Fear and Loathing in the White House Movie Theater

“I’ve built walls

A fortress deep and mighty

That none may penetrate

I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain

It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain

I am a rock

I am an island”

~ Simon & Garfunkel

Read Episode 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

NOTE:

“How long has it been since he’s come out of that room?”

“I’ve lost track. I guess a month and change.”

“A month?!”

“At least.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Jesus. We need him now more than ever. I’ll say a prayer.”

“He has to come out of there eventually.”

“You would think. Let’s try again to get some sort of response.”

Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders knocks loudly on the door of the White House movie theater. “Mr. President? It’s me, sir, Hucky. Can you hear me, sir? Knock twice of you can hear me.”

There is no knocking-back noise coming from inside the theater. But with an ear put to a juice glass held up to the door, Huckabee Sanders hears what she thinks is Celebrity Apprentice highlights.

 

Mired by burgeoning scandals, buried in damning news reports, swamped by the inability to Drain the Swamp, embarrassed by daily leaks revealing extreme incompetence, wounded by a number of legislative defeats, and dismissed by nearly every other world leader that’s breathing as dumb and loutish, it is not a good time for President Donald J. Trump.

This is not going well.

Trump is sad.

It has been thirty-three days since the President barricaded himself in the White House movie theater and has refused to come out.

Every day, a different member of the Trump family or someone on the senior staff has knocked on the door trying to get the President to leave the theater and return to work. Nobody has been successful. Not even Ivanka or the First Pet Titties the Monkey. Melania has been asked repeatedly to fly in from New York to coax her husband out of the room. She has declined, telling close friends the President’s self-imposed imprisonment is the best thing that has happened to her in more than a decade.

When Ivanka Trump stood outside the theater and tried to talk her father into emerging and actually being President again, she had a strategy. “Daddy,” she said, “We met with the Smithsonian yesterday. They pitched a great idea.” That’s a fib. It wasn’t the museum’s idea, it as Ivanka’s. “The Smithsonian wants to create a new exhibit called ‘Donald J. Trump’s Selected Letters.’” No such proposal was offered. “What they want to do, Daddy, is take your best Tweets during the campaign that you won big and that was amazing and had never been done before.” Trump lost the popular vote by almost three million votes. “The museum wants to take the Tweets and blow them up as big as freeway signs.” Clearly not probable. “But you need to come out and sign the paperwork.” There is no paperwork. “The cameras are ready to show your huge and big signature.”

Trump stood next to the theater’s exit. He put his hand in the door and sighed. Then he looked at his smartphone and his beloved Twitter feed. Ivanka’s ploy almost worked. But President Trump didn’t take the bait. He shuffled back to a chair in the theater and went back to watching Fox and Friends while locked in a room.

Inside the White House movie theater, it is a grim scene. Squalor and filth. Trump watches cable news nearly around the clock. Occasionally interspersed with DVDs of The Apprentice. Piles of McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell wrappers dot the theater floor like garbage-filled haystacks. When Trump would not exit the theater for three days, Secret Service used a chainsaw an agent brought in from home to cut out a hole above the locked door of the theater. Five times a day, fast food from various franchises is dangled from a plastic bag hooked on a broom handle for the President to devour.

With no bathroom in the theater, President Trump has been filling KFC buckets with urine and excrement, lining the used cardboard pails around the perimeter of the room. The stench is overwhelming.

Oddly, Trump’s hair and fingernails have begun growing at rapid rates as a result of the enormous stress and pressure. Ten times the normal speed of growth. That stringy, strawy mess that is normally folded over and hair-sprayed into place, now falls just past the President’s shoulders. The hair is as greasy as those cartons that had McDonald’s French fries in them. Trump’s fingernails are now two inches long and have yellowed to resemble Frito’s corn chips.

Trump hasn’t worn his baggy blue suit in eleven days. The suit is discarded in a pile on the floor. He now sits on the plush red theater seats ass-naked as he watches television except for his red necktie that is knotted around his turkey-wattle-neck and still hangs down past his saggy balls. For shoes the President wears empty Kleenex boxes that he has “shined” with Sharpie markers.

Illustration by Mikey B. Martinez III

In another part of the White House, press secretary Sean Spicer sits at his desk in his small office. Three televisions are on at once, all tuned to cable news that have the graphics on the screen: “DAY 33 OF SECLUSION.” And “THEATER WATCH: WHEN IS THE PRESIDENT COMING OUT?” And “WHITE HOUSE ISOLATION CRISIS.”

As Chuck Todd interviews legal experts on the possibility of invoking the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, Spicer loads a fresh razor blade into a Stanley box cutter. “I need to feed you, Precious,” Spicer whispers aloud. “Are you hungry?”

On MSNBC, Chuck Todd asks the panel, “Could the Twenty-fifth be used as a legal mechanism to remove Donald Trump from office? America is beyond crisis.”

“They don’t know what they’re talking about, do they, Precious?” Spicer asks.

The fresh razor blade neatly cuts a two inch slash into Sean Spicer’s forearm. A rivulet of blood drips down his arm and into his palm. “Thank you, Precious.”

Spicer has been “cutting” for almost a month now to deal  with his overwhelming guilt and self-loathing. Trotting out before television cameras every day to lie to America for his boss has taken its toll. Hard to find a D.C. shrink to talk to, reporters would find out. So a Stanley box cutter that he has named Precious has become his therapist. The cuts are the only relief and release Spicer can find. Both of Spicer’s forearms are carved up and sliced. Some wounds fresh and bleeding, some scabbed over and healing, some already scarring. Twice during recent press briefings before reporters, blood has dripped out of the cuff of his suit onto the podium. When immediately queried by reporters about the blood, Spicer has said he “Had a gardening accident.” Nobody in the White House press corp has been able to confirm Sean Spicer has a garden or when he would have time to tend to it.

This morning, when ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl asks Spicer “You have to tell us, when is President Trump coming out of that theater? This is beyond ridiculous.” Spicer slowly slips his left hand into his pocket and caresses Precious’ cold, steel body. Spicer rolls the knife in his hand a few times. That action helps make it successful in suppressing welling tears. The microphone on the briefing room podium barely picks up Spicer whispering, “Thank you, Precious.”

At the door of the White House movie theater, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is leaning over a little to try and listen inside. He turns to some White House staff and says, “I say, I said I say, the man is more mixed up than a feather in a whirlwind.”

The staffers stare blankly at Tillerson. “I made a funny, son, I say, I made a funny, and you ain’t laughin’.”

After three bangs on the theater door, Tillerson yells, “I say Mr. President, we need you to come out, sir, that Spicer fella is about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. He’s sayin’ all kinda nonsense. Bannon is runnin’ things and he has more nerve than a bum tooth.”

Again, the staffers have no reaction to Tillerson’s folksy similes. “These are jokes, boys and girls, I say, these are jokes. I made a funny. I keep pitchin’ em and ya’ll keep missin’ em. Don’t know what’s goin’ on. Ya’ll are about as organized as a plate of spaghetti.”

There is no noise coming from the theater. Not a creature stirring. Not even a, well… you know. President Trump stands at the door gnawing on a cold Sausage McMuffin with cheese and listens, but offers no acknowledgment to his Sectary of State.

“I say, I said I say, it’s so quiet in there you could hear a caterpillar sneakin’ across a moss bed in tennis shoes.”

Inside the White House movie theater, President Trump sits naked in one of the plush red chairs in the front row, watching Sean Hannity on Fox News.

These sour days have not been easy on poor Hannity either. He pleads into the camera, “Mr. President, sir, we love you. Please come out of that room and back to the business of making America great again. Never have I ever seen, in all my career of totally believing what I say on this television show and not just pandering and programming to my audience of gullible old white folks, a man so beautiful and handsome at the helm of America. We are blessed by almighty God to have you as President of the United States. It’s the honor of my lifetime to know you.” Hannity pauses for a moment. His lower lip quivers. Two tears fall down his cheeks from each eye. His voice is shakes as he says, “I beg you, sir, please come out of that theater. Fox News needs you.”

Balled up naked in the fetal position on the floor of the White House movie theater, Donald Trump weeps as he listens to Hannity’s impassioned petition. He switches feet on his Kleenex box shoes and says aloud, “I fucking suck at this.”