THE ART OF SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD
ME: I am pleased to have with me today, the 45th President of the United States, Mr. Donald J. Trump.
TRUMP: Pleasure. A big pleasure.
ME: Thank you. Let’s jump right in, shall we?
[Trump takes his folded hands and opens them up like a bird taking flight.]
ME: Is it fair to say, now that you have been out of office for a year, and we all have the benefit of hindsight, that you were the most successful businessman to ever occupy the White House?
TRUMP: I love hindsight. I told Melania on my zoom to Slovenia just wait until you see hindsight. Then everyone will see I did more for the people of America since King George. Especially the African Americans. If Biden hadn’t picked a black woman, you would have seen a very different outcome. Very different. You know, Grahame, history is a beautiful thing. I love history. Beautiful. Beautiful historical history. No one can take history away from you. It’s written down. Even sometimes on the internet. The radical left have tried, though. They want to erase me from the history books. Biden has been a nightmare. I said he would be before anyone else. A lot of people don’t know that. While people are sleeping, he put science back in the classroom and people’s jobs. No one can erase history. It’s beautiful. That’s why many, many people are asking me to run again in 2024.
ME: Very good. Today, though, I would love to discuss your new book, The Art of Speaking Ill of the Dead.
TRUMP: Great book. Great. I wrote it myself.
ME: Right. I want to begin with John Dingell.
TRUMP: Yes. A great man. Entirely ungrateful.
ME: What I think you did brilliantly at that particular campaign rally was not use the word, ‘Hell’. You simply said he was ‘looking up’ at the rally.
TRUMP: That’s right. I could just have easily said ‘looking down’. I thought about it. I did think about it. But, you know, Dingell was very unfair to me. Very unfair. I gave him a great funeral. The biggest funeral he’d ever seen. No one knew who he was until that funeral. And still, after the funeral, he wasn’t kind. Not kind to me at all. I didn’t want anything for it. His wife, Debbie, couldn’t thank me enough. I was worried she was coming on to me, to be honest. You know, widows can get lonely.
ME: For many people, John Lewis is the greatest civil rights icon of the 20th Century, second only to Martin Luther King, Jr.
TRUMP: Martin was an adulterer. A lot of people forget that.
ME: I do think it’s quite well documented. At least as well documented as your own wanderings.
TRUMP: Withhunt. No truth whatsoever.
ME: You said of John Lewis, ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He chose — I don’t — I never met John Lewis actually, I don’t believe.’ You went on to downplay his involvement in the civil rights movement by saying others were involved too.
TRUMP: You know, Grahame, the beauty of it is I’m the one who brought law and order to black communities. I ended the carnage. There should be statues of me at every mainly black school.
ME: Finally, your most famous insult post mortem was reserved for John McCain. You famously said of him while alive that you ‘like people who weren’t captured’.
TRUMP: I was never captured. I knew how to avoid that. John could have had a doctor prevent it. He came from a good family. It’s not my fault. He could have used that hand thing as a reason not to go.
ME: I’m pretty sure his disability was inflicted upon him by the Viet Cong.
TRUMP: Maybe. Maybe not.
ME: As both the mother and daughter were grieving, you said of John McCain, ‘He did the nation a tremendous disservice.’ What I think is brilliant about that turn of phrase is that McCain served his country, was tortured by our enemies for it, and you were able to turn the word ‘service’ around so deftly.
TRUMP: Thank you. I also refused to go to his funeral just like I didn’t go to Lewis’s.
ME: Technically, I believe you were told by Senator McCain, before he died, not to come.
TRUMP: Totally unfair. No one is more respectful than me at funerals.
ME: This book certainly attests to that. President Trump — oops, I know we aren’t supposed to use that title since Congress stripped you of it — what the hell, this is a Q-Anon conference we’re speaking at. Thank you, President Trump.
This interview was conducted on 22nd January 2022.
(As imagined by DadHollywood.)