmie was wearing a shirt with a cartoon drawing of Prince Charles and several rather robust women, with the caption “PRINCE OF WHALES.”
“The new process-and this could change-is that I’ll write the bills myself and sign them. Then I’ll hand them to my bald eagle courier, who will fly them to Massachusetts, where a Mayflower descendent will seal them into law by chiseling them into the Plymouth Rock. If that doesn’t work out for whatever reason, we can always-”
“BEAR!”
Jimmie craned his neck around to see who’d interrupted the president. People were standing, row by row, and exiting in a panic. They were being split down the middle, like a parting sea. All hell was breaking loose in slow motion.
“Bear?” Trump said. “No, we’re going to use an eagle-”
Jimmie heard the great beast before he saw it. The creature’s deep, bass growl rumbled across the green, like thunder across the Midwest plains of Jimmie’s youth. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention, even as he was frozen in place.
“What in the hell is going on out there? I’m not finished!” Trump yelled into the microphone. “I’m not finished!”
Trump’s demand fell on deaf ears. People were fleeing the seating gallery haphazardly, tipping their folding chairs over. Cat ran past Jimmie on her way back into the White House, where everyone seemed to be headed for cover.
That’s when Jimmie finally saw the animal cutting its way through the middle of the crowd.
It was no bear.
It was a giant panda.
Which was technically a bear, Jimmie supposed.
He also recognized this one: Mei Xiang, the adult female from the National Zoo. Not only had she survived Trump and Putin’s hunt, but she’d escaped! Maybe they’d released the animals from their cages and made the hunt a little more sporting than Jimmie had first thought.
The panda batted chairs to the left and to the right with its massive tree-trunk arms, roaring all the while. Its dark eyes blended into the black patches of fur that encircled them, but Jimmie was sure he could see more than a flicker of rage in them. This creature was out for blood. This creature was out for revenge.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Mei Xiang’s Revenge
When the panda was fifteen yards away, Jimmie’s fight-or-flight instinct finally kicked in. He crouched low and dashed to the edge of the seated area just as a chair flew over his head. Thankfully for Jimmie, the panda was of a single mind. It may not have been moving fast, but there was a deliberateness to its path of destruction. The panda was headed straight for the president of the United States and his entourage.
Although Trump had finally given up on his speech, he refused to yield the podium. “I’m not letting some Chinese push me around!” he shouted.
A phalanx of Secret Service agents formed a semicircle around the president, weapons drawn. They were decked out in black suits that had to be hot as hell on a day like this under the sun. They were probably a bit tougher than Jimmie and not likely to complain like he would about such things. That was why they were guarding the president and Jimmie was watching helplessly from the literal sidelines.
They didn’t fire at the panda. There were too many civilians behind the creature, standing around with their phones raised. Like Jimmie, they’d seen that the interloper wasn’t just randomly attacking people. It was heading straight for a single target. So out came their phones to Periscope and YouTube and SnatchCatch it to the world.
Vladimir Putin emerged from the shield of Secret Service agents with a shotgun. Where he’d picked up a shotgun was anyone’s guess, but he had one.
“Stand down, Americans,” Putin hissed. “This is between me and woman bear.”
Upon seeing Putin’s receding hairline, the giant panda charged forward at full speed. Jimmie had only seen pandas sitting around in zoos, napping and occasionally eating shoots and leaves. He’d never seen a panda drop to all fours and go from zero to sixty in two seconds.
Before Putin could raise the barrel of the shotgun, the panda hit him like a semi plowing into a Smart electric car.
The shotgun went flying as Putin was slammed into the ground. The giant panda rolled him over onto his stomach to assume a more dominant position. Then the beast pawed at his back, ripping Putin’s shirt clean off. The sow raked its massive claws across the Russian’s exposed flesh, drawing blood.
The Secret Service agents exchanged glances with each other, unsure whether to intervene.
Trump held up a hand, as if to say, Let the fight go on.
The panda put one paw on the back of Putin’s skull and pressed down with all its weight. A great cry of anguish issued forth from beneath the beast. Jimmie flinched. The Russian president was being crushed to death live on social media. This was certainly a first in the digital realm.
Putin struggled to get out from under the panda, but it was useless. The sow had to weigh at least two tons. That was a lot of shoots and leaves.
After another minute, Putin’s arms and legs stopped twitching.
The panda stood on its hind legs and roared in victory.
Jimmie saw that Putin still had some fight left in him, however. The Russian president inched his hand down the side of his leg, where he found a six-inch bowie knife hidden underneath his dress pants.
The panda didn’t look down until it was too late. Putin rolled over onto his back (or what was left of it) and hopped to a standing position. It was a feat of athletic prowess that Jimmie had only seen before on the WWE. The panda cocked its head in confusion at the shirtless, bloodied man attempting to stand toe-to-toe with it. Despite Putin’s impressive stature, the panda towered several feet over him.
Before the panda could react, the Russian president ran the knife up through the bear’s ribs and straight into its heart.
The panda staggered backward on its hind legs, with the handle of the knife sticking out of its chest. It flailed its arms about and howled in pain. It took a few more ragged breaths before stumbling forward, right on top of the man who had struck it down. Two tons of dead weight fell on Putin, crumpling him like he was an empty can of Trump Cola.
Excerpt From the Trump/Dorset Sessions
July 1, 2018, 7:49 AM
Dorset: The race for the White House was a wild one. On the Republican side, you battled it out with more than a dozen other serious contenders-