Trump: I would hardly call them “serious.” There was only ever one serious candidate for the Republican nomination. His name was Donald J. Trump.
Dorset: You certainly garnered the majority of votes. Still, Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, gave you a run for your money late in the campaign.
Trump: Lying Ted Cruz? Don’t get me started on that guy. We all saw what happened to him in the end. Terribly sad. I knew he was a liar. I take no pleasure in being right about him, you know. I wish he’d been caught sooner, but he’s behind bars now.
Dorset: I’d like to ask you about that. After you were sworn in, one of your first actions was to have the FBI reopen the Zodiac Killer case. Within a matter of weeks, they had arrested a suspect in the series of grisly killings that took place in California during the late sixties and early seventies: Ted Cruz.
Trump: Brilliant work by the FBI.
Dorset: The Zodiac Killer’s first confirmed murder, a double homicide in Solano County, was in December of 1968. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary in December of 1970.
Trump: Being born in Canada doesn’t preclude someone from being a serial killer. It does preclude them from being president of the United States of America, but that’s another story entirely.
Dorset: I’m asking if it makes any sense that he’s the Zodiac Killer, given that all five of the murders law enforcement attributed to him occurred before he was even born.
Trump: Ask the jury. I wasn’t in the courtroom. I didn’t see the evidence.
Dorset: You really believe a jury could legitimately convict somebody for murders that couldn’t be committed without a time machine?
Trump: I have faith in our justice system. Answer me this: Since Lying Ted Cruz has been locked up, has there been another Zodiac Killer murder? No, there hasn’t. I rest my case.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Chapter Thirty-Five
Thursday, Don’t Even Start
Thursday was declared a day of national mourning for President Putin. Trump excused all White House employees for the day so everyone could honor the late Russian president’s memory in their own way.
As Putin’s body was flown home to Russia, Jimmie hit up the Leonardo DiCaprio triple feature at the nearby megaplex. Putin had once described the actor as a muzhik. A “real man.” It was only fitting that both Putin and DiCaprio had gone out fighting bears-Putin at the White House and DiCaprio while filming The Revenant 2’s impressive live-grizzly attack scene (shot in one take, for which DiCaprio picked up a much-deserved posthumous Oscar).
It was while watching DiCaprio get torn apart by the pack of thirty-two hungry grizzlies that Jimmie finally concluded there was no way Putin could have had anything to do with Lester Dorset’s death. The Russian president had gone down fighting a two-ton panda. Putin was a real man. It was utterly inconceivable that he would murder a reporter by pushing him from a roof in the middle of the night. That wasn’t the way of the muzhik. Lester Dorset’s killer was still out there. One suspect down… two to go.
Excerpt From the Trump/Dorset Sessions
June 25, 2018, 8:16 AM
Dorset: You had some strong words for Jeb! Bush during the primaries.
Trump: He’s a wimp. He has weak, limp wrists. A tiny voice. Low energy. He might be suffering from a medical condition. Have you heard of this? “Low T”?
Dorset: Low testosterone levels. Some doctors say “low T” is exaggerated as a medical condition-that it’s natural for men’s testosterone levels to drop as we age.
Trump: You know who doesn’t suffer from low testosterone levels? Me, that’s who. My doctor said my levels were off the charts. Literally so high they would need to recalibrate the testing equipment.
Dorset: That sounds potentially dangerous.
Trump: I should find a way to take my excess and bottle it. I could charge a fortune for it. You’d buy it.
Dorset: Uh… I don’t know that-
Trump: You’d buy it. Come on. Besides, who would you rather have in the White House? Somebody with too much testosterone or a wimp like Jeb! with too little?
Dorset: I’m not sure if testosterone levels equate to sound governance. We’d have to check to see if any studies have been done.
Trump: You don’t need a study to tell you that it takes “high T” to do what I do. It takes a pair of big balls to be commander in chief. When Jeb!’s finally drop, he’s welcome to come out of whatever Florida swamp hole he’s been hiding in and come at me like a man. I will fight him any day of the week. Except on Sunday. Sundays are reserved for golf and Game of Thrones.
Dorset: You’ve been almost as critical of Jeb!’s brother, George W. Bush, as you were of Obama.
Trump: The Iraq War was a disaster. How many trillions of dollars did we sink into that waste of time? If we’d gotten some oil out of it, it might have been worth it. How hard is that? Throw some empty jugs in the Humvee. He made the same mistake his father made with Kuwait. To quote The Art of War, “Never get into a land war in Asia.”
Dorset: You’ve been very vocal about the need to “bomb the shit out of ISIS.” The United States’ use of unmanned drones in the Middle East has increased dramatically under your leadership.
Trump: We’re bombing the shit out of them-their training camps, their weapons stockpiles, and so forth. All from the air with our little toy planes. Since I took office, not one American life has been lost overseas.
Dorset: While that’s made you wildly popular with the American people, it’s brought condemnation from some quarters. Drone warfare is still warfare. The Guardian’s George Monbiot has said the US is “fighting a coward’s war.”
Trump: The Guardian? How typical. Of course the Brits would call us names-they’re still nursing their wounds from when we ran them out of town in seventeen-whatever. They’re a nation of cowards, I tell you. They make France look like goddamn Sparta.
Friday, August 31, 2018
Chapter Thirty-Six
A Little Ditty
After an exhausting day of totally boring meetings, Jimmie found himself with an hour to kill until he was supposed to meet Cat for dinner. Most of the staffers had left early for the day to get a head start on Labor Day weekend. As good a time as any to dispose of Lester’s recorder.
He removed it from its hiding spot. The worthless “game-changing” interviews on it had already gotten two men killed. Jimmie had no desire to be the third. And yet… he couldn’t quite bring himself to just ditch it. It might come in handy-as evidence for the emerging story. Right now, there was precious little to hold onto. He didn’t know where Lester was buried, and Connor Brent was fish food.
There was a knock at the door. He panicked, stashed the recorder in his desk, and then answered the door.
“You’re not answering your phone,” Chris Christie said, bursting in like Meat Loaf on a motorcycle.
It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.