Chapter 5
Where is Donald J. Trump?
It started out small. Just a quiet question from one of Trump’s cronies to another. ‘Where’s Donald,” Kevin McCarthy asked Matt Gaetz. Jim Johnson got in on the conversation and said, “yeah, where is 45? It’s just too quiet. He hasn’t been on Tweeter in days. The question moved through the Senate in Washington, DC. No one knew anything, which was really unusual in this gossipy town.
At Mar-a-Lago guests were wondering where all the Trumps that had been in residence had suddenly gone. Did anyone know they were going somewhere? Some of the wealthiest guests who saw family members most often forgot to whisper and wondered right out loud. Someone thought they heard a helicopter but that was not at all uncommon. Friends who wanted a golf game were told that Donald was not at Mar-a-Lago right now, but they thought it might be what Donald told management to say. He did that sometimes.
Roger Stone was still alive but Rudy Giuliani was in a nursing home. Paul Manafort was still around, and Chris Christie, Anthony Scaramucci aka The Mooch, not Lindsey Graham, but his last Chief of Staff Matt Gaetz. Michael Cohen was out of course, but there was also Jay Sekulow, Fox News people, and some new friends that he knew from the Club, which was now the Southern White House. The ‘guys,’ as they were affectionately known, were busy on their phones asking each other, “Where’s Trump?”
Obviously the Army had managed a really secret snatch. It wasn’t even recorded on the security system. The gossip and the concern took a long time to reach the one citizen who had happened to be walking near Mar-a-Lago when they hustled the Trumps onto the helicopter. He was in an altered state, so not the best witness. Still, he thought he had heard the pilot speak the word Guantánamo over the radio to someone on the other end. He remembered the staticky radio sounds as part of the word. He thought it was real, but he had been really out of it.
The witness did not have a lot of friends but finally he mentioned what he might have seen and heard to his brother. It only stayed a clandestine operation for about two weeks and then the thing went live on Tweeter and TalkFace and from there it went virile. TRUMP IS IN GUANTÁNAMO!
There were no Trumps left at Mar-a-Lago but Donald, Jr., Eric and Tiffany were still in their own homes in Florida. They had not even missed their father yet because they no longer saw him every day. “DAD IS IN GUANTÁNAMO!,” Don, Jr. said to Eric on the phone.
“How do you know,” said Eric who hated news, who only watched sports.
“It’s all over the news, and social media. Dad isn’t the President anymore. There has been a military coup. Kamala Harris now the acting President.”
“F**k this s**t,” said Eric, “What will we do? We could be next.”
Don Jr. thought this was a surprisingly astute thing for his often-clueless brother to say. However, he did not think whisking Donald’s two sons away to Guantánamo would be easy to do now that everyone was aware of what had happened to the Trump family. But it turned out that Ivanka and Jared were with the Trumps at Guantánamo. Another stunner. Their kids were still in Florida.
“We need a plan,” said Don, Jr. “I think we need to put Dad’s ‘band’ back together. We need to contact whoever we can find and have a meet and do some brainstorming.” Donald was hoping he could find some of his father’s pals who had half a brain. “Let’s have lunch, just you and me,” he said to Eric.
Eric was a bit surprised. The brothers did not spend much one-on-one time together, usually just family time. He readily agreed. “Let’s not go to the club though, let’s go somewhere in West Palm, oh I know, let’s go to The Breakers. We can eat by the pool and catch some bikini action.”
“All right, Don, Jr. agreed, it’s a plan, but don’t mention it in front of anyone, you know who I mean, or she will want to come along.”
“Gotcha,” Eric replied.
When they met at The Breakers the next day at about 12:30 it ended up that they weren’t serving lunch by the pool, so the brothers had a drink at a poolside table first. There are plenty of delicious drinks at The Breakers even if you don’t drink alcohol. Their table was ready at 12:45 and there weren’t many bikini-clad beauties to ogle, so they moved inside to the table in the back corner which they had asked for. Don, Jr. took out a little notebook and pen. When the waiter brought the menu, the discussion turned to what to have for lunch. Both ordered seafood dishes and still water with a lemon wedge.
“I want you to help me make up a list of names of Dad’s cronies that are still loyal and still have it upstairs. We need guys who still have some money because our plans may get a bit expensive. How about you? How are things looking with your finances? Will you be able to chip in?
Eric was not ready to talk about his money situation, especially to his brother so he started naming names of people he had seen around their Dad lately that they could contact. They came up with a list of names of guys who weren’t too feeble to be of much use.
“When is a good time to meet,” asked Donald, Jr.? “Let’s use that meeting room at Trump Tower that we used before and set out some food. I’ll give them an overview of what we want to talk about. How does that sound?”
Eric gave a thumbs up as he tackled his lunch and the guys turned to family news of lesser import.
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