A 2019 Christmas Carol

It was Christmas Eve. Scrooge McTrump was arriving back at the White House. He had been at a Holiday fete given to him by the RNC at his own DC hotel. It would pay for the month's lease, so he was content. As his limo slowly pulled up to the security checkpoints, Scrooge thought on the evening's event. So many obsequious and fawning sycophants! So many previous opponents now turned into groveling acolytes! He had succeeded in conducting his hostile takeover of an entire political party and now most of the nation's government. It felt good to be king.

"Thank you, sir, for making it safe to say 'Merry Christmas' out loud," said a burly security guard at the gate, tears streaming down his face. "Yeah, yeah. Merry Christmas. Now get the fuck outta my way!" If he was lucky, he could still catch the last minutes of Hannity on Fox.

Once inside, he walked up to the Residence floor. He knew Melania and Barron weren't there. They rarely were, and he didn't care. All he wanted was to relax and watch some Fox. He reached for the doorknob and recoiled -- "WTF!" The elaborate doorknob had somehow taken on an eerie and uncanny visage of his old pal, Jeffrey Epstein! Scrooge dismissed it as the result of having eaten some bad shrimp at the party. Maybe he would need to rush off to Walter Reed Medical Center again?

Feeling his pulse rate race a bit, he got into this golden night robe and turned on the TV. And there on the big screen was Jeffrey Epstein's mournful face appearing momentarily before giving way to Tucker Carlson's perpetually perplexed persona. "Fuckin' frozen fish trust fund loser," Scrooge grumped. He set his phone on the night table next to his Adderall and closed his eyes.

A booming knock at the bedroom door awoke Scrooge. He drew the covers up to his nose. There was the ghost of his old booty call partner - Jeffrey Epstein! The ghost walked in, burdened with heavy chains linked with sex toys, money boxes and hotel room safes. A knotted prison bedsheet was wrapped tightly around his neck. He gazed at Scrooge and began to moan and shake.

"Jeffrey! What the hell do you want? You're dead! I made sure of it!"

"McTrump, hear me well. Tonight at midnight, you will be visited by three spirits, showing your past, present and future. Heed their visions. This is your last chance to amend your ways. Don't be a total shreklekh mensch like I was." And then he vanished!

"Jeffrey, wait! Can I tweet about this?" Scrooge thought better of it. Shaken, he pulled the covers over his head. What the hell was Epstein on about? Scrooge liked him back in the day when they were on the poontang patrol. Ep had even introduced Melania to him. Jeffrey said he'd imported her like so many other "models" from Eastern Europe. But he had crossed Scrooge by poaching girls from Mar-a-Lago without his permission. That was the last he'd seen him... until tonight. He tried to go to sleep.

The phone alarm rang. It was midnight. Scrooge sat up and was startled to see the shade of Roy Cohn standing by his bed.

"Hello, Scrooge. Long time, you old counter-puncher!"

"Roy!! My old mentor! You died of AIDS in 1986. Where the hell did you come from?"

"Hell. A lot of your dead family and associates there say 'Hi'. Now let's get going. I've got a job to do here. I'm your Christmas Past."

And off they went lifting into a swirl of clouds and stars and the night sky!

When Scrooge could focus, he saw himself with family and friends at his Trump Tower penthouse. He felt an urge to visit his gold toilet there. But Cohn held up a cautioning hand. "You cannot pee. And they cannot see you." But he could see them, and himself. He squinted at one of his three wives. Everyone was laughing.

McTrump was regaling the group about having recently stiffed the Association to Benefit Children. "Yeah, it was for that nursery school opener for AIDS kids..." Scrooge remembered. He hadn't been a donor and never intended to be. But he knew where the NY press would be that day. So he showed up, got backstage and talked his way onto the Big Donor spotlight area. There was an empty chair there, so he sat down as the event began (he didn't care that the seat was reserved for an actual donor who now couldn't get into the chair before the event began and had to sit back in the audience).

"Yeah, what a bunch of schmucks," he recalled. The NY press took oodles of pics and video of him smiling and clapping. Then he left, and never gave a donation. But he got a lot of press coverage for nothing that day. "Yeah, that was a good day. That was fun, that I can tell you." Everyone laughed again.

The party was now raising a toast to McTrump. "To the man who always stiffs his workers. To the chief who bought two huge portraits of himself for $80,000 using his own foundation's money. To being able to stay above water despite writing off ONE BILLION dollars in losses over ten years. To Russians and their dirty money. To real estate and money laundering! Yay!"

Everyone clinked their glasses. Scrooge looked at the shade of Roy Cohn, who smirked and shook his head. "To all the stupid failed sucker businesses that we've foisted on the rubes! Trump University! Trump Airlines! Trump Steaks! GoTrump search engine! Trump Vodka! Trump Mortgage! Trump Magazine! Trump Ice! The New Jersey Generals! The Trump Network! Trump New Media!" Everyone laughed again and slurped their champagne as they began to fade into the chintzy decor - this vision was swirling about and then Scrooge found himself back in his White House bedroom.

"Roy, those were such good times, the likes of which have never been seen. And, quite frankly, I don't have as much fun now." But Cohn simply said, "Wait for the next Spirit." So Scrooge got back into bed.

He awoke again at midnight when his phone alarm sounded. Scrooge looked wildly around and saw the shade of the recently departed Elijah Cummings standing there. "I'm here, Scrooge, to take you for a spin through your Christmas Present. So hang on, it's going to be quite a ride." The room spun. Soon he witnessed a whirlwind of voices and images.

Scrooge saw the 1% enjoying their stock market and tax cut gains. There were glaciers melting, withering droughts, wildfires and floods. Sexual assault victims sought the comfort of their friends and families. Hundreds of immigrant/refugee children were in cages at the southern border. Puerto Ricans and Virgin Islanders were still struggling.

He saw old flames like Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and felt his mushroom stir. In a flash, the 24+ women who have accused him of sexual assault flew past. Then he saw courtrooms and prison cells with associates like Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates. And then he saw others he knew who would be there soon.

He saw his adult children being told they were required to attend training classes on the duties of running charities (this, and a $2 million dollar fine, was the civil case punishment for operating a fraudulent Trump Charities scam).  He looked past the 1000+ former Federal prosecutors who agreed that the Mueller Report would have resulted in multiple felony charges against him if he weren't President.

He saw China's Xi sipping a drink, chuckling, saying to himself "an immense fortune". There was his love letter pal, Kim Jong-un, riding a horse and thinking "What a dumb fuck!" And there was his boss, Vladimir Putin, sitting by a fire in his dacha, quietly laughing and shaking his head, saying "Who could have imagined?"

Finally, Cummings brought Scrooge to an Arizona desert home where he found Cindy McCain lighting a Christmas candle for her late husband.

"I can't take it anymore, Elijah!! Take me away! Get me outta here!"

Scrooge found himself in bed again when the phone alarm rang once more at midnight. He opened one eye and saw the Spirit of the Future waiting for him. It was Richard Nixon. With a glower and a shake of his jowls, Nixon raised his arms high, flashing his famous Victory hand signs. Then the now-familiar swirling of senses began and they were gone.

He began to focus on familiar settings. It was a wing of his residence at Mar-a-Lago. The room had been set up like a hospital room. There was a hospital bed, a crash cart, and vitals monitors. Two nurses were unplugging cables and removing IVs as the long "beeeeep" was heard, registering a flatline. A silent bored orderly waited in the background.

"He was such a crazy man! Still grabbed at my cooch with his dying breath!"

"Oh, honey. I was so tired of his constant yelling! It was such a load of mush! 'I'm the real victim!' and 'I've had the worst treatment anyone in the world has ever had!'. And that's the stuff I could even make out..."

"Well, at least it will be quiet around here now. His wife won't come and most of his kids and friends  are in jail. It's sad."

"Yes, it is."

Nixon turned to Scrooge and pointed to the shrouded body. Scrooge peered closer and saw a marmot-like mop of disheveled dyed-blond hair spilling out from the top of the sheet. It looked familiar. He looked back at Nixon, who shook his jowls and lifted his arms aloft again.

And then it was over! McTrump opened his eyes. It was Christmas morning! He leapt out of bed, feeling like a completely recharged man. He grabbed his phone and shot out a quick tweet. "Merry Christmas, even to the hateful losers who are trying to destroy me and America! This means you, Democrats!!"

Scrooge felt fine! He didn't need any redemption. When you're the greatest person in the world, the one who is the smartest genius, the handsomest man, The Chosen One  by God who requires undying support and obedience, well, who needs flippin' redemption? He got on his phone.

"Hey! Kitchen! Where the hell is my Diet Coke and Egg McMuffin?!! Let's go, chop-chop!!"

It felt good to be king.