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. Read more
