On the first million billion days of the Trump era…
Day 1: Donald Trump is sworn in as President and promises to end “American carnage.” He gives his speech in the rain, although he will later insist that the skies cleared when he spoke. My son walks in to the room as I watch the inauguration. “Dad, are you crying?”
Day 2: The Women’s March hits DC and cities across the world. My spirits are lifted from the day before. Still, I find myself listening to Radiohead’s latest album in an effort to brighten my spirit.
Day 3: Kelly Anne Conway introduces the world to the phrase alternate facts. My shrink and I decide that we should go from meeting four days a week, to meeting 5 days a week.
Day 4: Trump begins a trend that will mark his first 100 days by signing an executive order to undo something that Obama did. I go on Amazon and order a James Comey dartboard.
Day 5: Trump signs executive orders to allow construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines. (By the time he’s done, there will be an oil derrick in the Oval Office.) I have a nightmare in which Trump invites Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin and Kid Rock to the White House. In the dream, Kid Rock’s shirt lapels are sticking so far out of his sweater that Nugent tries to hunt one of them.
Day 6: Trump signs an executive order to start the Mexico border wall project. (Sometimes, it’s too bad that blog posts can’t have laugh tracks.) Once again, my cat gives me that how could you fucking humans let this happen? look. Trump starts the voter fraud allegation nonsense.
Day 7: Trump tweets something bad about Mexico. Mexico’s president cancels the meeting. Spicer floats the idea of a 20% border tax. And for the first time, we’re legitimately scared for America’s future. My mood is buoyed slightly at the arrival of my massive framed picture of Obama kitesurfing.
Day 8: Trump issues the Muslim ban. I look at my calendar, realize it’s only been one week. Spicer says this: “This was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual.” The statement is false (surprise!). And everyone is quite sure that this is the most ridiculous statement Sean Spicer will ever make.
Day 9: Citizens take to the streets and to the airports to protest the Muslim ban. The protests give me hope and improves my mood to the point I am only deeply, deeply despondent.
Day 10: Mass confusion at airports and in White House. “In a statement and a series of tweets, Trump insisted the order was not a ‘Muslim ban’, cited Obama precedents … and insulted John McCain, Lindsey Graham and the New York Times.” My shrink suggests Ativan.
Day 11: The ACLU makes $24 million in donations after it files a suit against the Trump administration. Once you account for debt, that probably makes the ACLU richer than Donald Trump. That makes me smile. At least it felt like I was smiling. Thanks to a new sedative, I also seemed to be drooling.
Day 12: Trump fires Sally Yates (who we later find out was right about everything). My anger briefly takes my mind off the splitting headache I’ve had for twelve days.
Day 13: Trump urges the Senate to use the nuclear option to confirm Gorsuch. Admit it, you were just glad he meant that nuclear option.
Day 14: Trump offends the leader of Australia and threatens to deploy troops to Mexico to apprehend some of the “bad hombres.” My son knocks on my door and asks, “How many more days are you going to stay in bed?”
Day 15: Kellyanne invents the Bowling Green Massacre. The members of the liberal media pounce. Later, they each go home and tell their familes they can’t believe any of this is actually happening.
Day 16: Trump suffers a court loss (if the first hundred days were a song, that line would be its chorus).
Day 17: The Super Bowl gives us all a break from politics. Except for the fact that all of us are either rooting for the guys Trump loves or the city that Trump dissed. Bill O’Reilly (remember him?) calls Putin a killer and Trump responds: “You think our country is so innocent?” A hawkish, Republican friend of mine hits me up for some of my ativan.
Day 18: Bannon begins his brief moment as the world’s most powerful man. Very brief.
Day 19: Pence casts a tie-breaking vote to confirm DeVos. Al Franken offers to explain to DeVos what just happened.
Day 20: Trump initiates his first war. It’s against Nordstrom.
Day 21: Trump travel ban suffers another a legal defeat.
Day 22: Someone in the White House spells Theresa May’s name wrong. Trump lies about being in Scotland on the day Brexit passed. Between this and suffering through the entire John Adams miniseries, I come to the conclusion the revolution wasn’t such a great idea.
Day 23: Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe visits Mar-a-Lago. Trump discusses a North Korean missile test in an open dining room. I call my San Francisco-based estate planner who tells me she is completely booked for the next several weeks.
Day 24: Stephen Miller makes his debut on the Sunday talk shows. I stop watching Sunday talk shows.
Day 25: Mike Flynn resigns, ensuring that he and the Russia story will no longer be an issue.
Day 26: An NYT story reports that members of the Trump campaign team “had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.” I briefly feel nostalgic for the America of the year before the election. My wife reminds me it’s Valentines Day and suggests some champagne. I counter with the suggestion that we watch MSNBC for a few hours. We compromise and do ayahuasca.
Day 27: Andrew Puzder withdraws his nomination as Labor Secretary. Trump hosts Benjamin Netanyahu and says, “I’m looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like.” For a second, even Bibi misses Obama.
Day 28: Trump’s delivers an epically disturbing 77 minute news conference. I suddenly understand why Elvis shot TVs.
Day 29: The AP reports that Trump plans to use the National Guard to round up 100,000 undocumented immigrants. Spicer denies it. I’m still distracted by the press conference from the day before, and my urgency to fully stock my panic room.
Day 30: Trump tweets: “Don’t believe the main stream (fake news) media.The White House is running VERY WELL. I inherited a MESS and am in the process of fixing it.” I quit Twitter.
Day 31: Trump reports on a nonexistent terrorist attack in Sweden. The media reports on the fallacy. Trump’s base wonders what a Sweden is.
Day 32: Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster takes over Mike Flynn’s gig. The world is momentarily relieved (especially me, because my shrink turned me on to Xanax Gummies).
Day 33: Trump finally denounces the threats to Jewish Community Centers. And in a surprise twist, his comments mention Jews.
Day 34: Trump issues executive order rolling back Obama’s rules on transgender bathrooms. Caitlyn Jenner refuses to admit she regrets voting for Trump.
Day 35: Steve Bannon puts the mainstream media on notice that they are the opposition party: “The mainstream media ought to understand something: all those promises are going to be implemented.” (Update: None of them ever were.)
Day 36: Trump refers to members of the media as the enemies of the American people. My daughter says, “Daddy, aren’t you a member of the media?” After about 45 minutes I’m able to convince her that I’m just a news curator.
Day 37: Trump announces that he will not attend the White House Correspondents Dinner. My son gets suspended for bringing a picture of Steve Bannon to school to “scare the other kids.”
Day 38: The nation first becomes aware of the scotch tape that Trump uses to keep his tie in place. It’s the first time I feel like we might have some common ground.
Day 39: The president explains: “I haven’t called Russia in ten years.” No one cares.
Day 40: Trump gives an offensive, but relatively normal, address to a joint session of Congress. Van Jones loses his fucking mind.
Day 41: Cable News redefines what the word presidential means. I’ve now consumed so much anti-anxiety medication that I achieve a state known as functional comatose.
Day 42: We learn that Jeff Sessions lied about not meeting with the Russian ambassador. I can’t decide if my confusion is the result of the false statement, or that fact that I’ve taken to starting each day by banging my head against a wall.
Day 43: Trump tries to avoid the Russia story by taking a trip to Florida (not realizing that, for most Americans, Florida is even more controversial than Russia.)
Day 44: Trump accuses Obama of wiretapping him during the election. The claim is so obviously ridiculous that I’m sure no one will waste any time investigating it.
Day 45: Trump calls for investigations into his ridiculous claim that Obama wiretapped him.
Day 46: Trump issues his revised travel ban. House GOP releases their proposal to reverse Obamacare. My kids wonder aloud why, for the last few days, our house has smelled just like it did when I took them to see The National at the Greek Theater.
Day 47: Trump begins pushing the Obamacare repeal “We’re going to do something that is great, [it’s] complicated, but it’s very simple … it’s called good health care.”
Day 48: Wikileaks releases something new. Trump team decides they don’t like Wikileaks anymore. We hear rumors that Pamela Anderson might be dating Julian Assange. I mentally take back all the times I masturbated to Barb Wire.
Day 49: Trump tweets: “Despite what you hear in the press, healthcare is coming along great. We are talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture!” Scott Pruitt denies that carbon dioxide causes climate change. A canary dies in the EPA lobby.
Day 50: Trump on the GOP health care bill: “This is the time we’re going to get it done. I think it’s just something that’s going to happen very shortly.”
Day 51–56: There were some CBO numbers on the health care plan, and I was placed under “observation” when my wife found me in the attic trying to build a time machine.
Day 57: In a press conference with Angela Merkel, Trump again claims that Obama wiretapped him and says to Merkel, “At least we have something in common, perhaps.”
Day 58: In some tweets, Trump explains: “Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, Germany owes … vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!” The rant was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that typing NATO was the first time he appropriately used all caps.
Day 59: Trump spent most of the day at one his golf resorts. It was a good day.
Day 60: James Comey says the FBI is actively investigating connections between the Russians and the Trump campaign. I decide I really need to go for a hike in Chappaqua.
Day 61: Ivanka gets an office in the West Wing. My reaction briefly distracts my kids from the fact that I’m wearing a straight jacket.
Day 62: Wait for it…
Day 63: Trump pretends to drive an 18-wheeler …
Day 64: … and the the GOP health care bill is pulled. (Still, being a big boy in the truck was fun.)
Day 65: Trump tweets: “ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!” (I worry.)
Day 66: Devin Nunes gets more ridiculous.
Day 67: Jared is now in charge of making government more efficient. He should’ve stuck with the Middle East. It would have been less complicated.
Day 68: Finding himself unable to kill people through bad health care, Trump signs an executive order aimed at killing us through environmental legislation. I ask my wife for a gas mask, but the orderlies won’t let her pass anything through the Plexiglas divider.
Day 69: Chris Christie visits Trump at the White House. And for the first time, I feel sorry for Chris Christie.
Day 70: My shrink prescribes a daily dosage level of Ambien he feels is most appropriate. I wake up on Day 76.
Day 77: After getting a lesson on North Korea from Professor Xi of China, Trump bombs a Syrian airbase over a big, beautiful piece of chocolate cake. President Xi says something in Chinese that roughly translates as, “Don’t normalize this.”
Day 78: Senate goes nuclear, Gorsuch gets confirmed. Trump still thinking about cake.
Day 79–80: Kushner and Bannon try to make up.
Day 81: Gorsuch gets sworn in. I send Justice Ginsberg a ten year supply of Elysium.
Day 82: United Airlines tries to steal the spotlight by dragging a passenger off a plane. So Sean Spicer explains that even Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons on his own people. It’s not easy to talk about Assad and Hitler and still end up being the guy who comes off as the asshole.
Day 83: Ka…….
Day 84: … boom! US military drops a MOAB in Afghanistan. Trump pretends to have been in on the planning and/or to know what a MOAB is.
Day 85: Trump decides all White House visitor logs will remain secret. (Except when Nugent visits.)
Day 86: Preparations are in full swing.
Day 87: Preparations continue…
Day 88: … and the Trump White House finally celebrates its first victory as the Easter Egg roll goes off without a hitch (other than Sean Spicer telling the kids that the Easter Bunny never used chemical weapons on his own people).
Day 89: The first dreamer is deported. Trump visits Wisconsin to push the buy/hire American policy. By my count, he’s been president for about a billion years.
Day 90: The Patriots come to the White House. But not Tom Brady who skipped for family reasons. Translation: Gisele joined the resistance.
Day 91: It’s 4/20. For me, that feels a little redundant at this point.
Day 92: With a week to go, Trump decides the 100 day mark which he talked about so much is actually a media creation. And suddenly, I realize, I sort of miss Kellyanne Conway.
Day 93: I try to explain to my kids why we need a march for science. They seem pretty scared by my explanation. They also seem pretty scared by my IV, until I explain that it’s quite common for serotonin reuptake inhibitors to be delivered intravenously.
Day 94–98: Another attempt at Health Care gets pulled back, Trump issues his tax plan (or bullet list, anyway) which is a version of the Laffer curve in which tax reductions spur the economy and trickle down more money to Trump, Inc. And in a Reuters interview, Trump admits he thought being president would be easier. In fairness, the rest of us thought impeaching Trump would be easier.
Day 99: Trump says: “Maybe it takes a little bit longer, but I think we’re doing tremendously well. I don’t think anybody has ever done this much in a hundred days.” If he’s talking about the amount of anti-anxiety medication Americans have consumed, I’d say he’s right.
Day 100: Trump describes himself as “a closer.” Trump’s not a closer. The guy who sold all those Juiceros, now he was a closer.
Only 1361 days to go. (That’s both a note to you, and my pharmacist.)
Dave Pell Writes NextDraft. Real News Daily.
