Black Books-Chapter Twelve

A fictional account of life in MAGAritaville.

‘Build the Wall’ began as a mnemonic device, coke-dreamed up by Roger Stone and his mealy-mouthed protégé Sam Nunberg to keep Trump on message, steering him back to his xenophobic agenda at his early MAGA rallies where he would too often digress into boasting of his wealth instead of delivering the meat-and-potatoes to the base.

‘Gotta give the dogs their kibble’ - it was strategic - used to connect the manicured and pampered scion who had spent his adult life shuttling between Fifth Avenue and Palm Beach on his own private 757 with guys who shopped at Walmart and used their tax returns to buy more guns.

They needed a ploy to keep the old man on topic.

Anyone who had ever golfed with him knew this man’s topic was himself; either how many women he had slept with that month or how much cash some bank just loaned him knowing ‘he would never pay the suckers back’.

Being a skinflint philanderer seemed to be a point of pride with Donald in an almost pathological way. ‘If anyone has ever been raised wrong, it’s this motherfucker!’ Stone would often say, ‘but it’s OUR job to sell him to the masses. Putin’s orders and you DON’T fuck with Putin. Just ask Paul…’.

Stone and Manafort went way back laundering the image of despots to D.C. and beyond. In their lobbyist days at Stone, Black, Manafort & Kelly they managed to help both Idi Amin and Ferdinand Marcos curry favor with Capitol Hill and K Street.

A halfwit predator from Queens should be easy work Roger thought to himself but it was proving anything but. ‘The stupid fucker can’t remember not to talk about himself and it’s no use to give him notes because he reads at the level of a second grader, another secret his old man helped hide about this clown’.

‘A bunch of dudes sitting around in dollar store denim and Cabela’s boots with ‘Come Take It’ stickers plastered all over their trucks aren’t gonna go for this prick unless we come up with something good.’

‘How do we make him remember?’ the paunchy young Nunberg asked aloud.

Nostrils burning like the South Florida sun that was rising through the window of the Fort Lauderdale Marriott.

Stone stood facing away, the black leather straps of his chaps visible over his naked, mottled buttocks.

His ‘coke sniffin’ pants’ as he liked to refer to them.

He wore a wife beater (an inside joke he shared with Donald) - Roger was essentially naked from the waist down which was his preference for ‘strategy sessions’.

A bit of Nixon’s jowly visage peeking from beneath the sweat-soaked white cotton.

The homage to Stone’s idol, Richard Nixon, was easily the world’s strangest tattoo and that was on a planet that included both Bakersfield, California and New Orleans.

A full-size portrait of the man who launched the war on drugs when you were hoovering up the last few rails of a Miami 8 Ball was peak irony.

Roger stared down at the pool below, empty but for a few chaise lounge chairs scattered about haphazardly…the sun was still off in the distance but its first few golden rays streamed across a six foot high wall built around the edge of the property.

He turned to Sam and said ‘I’ve got it!’

It worked so well the man ascended to office, stunning a nation and moving a once proud people and a land that was always seen as a beacon for democracy ever closer to something far more sinister on the world stage.

It was now nine years later and the same cast of characters were up to the same shenanigans. How to push back on the seemingly never-ending revelations from Trump’s first term in office. ‘How could one guy fuck so many things up?’ was a common refrain in Trump’s inner circle.

Not that they cared about his misdeeds so much as they cared about how sloppy he was in doing them. They were fixers and he was a freak.

While he was flying around the country with Kid Rock doing God knows what they were trying to get him back in the Oval Office while keeping him out of jail.

Stone and Manafort had been pardoned for that very reason.

Ditto Flynn; all three were well engaged in their respective roles in the latest campaign.

Trump still spoke regularly to Putin, as big mouth Bob Woodward had just detailed in yet another book on Trump’s term.

They weren’t as scared of going back to jail as much as they feared Vladimir and what would happen to them if they failed to deliver Donald back to the White House.

They all remembered what happened to Epstein.   

Back at Mar-a-Lago Stone and Manafort sat with Kid Rock one day after golfing with ’45’, as the skinny bug-eyed singer liked to call him.

He himself a rich kid from the Detroit suburbs named Bob who had made a mint manipulating rubes.

Culturally they both spoke to the lowest common denominator in terms of taste.

Roger and Paul wanted him around to help fine tune the MAGA talking points.

The ‘God, Guns and Grifter’ set that has become ubiquitous in Red State America.

Kid Rock was there to speak to the ‘screaming eagle’ crowd. To dumb down the masses with false patriotism and jingoistic pablum.

The folks being targeted by the architects of MAGA had little value to them but the electoral college votes they represent are worth billions to men like Charles Koch and Harlan Crow.

So showman are picked who can speak their language.

This is really about wealth and vast sums of it controlled by the oil and gas industry.

In a functioning democracy folks will eventually wake up to the need to stop burning fossil fuels.

Especially with entire towns being wiped off the map seemingly every other day.

‘Listen Kid, this isn’t just about throwing out chicken tenders to a bunch of MAGA rednecks in an Alabama football stadium then hoping back on ‘Trump Force One’ with the old man and talking about titties,’ Paul leaned forward in his ostrich skin jacket, making a crinkly sound as he moved in closer.

Rock sat wide-eyed and stringy-haired, caused mostly by chemicals and a lack of conditioner.

He had essentially been living in a guest room at Mar-a-Lago and some of the powers that be began to see him as potential liability if he didn’t fully understand who he was dealing with.

‘THIS is not a game, this ain’t blowing lines in your dressing room with Aerosmith at the fucking VMAs, Bob-’ Paul used his real name as if to emphasize he had him pegged as poseur.

‘Ever wonder why ZERO evidence was released to the public after Epstein’s death?’ Stone began to look increasingly uncomfortable, his pointy head swiveled about to make sure no one was eavesdropping.

He was like a Batman villain come to life and dressed by a pimp who hated him.

All pinstripes and spats today, never mind that it was 95 degrees in Palm Beach.

His eyebrows raised over his dark black oval sunglasses that looked like they might have been stolen from Anna Wintour as Manafort continued, ‘Not a single picture from the safe at Jeffrey’s East 71st townhouse leaked out and that place was a brothel for billionaires - a fucking kompromat factory for public officials including your new best friend. Wonder why the FBI only raided Epstein’s private island after he was dead? Bill Barr knows and so do we Kid, because we’re fucking soldiers.’

Paul was back to using the nom de guerre hoping to bring him in closer on the con. The classic good cop/bad cop. But with Manafort it was always ALL bad.

But it was of course that way with everyone in MAGA world.

‘Jeffrey Epstein sat right where you’re sitting now, Kid…he and Donald used this place as a fucking playground back in the day, it was all cocaine and cheerleaders. Jeff thought the party would never end - it ALWAYS ends, Pal’.

Manafort leaned in so close to Rock at this point that the horseradish from the shrimp cocktail he had eaten at lunch was making Kid’s eyes water.

Or maybe it was fear.

‘DOJ views all this as a national security issue, Putin has dirt on folks that could fuck up our entire economy and geopolitics - and I don’t just mean the obvious dirt bags like Prince Andrew and Donald, or the freaks like Steve Wynn and Elon Musk.’

Kid was now looking down at his new Trump watch and wondering if the diamonds were real.

‘Now look, I don’t want to get you all freaked out…’

‘Too late for that!’ Roger quipped, and all three had a little chuckle.

Stone and Manafort worked as team in these moments; they had their act down pat -a partnership honed over decades.

‘Listen, the detente on all this is to go easy on Trump, make it appear as if he is being held accountable by mainstream media and the Justice Department but also to make sure those in charge know the score and there’s a system in place to allow him to slip the noose at the last minute.’

‘If you don’t believe me Bob, good for you. I miss those days of innocence. Big pictures can be a burden as you need a place to store them. Look around you - this is ground zero for both consequence and consumption. The system was designed to protect men like us Kid but it requires fixers. Word to the wise, don’t become a problem for….for anyone, capiche?’

With that the late 90’s White rapper turned MAGA douchebag-whisperer got up, excused himself and walked out to the bushes just outside the pool area where they had gathered and threw up.

A lot.

He took the next plane back to Detroit.