by Alec Baldwin
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.
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.
IT FINALLY FELT REAL, LIKE A MOVIE
My second weekend as president, I really felt like the president. It finally felt real, like a movie. Or I guess since it was live, more like one of those Broadway shows based on a movie, like The Color Purple or School of Rock, except not a musical. It got very exciting, because it wasn’t just signing the papers and posing for the pictures.
I called Piñata, told him he’d better stop saying he’s not paying for the Wall, and I might have to send our military in to take care of his drug guys. And by the way, that I hadn’t really enjoyed my trip down to see him last summer. “Burn.” Cut!
Then I called the prime minister of Australia and gave it to him straight—we’re supposed to take your refugees from terrorist countries? You can tie me kangaroo down, sport. Cut! After Iran shoots off a missile test, I tell them (and my millions and millions of other followers on Twitter) that they have been PUT ON NOTICE, just like that, in all capital letters—and the weak Obama and Hillary holdovers in the State Department can’t believe their eyes. Cut!
Friday night I had the FBI director over for an early dinner at the White House, just the two of us, Comey and me—asked him if he liked how nice I was to him when he was here for an event a few days before, the hug, public hug from Trump, told him I was glad he liked his job so much and that I’d heard he’s a very loyal guy, especially to bosses, very chain-of-command guy, and I assumed he’d always give any boss a heads-up if the boss were ever under investigation, especially if the investigation was some total hoax. Close-up on my face, close-up on his face, he tells me I’m not under investigation, cut!
I called another CEO to tell him if he kept his factory open in Iowa or Indiana, someplace, at least for a while, we’d make it very strongly worth his while. And that if he built a factory in Mexico, his children and grandchildren would regret it—and no, I said, I didn’t mean “future generations of Americans,” I meant his children and grandchildren.
If he didn’t believe me, I told this guy, check out the trouble the Tic Tac company is facing after the Access Hollywood tape incident. The president of the United States gives their product the greatest publicity they’ve ever had, and then put out a statement calling me “unacceptable”?
By the way, here’s some revealing personal information, which I know is the kind of thing people love in books like this. After I decided I was quitting Tic Tacs last fall, Chris Christie sent over a whole basket of new fresheners for me to try—Breath Savers, Mentos, Certs, Dentyne Mints, Listerine PocketMist, Binaca. Binaca he found somewhere! They probably still sell it in Jersey. Came out when I was a kid, went through like one a week back then. Ivanka and Jared suggested Altoids. I thought, “Original Celebrated Curiously Strong Mints,” give me a break, so gay, so elitist, also not American, British. But Rex Tillerson told me they’re actually made by Kraft or Wrigley, totally American. So for now I’m an Altoids guy.
Anyhow, that second weekend as president, my ban on terrorists was also going into effect—our border guys at the airports kicking ass and taking names. Literally! Sending possible terrorists back to Timbuktu after checking them for bombs! (Interesting fact not many people know: Timbuktu—actual place in Africa, Islamic.)
It even added to the drama having all the protesters and lawyers fighting us, which I’m used to—another way I’m more prepared for this job than other presidents when they’ve come in, part of the real beauty of Trump. That weekend was like when demolition finally starts on a major, major new Trump property, after the architects and engineers have been planning for months and years. And sometimes you go ahead even when you don’t have every single t crossed and i dotted on the permits and “environmental impact statements” and so forth, you just go, go, go. Unlike with a building, we didn’t have months or years to plan this all out, because I was only president for a week. So I guess it was less like a construction project and more like when you realize the girl you just met is a little buzzed and willing to go all the way, and there’s like this formality of small talk where you’re smiling but you’re afraid she might pass out or cry or something so you just, you know, go in. What I mean is, not so much planning.
Mad Dog Mattis wished we’d given him and the Pentagon more of a heads-up on the ban, but I really, really didn’t want the terrorists to have any warning so they could pull their refugee disguises together. I think I convinced Mad Dog I was right about that. He didn’t tell me I wasn’t. And General Kelly’s guys at Homeland Security didn’t know it was coming either, but I think it’s good to keep your own people on their toes
. Right? You don’t tell employees in advance about a drug test. Or like when you don’t always tell the wife ahead of time that tonight’s the night, until suddenly, bam, it is, therefore she always has to be ready to do what needs doing. Leadership 101.
HE IS VERY, VERY, VERY JEWISH, WHICH I RESPECT SO MUCH, HE’S BASICALLY IN JEWISH JAIL FROM FRIDAY THROUGH SATURDAY NIGHT.
Sunday morning Jared came over to the White House to watch the shows with me—Jared is family, so we were upstairs in the private presidential “living room,” which is small, more like a den than a living room—and discussed the terrorist ban. When things started hitting the fan on Friday night and all day Saturday, Jared wasn’t around, which was fine, and he couldn’t even talk with me on the phone, which was fine, or text or e-mail, which I don’t do anyway. Because he is very, very, very Jewish, which I respect so much, he’s basically in Jewish jail from Friday through Saturday night— house arrest, okay, but actually much worse because he and my Ivanka aren’t allowed to have fun or work, no TV, no movies, no phone, no Internet, no driving, nothing. People in Secretary Ben Carson’s Christian religion, Seventh-day Adventist, do the same thing; their holy day is Saturday, although they don’t call it Sha-boom or whatever, like Judaism does. But it’s not like there’s ever going to be some Housing and Urban Development emergency where I’ll need Ben on a Saturday, right? (Also, he’s not strict about it, because when he was running against me, he definitely campaigned on Saturdays, which I could’ve hit him for at the time, but didn’t.)
The Sunday shows had footage of the protesters and lawyers at the airports all trying to stop us from keeping America safe. “I wonder how much your buddy Soros is paying them?” I asked. Jared just smiled. “Come on, tell me, I won’t tweet it.” Jared has a huge line of credit from George Soros for his real estate business. Like a billion dollars. We kept the story from getting out before the election, and I worried it would be a big problem for us with the conservatives, the Alex Jones folks, when it did break, which it just did, but Bannon says he’ll make sure it “stays on the down-low in our zone.” Steve is very tough. He reminds me of a tubby Roy Cohn, not gay but tough and funny like Roy except with more real, you know, beliefs and so forth. I know Steve looks like he has cancer or something, but I had people check it out and that’s just the way he looks.
Somebody who’d been around the day before—Cohen or Eisenberg, one of the young national security guys who are allowed to work all weekend even though they’re Jewish—told me not to worry about the protesters. Because Americans don’t care for the pro-Muslim protesters, which is true. But also because, which I didn’t know, by using some kind of high-tech radar we can clock in to all the protesters’ phones, so it’s like they’re registering with us, then keep the numbers on file in case any of them turn out to be terrorists or terrorist supporters or illegals. So what looks bad for us, people don’t realize, is actually a win. Which, quite frankly, has always been a big part of my success in business. Marketing 101.
“You saw what McCain and Graham said?” Jared asked. “Criticizing the executive order, the rollout?”
“Already have a response. Here’s how I’m hitting them: ‘WARNING: John McCain & never-married “Lindsey” Graham, major losers, planning to start World War III—soon! Not my fault when they do! Scary!’”
Jared shot me this really annoying look of his, like I’m his son. But I handed him the phone. Especially since he’s not getting directly paid, sometimes I have to let him be “Senior White House Adviser.” It’s why I let him have his own little intelligence briefing every morning. Better than listening to him go on and on about my presidency being “in beta” with “limited-time windows of opportunity to move the needle,” and how I have “core competencies in disruption” but I need to “get buy-in” if I want to “take Washington to the next level.”
He changed my tweet, made it:
“Senators and former pres candidates McCain & Graham should focus energies on ISIS, immigration & border security, not premature criticism.”
“Come on, Professor Kushner—‘premature criticism’? That’s like ‘erectile dysfunction.’ So off-brand, so not Trump! Boring, boring, boring. Plus, I’m definitely putting World War III back in.” Which I did, and punched “Tweet,” boom. I am the president. Jared went down to do some work in his office in the West Wing.
He hasn’t called me Mr. President yet.
My daughter does sometimes, but it’s more humorous, like with a fun wink, the way Marilyn Monroe sang it to President Kennedy. Which by the way isn’t “inappropriate” of me to say—Va-va-va-vanka said it herself. She also told me Marilyn was almost exactly her age at the time of the “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” show at the Garden, and that she killed herself like two months afterward. Sad.
Why is there nothing good at all on TV on Sundays after the news shows? It was true when I was a kid and what, twenty-five years later, with a million channels, it’s still true. I want to put forward a plan to fix that, and have already asked my great new FCC chairman to take care of it—Ajit Pai, Indian guy, great young guy, Harvard, Ajit Pai, I love saying Ajit’s name, fantastic name. On the other hand, the lack of good TV in America on weekend afternoons, I must say, is a big reason I took up golf in the first place, and why I’ve won eighteen club championships so far. And therefore also why I now own the finest golf properties in the world, the greatest collection in history. So out of bad can sometimes come good. And as president, because they’ll try to keep me from golfing every weekend, the lack of good TV will give me time to write this book, by talking, as I’m doing now, here in the Treaty Room. Which really may be my favorite room in the White House—only I come here, extremely comfortable sofa, concealed minifridge for the Diet Cokes, credenza for the Doritos and Lays and chocolate-covered pretzels I have flown in from Pittsburgh, a really fantastic gold mirror, very old, plus a nice balcony and a decent view. And the only large-screen TV they had in the place, if you can believe it, in 2017.
As a result of the TV situation on the weekends that I don’t golf, Ivanka says I get “moody.” Which is why she told her friend Wendi Murdoch to tell Rupert to try to make more of his calls to me on Sundays or, even better, Saturdays, when she has to be so Jewish all day long. That’s also why they scheduled our first White House movie for today in the screening room in the East Wing. (What is with all the bright red fabric in there? Like a strip club.) It’s Finding Dory, the computer cartoon about the fish. Ivanka’s bringing over the kids, and it had the most successful opening weekend of any cartoon ever, grossed a billion dollars, so I—
What the hell? Uh-oh! Landline ringing on the Treaty Desk!
VOICE MEMO: Presidential to-do list
Song, “WHAT THE HELL / UH-OH / LANDLINE RINGING ON THE TREATY DESK,” © 2017 by Donald J. Trump.
The call was from Mad Dog and Mike Flynn. SEAL Team Six did a commando raid against al-Qaeda in Yemen, which is the little one at the bottom of Saudi Arabia.
“Around forty-five dead, Mr. President,” Flynn said.
“Fantastic,” I said. “Forty-five down, how many to go?”
Mad Dog said it wasn’t that simple, because about thirty were civilians, only fourteen definite al-Qaeda. (I’m not quoting him directly because he said he might have to resign if I did that. Fine. I’ve made a similar deal with my wife, the First Lady.)
“Okay, Mad Dog,” I said, “but fourteen is still good. Why don’t you guys sound happier? Yemen is on our list, right, one of the bad Arab countries, where we’re vetting all the terrorist immigrants? Well, this shows people that a lot of the Yemenians are terrorists, and we’re whacking them there so they don’t come here and destroy America! You can’t say that but I can. I’ll tweet it. And we’ll get Fox & Friends to do a split screen in the morning—like on the right they show some of the ones in the garb at JFK, and on the left a few of the dead ones in Yemen. Pictures worth thousands of wor
ds! You with me, Mad Dog? Mike?” It was Marketing 101 blended with Leadership 101.
Mad Dog told me that the bad Arab hombres got one of our SEALs, that even with months of planning things sometimes go wrong, and would I please stop calling him Mad Dog.
Jared came upstairs and I gave him the lowdown.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s too bad. Really sad.”
We sat for a minute, the two of us. It was a moment of silence. Not complete silence, because the TV was still on, the afternoon rerun of Meet the Press with Chuck Todd, who is practically bald now, which I guess is why he grew that ridiculous, disgusting goatee. And I was checking Twitter—somebody points out that the ACLU and ISIS both have four letters and two of them are vowels. Interesting. Nothing yet about Yemen.
“You know,” I finally said to Jared, “the media will blame me for the SEAL getting killed. And the civilians. If they really were civilians. Mad Dog said it was a mission they’d planned for months, meaning under Obama, right? I guess I gave the thumbs-up last week sometime, but it’s the generals who call the shots, not me, that was always the Trump platform. I didn’t write the courses for Trump University, I don’t tell the guys with the bulldozer how to put the sand in the bunkers or water in the hazards. Right? I mean, Mad Dog and my other generals are extremely well respected, the most respected that we’ve had since Patton, so I trusted them. That’s what you do, as the commander in chief.”
“Uh-huh,” Jared said.
