On Jan. 20, Donald J. Trump will officially inherit the Oval Office from President Obama, rendering the White House the newest victim of rich, white gentrification of a black neighborhood. But first, the mandarin-imbued oligarch must finish appointing his ragtag team of misfits, ne’er-do-wells and anti-Semitic frog retweeters to the highest political positions in the land. This motley crew of men and, well … even more men, will then attempt to navigate the intricacies of a four year term laden with quagmires regarding foreign and domestic affairs alike, all while trying to ignore that weird old-man smell emanating from Rudy Giuliani’s office. To understand just how complicated this process can be, I’ve created a convenient choose your own adventure guide to help you better envision yourself in Donald’s tiny, gold-plated shoes.
1. It’s the day before your inauguration, and Chancellor Angela Merkel releases a statement chiding your decision to employ Gary Busey as chairman of the inauguration ceremony. If you back down and swap Busey for a less controversial pick (Scott Baio, perhaps?), go directly to step two. If you decide to wait until 3:00 a.m. to fire off a series of tweets berating the German leader while also imploring your followers to check out a tape of Merkel suggestively eating a bratwurst sausage, move on to step five.
2. The inauguration flows smoothly, and you find yourself settling into the Oval Office. Suddenly, your aides bring word that Joe Biden has built a wooden clubhouse on the Rose Garden Lawn and is refusing to vacate the premises. When you arrive at the scene, you see a tattered shack with the phrase “No Trumps Allowed” scrawled across the side in Sharpie. If you leave Joe alone, proceed to step three. If you decide to evict him from the grounds faster than a black tenant from one of your apartment buildings, skip to step six.
3. Vladimir Putin calls the White House hotline and invites you on a shirtless horseback riding adventure into the Russian wilderness. If you accept, continue to step four. If you decline, skip straight to step seven.
4. After your plane lands in Moscow, Putin leaves you stranded at the airport, while Chris Christie sheepishly informs you that he left your luggage sitting on the tarmac. You return to America to blame the incident on “radical Islamic terror,” and begrudgingly arrive at step seven anyway.
5. The German people are führious, and vow to flog you into sauerkraut if you ever set foot on their soil again, as even they admit that your stunning rise to power was just a little too Hitler-ish (with the exception of several neo-Nazi organizations, which award you a sterling 3/3 Reich rating). Retreat back to step two.
6. Just as you begin to disassemble Joe’s clubhouse, he fires a rock from his slingshot out of the window, knocking your toupee, crafted from the pelt of an endangered Golden Takin, off of your scalp. The paparazzi nabs a photograph and you spend the rest of your term holed up in Trump Tower shopping for Rogaine on the internet. The end.
7. After finalizing your administration’s top brass by replacing Attorney General Loretta Lynch with Judge Judy, the NAACP denounces your cabinet selections for being whiter than the sounds coming from Steve Bannon’s sleep noise machine. If you ignore this critique while instead emphasizing your “yuge” relationship with “the blacks,” continue to step eight. If you take this criticism to heart and actively try to reform the inherent structural racism permeating the U.S. criminal justice system, stop reading this column immediately, as I don’t think you get how this whole “pretending to be Trump” thing works.
8. The outrage towards your administration grows; during a Thanksgiving ceremony you refuse to uphold the longstanding gobbler pardoning tradition, stating that you prefer to only pardon wild turkeys that didn’t get captured. The end.
Reuven Bank, Opinion Editor and shirtless horseback riding enthusiast, is a sophomore ecology and evolution major. He can be reached at reuven.bank@yahoo.com.
