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Ray Kroc and Hunter S. Thompson had nothing on Trump
Reader’s Walter Mencken carries the story from 2016 forward
These scallops are much better than Springfield chicken, which, as you know, is just cat.
[Note: None of this actually happened. But eight years ago, I sat down with some political luminaries to discuss the shocking election of Donald Trump to the presidency. Looking back, what's most remarkable — touching, even — is how simple so many of us still were. We still had the capacity to be shocked by something like a celebrity President with a reputation for outrageous statements and outsized self-confidence. (And a big part of Trump's game was that he was a man of confidence. Confidence personified. A confidence man, if you will.) And in many ways, that was the point of that first conversation: these guys wanted me to know that we should have seen Trump coming, that he'd been around since forever, or at least since the days of the Duke and the Dauphin. Anyway, the conversation got a little heated, some things were said, and I guess word got back to Mr. Trump...]
Donald Trump: Walter, Walter, Walter. Sit down, have a drink.
Walter Mencken: Thank you, Mr. President. President-Elect? President-Emeritus?
DT: Among friends, I’m known as The Once and Future King. That’s a book title, by the way. About King Arthur. Great guy, great leader. Had a little woman trouble, a little trouble with members of his cabinet turning on him. I know how he feels. They said Kennedy’s Presidency was Camelot. As usual, they were wrong. Jackie knew how to put on a Chanel suit, but I’m sorry, have you seen Melania? Besides, Kennedy’s dad got him elected. Standard story of political royalty. I’m the one who came out of nowhere and pulled the sword from the stone. They said it couldn’t be done; no one had ever been President without prior political or military experience. But I did it; just a kid from Queens who made good. That’s the land of opportunity doing its thing. That’s what makes America great…again. But like LL Cool J said, don’t call it a comeback, been here for years. By the time all this is over, the history books are going to have to put me alongside Roosevelt as a President who got elected to three terms. They just haven’t come to terms with it yet. That’s a joke, Walter.
WM: Um, is this…water?
DT: Alcohol dulls the palate. Look at these scallops. These are the biggest scallops, the best. Topped with lobster and caviar. All the best seafood, right there in one place. Like Aerosmith sang, you don’t want to miss a thing. Look how many hits they had after Stephen Tyler got sober. A lesson for us all. Anyway, these scallops are much better than Springfield chicken, which, as you know, is just cat.
WM: Wasn’t that, er, fake news, that bit about immigrants eating people’s cats and dogs?
DT: You’re going to sit here at my table and eat my scallops and drink my Icelandic Glacial water and have the temerity to talk to me about fake news? You, Walter? You put me on the cover of your little rag as a perfectly browned Thanksgiving turkey. You blamed my trade policies for the pandas leaving the San Diego Zoo. Though I did chuckle when you turned me into John Rambo, heading overseas to rescue hostage American jobs.
WM: Touche. I apologize for the temerity. Though I prefer the term “almost factual.” But while we’re on the subject, did you know that you put me out of work for a while there?
DT: One journalist down, the staff of the Washington Post and CNN to go. Tough times, tough times. I’m going to fix the economy, but I’m only human. Probably.
WM: No, seriously. I had a pretty good thing going with the Reader. But then you got elected and the great Misinformation Panic set in. Because clearly, if people knew the truth, well… Even news that was Almost Factual was suddenly problematic for a newspaper to run, because Google and company were tweaking their parameters. We risked being flagged, getting buried in the search results, or not showing up at all. At least, that’s what they told me when they spiked my column. I have to admit, it was frustrating.
DT: I didn’t realize I was having dinner with one of the haters and the losers.
WM: Not at all. When they finally let me come back in April of 2018, what was the first thing I covered? You, singlehandedly starting construction on your border wall, for better or for worse, the single most potent symbol of your political life.
DT: It was, it really was. I promised to make America great again. And what is the first characteristic of a country — the thing that distinguishes it from all other countries? That’s right: a border. You don’t have a border, you don’t have a country. You can shut down the government, and things will keep going, at least for a while. But you take away the border, and you get the Biden administration. Even the New York Times grants that it was the biggest immigration surge in U.S. history. More than two million a year. And as Riley Laken knows, they weren’t sending their best.
WM: You know, these scallops are delicious.
DT: You know, you were pretty lousy to me in your first Trumpsgiving story. What was it your dad said? “On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” And then there was that celebrity dig from Thurber: “It was inevitable that some day there would come roaring out of the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence, background, and character to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared for aviators who stayed up a long time or few a great distance.” Did you ever see The Founder? Great film about a great American, Ray Kroc, the man who gave us McDonald’s. Other people like to say that the McDonald brothers gave us McDonald’s, that Kroc was some evil backstabber who stole it out from under them. But as usual, other people are wrong. It’s like Kroc says in his big confrontation with the brothers: “I understand McDonald’s better than you ever did.” They created the perfect machine for preparing and serving mass quantities of tasty food while eliminating labor, and then they refused to fire it up. I’m the Ray Kroc of politics. I didn’t build the system, but I understand it better than anyone. That’s why I was out there working the fry station at McDonald’s this time around. And the best you could do to acknowledge that was to have Hunter S. Thompson grouse that “the fig leaf of respectability has been dropped from the body politic.”
WM: That was eight years ago. You still had the power to shock people back then. So why am I here, Mr. Once and Future King?
DT: Careful, I said that’s what my friends call me. You’re here because I want to thank you, and also to give you a message. You understood the beauty of the wall. You understood that immigration was the key issue. And during my...time away from the White House, you kept up the fight.
WM: Now wait a second there. When I went after Biden’s border buffoonery, I was addressing an issue of pressing concern to Reader readers. I wasn’t trying to help you get re-elected.
DT: Potato, potahto. Anyway, I asked you to here to remind you of how I first rose to national prominence. It wasn’t through newspaper stories, I can assure you. It was through television. I had a little show called The Apprentice. Well, not so little. It was the biggest show, the absolute biggest. And it had this wonderful catchphrase…
WM: Happy Trumpsgiving, everyone.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Ray Kroc and Hunter S. Thompson had nothing on Trump
Reader’s Walter Mencken carries the story from 2016 forward
Ray Kroc and Hunter S. Thompson had nothing on Trump
Reader’s Walter Mencken carries the story from 2016 forward
These scallops are much better than Springfield chicken, which, as you know, is just cat.
[Note: None of this actually happened. But eight years ago, I sat down with some political luminaries to discuss the shocking election of Donald Trump to the presidency. Looking back, what's most remarkable — touching, even — is how simple so many of us still were. We still had the capacity to be shocked by something like a celebrity President with a reputation for outrageous statements and outsized self-confidence. (And a big part of Trump's game was that he was a man of confidence. Confidence personified. A confidence man, if you will.) And in many ways, that was the point of that first conversation: these guys wanted me to know that we should have seen Trump coming, that he'd been around since forever, or at least since the days of the Duke and the Dauphin. Anyway, the conversation got a little heated, some things were said, and I guess word got back to Mr. Trump...]
Donald Trump: Walter, Walter, Walter. Sit down, have a drink.
Walter Mencken: Thank you, Mr. President. President-Elect? President-Emeritus?
DT: Among friends, I’m known as The Once and Future King. That’s a book title, by the way. About King Arthur. Great guy, great leader. Had a little woman trouble, a little trouble with members of his cabinet turning on him. I know how he feels. They said Kennedy’s Presidency was Camelot. As usual, they were wrong. Jackie knew how to put on a Chanel suit, but I’m sorry, have you seen Melania? Besides, Kennedy’s dad got him elected. Standard story of political royalty. I’m the one who came out of nowhere and pulled the sword from the stone. They said it couldn’t be done; no one had ever been President without prior political or military experience. But I did it; just a kid from Queens who made good. That’s the land of opportunity doing its thing. That’s what makes America great…again. But like LL Cool J said, don’t call it a comeback, been here for years. By the time all this is over, the history books are going to have to put me alongside Roosevelt as a President who got elected to three terms. They just haven’t come to terms with it yet. That’s a joke, Walter.
WM: Um, is this…water?
DT: Alcohol dulls the palate. Look at these scallops. These are the biggest scallops, the best. Topped with lobster and caviar. All the best seafood, right there in one place. Like Aerosmith sang, you don’t want to miss a thing. Look how many hits they had after Stephen Tyler got sober. A lesson for us all. Anyway, these scallops are much better than Springfield chicken, which, as you know, is just cat.
WM: Wasn’t that, er, fake news, that bit about immigrants eating people’s cats and dogs?
DT: You’re going to sit here at my table and eat my scallops and drink my Icelandic Glacial water and have the temerity to talk to me about fake news? You, Walter? You put me on the cover of your little rag as a perfectly browned Thanksgiving turkey. You blamed my trade policies for the pandas leaving the San Diego Zoo. Though I did chuckle when you turned me into John Rambo, heading overseas to rescue hostage American jobs.
WM: Touche. I apologize for the temerity. Though I prefer the term “almost factual.” But while we’re on the subject, did you know that you put me out of work for a while there?
DT: One journalist down, the staff of the Washington Post and CNN to go. Tough times, tough times. I’m going to fix the economy, but I’m only human. Probably.
WM: No, seriously. I had a pretty good thing going with the Reader. But then you got elected and the great Misinformation Panic set in. Because clearly, if people knew the truth, well… Even news that was Almost Factual was suddenly problematic for a newspaper to run, because Google and company were tweaking their parameters. We risked being flagged, getting buried in the search results, or not showing up at all. At least, that’s what they told me when they spiked my column. I have to admit, it was frustrating.
DT: I didn’t realize I was having dinner with one of the haters and the losers.
WM: Not at all. When they finally let me come back in April of 2018, what was the first thing I covered? You, singlehandedly starting construction on your border wall, for better or for worse, the single most potent symbol of your political life.
DT: It was, it really was. I promised to make America great again. And what is the first characteristic of a country — the thing that distinguishes it from all other countries? That’s right: a border. You don’t have a border, you don’t have a country. You can shut down the government, and things will keep going, at least for a while. But you take away the border, and you get the Biden administration. Even the New York Times grants that it was the biggest immigration surge in U.S. history. More than two million a year. And as Riley Laken knows, they weren’t sending their best.
WM: You know, these scallops are delicious.
DT: You know, you were pretty lousy to me in your first Trumpsgiving story. What was it your dad said? “On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” And then there was that celebrity dig from Thurber: “It was inevitable that some day there would come roaring out of the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence, background, and character to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared for aviators who stayed up a long time or few a great distance.” Did you ever see The Founder? Great film about a great American, Ray Kroc, the man who gave us McDonald’s. Other people like to say that the McDonald brothers gave us McDonald’s, that Kroc was some evil backstabber who stole it out from under them. But as usual, other people are wrong. It’s like Kroc says in his big confrontation with the brothers: “I understand McDonald’s better than you ever did.” They created the perfect machine for preparing and serving mass quantities of tasty food while eliminating labor, and then they refused to fire it up. I’m the Ray Kroc of politics. I didn’t build the system, but I understand it better than anyone. That’s why I was out there working the fry station at McDonald’s this time around. And the best you could do to acknowledge that was to have Hunter S. Thompson grouse that “the fig leaf of respectability has been dropped from the body politic.”
WM: That was eight years ago. You still had the power to shock people back then. So why am I here, Mr. Once and Future King?
DT: Careful, I said that’s what my friends call me. You’re here because I want to thank you, and also to give you a message. You understood the beauty of the wall. You understood that immigration was the key issue. And during my...time away from the White House, you kept up the fight.
WM: Now wait a second there. When I went after Biden’s border buffoonery, I was addressing an issue of pressing concern to Reader readers. I wasn’t trying to help you get re-elected.
DT: Potato, potahto. Anyway, I asked you to here to remind you of how I first rose to national prominence. It wasn’t through newspaper stories, I can assure you. It was through television. I had a little show called The Apprentice. Well, not so little. It was the biggest show, the absolute biggest. And it had this wonderful catchphrase…
WM: Happy Trumpsgiving, everyone.
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