The Trump Two-Minute Transition Drill

"You get a lot of gifts in this job. Here’s an N95 mask from Tony Fauci. Never used."

Dec 09, 2020

Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images file

by Rich Herschlag

Hey, Joe. I bet you’re surprised I finally agreed to have you over for a couple minutes to go over the transition. Well, I’m a nice guy, and by doing this I’m also winning a $10 million bet.

Okay, here’s a keg of hair dye, and the tanning booth is over there by the fridge. I keep a copy of Mein Kampf inside for long sessions. I’ll leave it in there for you. If you get bored, just go to sleep. There’s a pillow in there from the My Pillow guy.

You get a lot of gifts in this job. Here’s an N95 mask from Tony Fauci. Never used. Here’s a dartboard from Mitch McConnell. Funny story—for a while I had your picture on it. Now I have Bill Barr’s. Here’s a bag of cash. Half a million from Vladimir Putin. I forgot what it was for, but I remember that I took care of it.

And this is my favorite gift, from Barron. It’s a collection of history comic books I like to read on the bidet. You can really learn a lot that way. Did you know Alaska and Hawaii are not connected to the other 45 states? Did you know Frederick Douglass is dead? Did you know Nixon was almost impeached for lying?

Can I offer you a non-alcoholic drink and a blood transfusion? I like to keep in shape, and when you can’t get out to the golf course there’s nothing better than a pint of O negative from little Scandinavian boys. If you can’t finish that Red Bull just put it down right there on that stack of unread intelligence briefings.

There’s a lot to remember on this job, so I keep lists. Here’s a list of every country on the planet in alphabetical order. I’m up to Belarus. This one’s a list of famous American cities. Did you know Kansas City is not in Kansas? What the hell is that all about? And this piece of paper is not really a list but it’s probably the most important thing I can give you—Sean Hannity’s number.

Now, Joe, you know how wives are. That’s why I keep a few sex robots. You wouldn’t believe how realistic these things are. You can even special order one that files rape charges afterwards. And look at this one over here on the desk. You could say it bears a striking resemblance to a very young Ivanka. That one was a gift from Jeffrey Epstein. I like to keep my robots clean. There’s no bigger disgrace than a dirty robot. Listen, Joe, I’m going to be taking most of these with me to Mar-a-Lago, but I’m going to leave one behind for you. It’s the one that looks like Omarosa. It’s still in the box.

Okay, that’s the bulk of it. You know the job—you get up at three AM, order in a half-dozen Big Macs, turn on FOX, and start rage tweeting for five or six hours. Then you talk to your kid for a few minutes about getting a couple of princes and a sultan to bring an entourage to one of your hotels. Then you curl up in a ball and weep uncontrollably for an hour or two, scream about Arizona, and replace the National Security Advisor with a recent community college dropout who interned last summer at QAnon. That, over there, we call the red phone. If a guy named Igor calls, just tell him you’ll do whatever he says.

But all this is just window dressing. There is one talent above all you’ll need in this job to succeed. Joe, I can see now what you’re thinking—oh, he’s probably talking about lying, gaslighting, exaggerating. Or he’s talking about conning, pandering, misleading, intimidating, obfuscating. Sure, those are all wonderful skills to have as leader of the Free World, but they pale in comparison to the single most critical, useful, indispensable skill you will ever be lucky enough to hone—the ability to destroy a person’s life.

This is what we do here. This is what I do. Listen, I like people until I don’t. Once someone is in your way, you just have to figure out what it is they care about most and destroy it. For a lot of losers, that thing is their job. Which is easy. You fire them. Can you believe a lot of these idiots stay in some military, or diplomatic, or intelligence job for 10, 20, 30 years where they work weekends and make a five-figure salary? I consider that a mercy killing.

Other schmucks are in love with their reputation. So, you know, you go on cable and talk about how this broad was a lot of trouble and you’ve heard some very bad things. Still other losers fear for the safety of themselves and their families. And in that case, you’re gonna want to tweet out their cell phone number and home address.

Well, that more or less covers it. You’re welcome. Right now I have to get on a Zoom meeting about taking down the governor of Georgia. And we may pardon Ted Bundy posthumously. I’m just going to have to ask that you leave everything as you found it. Because I’m only going to be gone for four years anyway. In the meantime, just take Amtrak back and forth to Delaware.

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