Christopher Buckley

The world knew him as ‘Bush 41’. I knew him by a different name -during the time I worked for him as his speechwriter when he was vice president. In those days, the staff called him ‘the Vishnu’. (Bear with me.) It was his own devising. He’d been to India on a state visit, where they’d presented him, amid much pomp and ceremony and clanging of brass, with a statue of the four-armed Vedic deity. Its plaque described the Vishnu’s numerous godly qualities, among them: omniscience, omnipotence, and his title ‘Preserver of the Universe’. Mr Bush immediately recognised a kindred godhead. He began referring to himself, in staff memos and aboard Air Force Two’s loudspeakers, as ‘the Vishnu’.

Americans traumatised by their current president could be forgiven for thinking that his demand for a ‘space force’ was about protecting the country from aliens. Aliens, that is, of extraterrestrial persuasion, not the ones currently hurling themselves against the southern border. What, really, is implausible these days? As baseball savant Yogi Berra said when told that a Jewish woman had been elected mayor of Dublin: ‘Only in America.’ But as it turned out, Donald Trump’s demand to have a new sixth branch of the US armed services is about protecting America’s satellites and cyber capabilities. A worthy goal. Per the President’s custom, he didn’t inform the White House that he was going to issue his decree.

 Washington Day 1: The New York Times reveals that President Trump offered FBI director James Comey a 25 per cent discount on membership at Mar-a-Lago if he would end his investigation into former NSC director Michael ‘Mikhail’ Flynn. Vice President Pence secretly convenes the cabinet at Camp David. The site is chosen because Trump has visited it only once, declaring it ‘a dump’, and is therefore unlikely to show up. Pence tells the cabinet: ‘It has been a great honour to serve with the President’, whom he calls ‘a truly wonderful human being’, but says ‘it’s time we started thinking about our own reputations here’.

SpeccieLeaks presents: Transcript of private meeting between President Trump and President Putin, 14 February 2017, Andreyevsky Hall, Grand Kremlin Palace PUTIN: So how are you liking Russia? TRUMP: Fabulous. Amazing. And this room — incredible. You have beautiful taste, my friend. Beautiful. PUTIN: You like gold? TRUMP: Very much. We used a tremendous amount of gold in the Trump Tower. PUTIN: Yes, it’s something. Truly. I have seen it on television. TRUMP: Those chandeliers there. How much were those? PUTIN: Well, I don’t know. But I will have this information provided to you. TRUMP: That would be great. We just opened a new hotel in DC, right next to the White House? It’s got these high ceilings? A couple of these babies would look amazing.

SpeccieLeaks presents: Transcript of private meeting between President Trump and President Putin, 14 February 2017, Andreyevsky Hall, Grand Kremlin Palace   PUTIN: So how are you liking Russia? TRUMP: Fabulous. Amazing. And this room — incredible. You have beautiful taste, my friend. Beautiful. PUTIN: You like gold? TRUMP: Very much. We used a tremendous amount of gold in the Trump Tower. PUTIN: Yes, it’s something. Truly. I have seen it on television. TRUMP: Those chandeliers there. How much were those? PUTIN: Well, I don’t know. But I will have this information provided to you. TRUMP: That would be great. We just opened a new hotel in DC, right next to the White House? It’s got these high ceilings? A couple of these babies would look amazing.

A few nights ago, my missus and I were walking along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, minding our own business while trying not to think about Donald Trump — or Ted Cruz, or Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders. Presently we passed the Old Post Office Building, a venerable pile dating to 1899. It looks a bit like Big Ben atop a ten-storey Romanesque atrium. There in front was a billboard the size of Montana proclaiming ‘TRUMP’. It is to be — shudder — a hotel. Clutching my beloved’s arm, I gasped: ‘A drink — quickly. For the love of God, a drink.’ She rushed us to the restaurant, where a martini revived my colour and vital functions. But my depression remained.

The presidential campaign here in the land hymned by one of its earliest immigrants as a shining ‘city on a hill’ looks more and more likely to boil down to electing Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. It is of course possible that the party of Lincoln and Reagan will not go completely off its meds and nominate Mr Trump. It’s possible, too, that the wretched FBI agents tasked with reading Mrs Clinton’s 55,000 private emails will experience a Howard Carter/King Tut’s tomb moment and find one instructing Sidney Blumenthal to offer Putin another 20 per cent of US uranium production in return for another $2.5 million donation to the Clinton Foundation, plus another $500,000 speech in Moscow. Absent such, Mrs Clinton will be the Democratic nominee.