Inside President Steve Bannon's first 100 days
The following is a recollection by President Steve Bannon, the actual leader of the United States, on his meteoric rise and fall from power.
When the term began, I had all the power, and none could question my strength. This was the Bannon Presidency.
On day one, I drafted an executive order to legalize video poker at horse-racing tracks. On day three, I woke up Reince Priebus in the middle of the night and forced him to dig a wide and deep hole. I installed a button on my desk that, when pressed, would summon a butler with a Tom Shandy (half lemonade, half Pepto Bismol) at any hour of the day.
The days were full and glorious: Rolling back protections on an endangered tree frog whose eyes I didn't trust, ordering a Presidential Medal of Freedom for the guy who fired a gun inside Comet Ping Pong. I could call a New York Times reporter and say something like, "As the Peloponnesian conflict displayed, discordant adversaries can often lead to new hegemonies." They would print it, and claim it showed my deep intellectualism.
The power was intoxicating, like a fine whiskey or a vacation in Guatemala. I personally deleted all references to "women" from the Office of Women's Empowerment; I chose Neil Gorsuch for the court because his strong jawline reminded me of a young Kurt Russell.
"Gorsuch is the one," I told Trump over dinner at Mar-a-Lago with the Japanese prime minister and Hulk Hogan's kid. Trump thought he had made the decision. He wasn't even choosing which clubs to use on the fairway.
One evening, I dressed in Dwight Eisenhower's military fatigues, stood atop the Washington Monument, surveyed all I had won, and shouted "CUUUUCK" so loudly that a flock of sparrows was startled into flight. Each night I would fall asleep on a lawn chair and dream of my visage etched into a mountain; each day, I would drape myself on Bill Clinton's official White House portrait and ask tour groups if they wanted to see a dead body.
I was the president, dammit. There was even a hashtag. Nothing could stop me.
And then Jared Kushner stepped off the Acela Express, straight out of a Lands' End catalogue. He was — I don't know how to say this in Hebrew — a globalist. Whenever I would mention the coming race wars or suggest a national armband, he would crinkle his nose like a hamster. That was the beginning of the end for me.
There were, of course, also the unflattering Saturday Night Live sketches. I always thought that if a comedy program were to take me down, it would be Mork & Mindy. But Donald, he watches TV like a third-grader who's faking sick to skip school — and he never misses a Baldwin moment on SNL.
Mostly it was the casting. Spicer, he got the loud gal from The Heat to play him, and now every housewife from Topeka wants a cutesy photo of the press secretary berating her snotty kid.
And who do I get? Death Incarnate, with the president on his leash.
The key to ventriloquism is that the puppet can't see the wrist coming out of his back. I think Voltaire said that, or maybe a cocktail waitress I met in Omaha. Anyway, once that pimple was popped, there was no un-popping it. President Bannon was out.
We had some good times though, didn't we? Three Doors Down rockin' the inauguration; the motorcycle trips to Virginia Beach with Stevie Miller and Todd Palin; the first official White House screening of Loose Change.
And who knows? Maybe President Bannon will seesaw back into power. For now, I'm biding my time, lurking in corners, trash-talking on background, reading Thucydides. Rome wasn't built a day; this mouth will rise again.
(Editor's note: This story is a work of satire.)
