- 23 Nov 2019 00:43
#15050370
July 2019. The White House — 3 a.m. Donald Trump tosses and turns.
MELANIA: What’s wrong, Donald?
TRUMP: I can’t sleep.
MELANIA: (Turns the lamp on.) Why, what’s bothering you? You can tell me.
TRUMP: No, no. I don’t want to bother you with my problems.
MELANIA: Donald, I’m your wife. You can tell me anything.
TRUMP: O.K. … The truth is, I just can’t stop thinking about corruption in Ukraine.
MELANIA: Oh honey.
TRUMP: It’s killing me. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep.
MELANIA: Maybe you should take a Xanax.
TRUMP: I took two. It did nothing. The thing is, Melania, it’s just so difficult for some of these post-Soviet countries to set up a functioning democracy, and corruption is at the root of that. It’s endemic. These poor people who lived under the yoke of Communism for so long are thirsting for genuine democracy and. … (He wells up.)
MELANIA: What, honey? What is it? Tell me.
TRUMP: I just need a second. (Melania hands him a tissue.) Thanks, I’ll be O.K. I just feel so deeply for them. They’re a brave, decent, honest people. They deserve so much more than they’re getting. It’s such a shame. I’ll tell you one thing — I’d like to get my hands on some of those crooks! That Zlochevsky — I don’t know what I’d do to him. You know I fought in the Golden Gloves? I could’ve been a professional boxer. I had many offers. Many.
MELANIA: I didn’t know that.
TRUMP: Oh, yeah. My fights would be over so fast, I wouldn’t even break a sweat. Didn’t even take a shower. Sometimes my opponent would beg me to stop: “Please, please! Don’t hit me anymore!”
MELANIA: I would’ve liked to have seen that.
TRUMP: Unfortunately, none of it’s on video.
TRUMP: I got it. Listen. Ukraine needs military aid to fight the Russians, and I was going to give it to them. I was going to give them so much aid, they’d be thanking me for the next 20 years. They’d rename the capital after me. I wouldn’t even be able to enter the country because they’d be draped all over my car. It would be adulation like you’d never seen because of this military aid package. I’m telling you, it’s bigger than the Marshall Plan. It’s a beautiful package.
TRUMP: You know what? I feel better. I knew I’d eventually figure out a solution. You know what I am?
MELANIA: A genius?
TRUMP: A stable genius. A very stable genius.
MELANIA: Goodnight, honey. This might be the most perfect plan you’ve ever had.
TRUMP: Yes, it’s perfect.
MELANIA: (Turns out the light.) I’m so proud of you.
TRUMP: So am I.
"Society in those days was a perfectly competent, perfectly complacent, ruthless machine." Virginia Woolf 1897