As the debt ceiling crisis evolved into a debt ceiling deal, I’ve been busy as a one-armed wallpaper hanger. Prior to the deal, my office was packed with clients representing special interests from all over the economic and political spectrums, each wanting advice for strategies on how to gore somebody else’s ox. And, of course, once the deal was stuck, those same people were desperate for advice on how to avoid getting their own ox gored. Consequently, I got to re-use a lot of advice this week, simply switching the clients to whom I gave it; which was nice, because frankly, starting right around Thursday afternoon, I was feeling a bit fatigued.
So, on Saturday night, after I wrapped up around 7:30, I decided to stop by the Round Robin bar for a couple of relaxing cocktails. There, no sooner had I found an unoccupied table at which to enjoy my glass of Laphroaig 18, than I was accosted by Blewitt and Sexauer, two long-time Republican campaign operatives. At the moment, Blewitt is working for the Trump presidential campaign, and Sexauer is working for DeSantis. There being only five hundred and fourteen days until the election, and both of them being quite drunk, they were going at it hammer and tongs. And both of them being massive egotists who love to hear themselves talk, of course they needed an audience. And, considering that they are both clients, it obviously made sense to them that audience would be me.
“Collins!” Blewitt shouted with glee as he took a chair next to me. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s one of my favorite haunts for relaxing after work,” I confessed. “It’s near my office and I like the atmosphere.”
“Well you damn sure got that!” Sexauer proclaimed with a sweeping gesture at the surroundings. “The bar at the Willard Hotel has history everywhere you look!”
“It sure does,” Blewitt agreed, gesturing at Sexauer, “and pretty soon, this guy’s campaign is going to be history! They’re so disorganized, when I called the DeSantis campaign headquarters and asked if they had a Sexauer there, the little chippy who answered the phone said, ‘Uh, no, but we do have a really awesome coffee break!’”
“And the Trump campaign is living in a fantasy world!” Sexauer shot back. “How’s Trump going to get re-elected facing thirty counts of business fraud in New York, thirty-seven counts of espionage in a federal court in Florida, and God knows how many counts of RICO conspiracy in Georgia, plus God knows how many other counts of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the United States government in the federal court here in Washington?”
“Because everything Trump did was perfect!” Blewitt declared. “That’s his story and he’s sticking to it, and find me a Republican who doesn’t believe him!”
“We’re finding plenty of them,” Sexauer sneered, “and they’ve had it with Trump! He’s mentally unstable, sociopathic and sucks up to murderous dictators like Kim Jong Un! And with a name like ‘Blewitt’ I’m sure you know what that’s all about!”
Blewitt drew himself up in a posture of offended self-righteousness worthy of a Mormon Elder being informed of yet further evidence that Joseph Smith was a charlatan and a sexual predator. “Let’s not get personal here, okay?”
“Oh,” Sexauer scoffed, “and you calling every place I work the day I’m supposed to start, asking if they have a Sexauer there isn’t getting personal, huh? You have any idea of the receptions I get?”
“No sense of humor,” Blewitt dryly responded, “that’s your problem.”
“And dirty tricks,” Sexauer wailed. “Are your habitual modus operandi!”
Blewitt took a self-satisfied draught of his white Russian. “All I’ve got to say is, Roger Stone isn’t the only Republican operative with a tattoo of Nixon somewhere on their body. Hey, wattaya say – maybe you should get one,” he cackled, “and lighten up.”
“Ha!” Sexauer japed, “No doubt Trump can get himself some righteous tats where he’s going – I’m sure they’ll look great with his new orange jump suit! And just wait until his prison picture gets displayed all over TV and the Internet – he’s going to look mighty ridiculous without the world’s largest comb-over plastered on his head!”
“Show some respect for the President of the United States!” Blewitt insisted.
“You mean the former president!” Sexauer pointed out.
“Donald J. Trump,” Blewitt haughtily sniffed, “happens to be the current legitimate president. As anyone who cares to check the actual facts already knows, the Democrats stole the 2020 election.”
“Ah-ah-ah!” Sexauer needled, “If Trump is the president now, then according to the Twenty-second Amendment to the Constitution, he can’t run for a third term in 2024!”
“That’s a bunch of Communist [expletive]!” Blewitt thundered, turning some heads at adjacent tables. “Trump can be president as many times as he wants – all he has to do is suspend the Constitution!”
“‘Communist [expletive]?’” Sexauer chuckled. “Who just congratulated the Supreme Leader of the Peoples Republic of North Korea on his appointment to the World Health Organization executive board? Your man Trump, that’s who! How do you think that’s going to play in Peoria? And besides, Trump couldn’t figure out how to suspend the Constitution if his life depended on it. DeSantis, on the other hand, was cum laude at Harvard Law School! If there’s anybody who can figure out how to suspend the United States Constitution, and, what’s more – make it stick – it’s him! You think Trump is the people’s retribution against the Deep State? Ha! DeSantis will round up every bleeding-heart white liberal, every nelly queer, every loud-mouth lesbian, every illegal alien, every black [expletive] communist [expletive], every towel headed sand-[expletive] terrorist, every slant-eyed slippery slope and every so-called ‘intellectual’ and show them some real retribution! DeSantis knows that the time has come to lock them all up and keep them away from our children! Trump’s all talk! DeSantis is action! And that’s what the Republican Party needs in 2024 – a president who can suspend the Constitution and make it stick!”
“Donald Trump,” Blewitt snapped, “will suspend the Constitution five minutes after he gets inaugurated, and then, he’s going arrest every Deep State enemy of the American people and put that stick right where the sun don’t shine! You watch: Trump’s Retribution Comeback Campaign is going to sweep the nation, and for your information, Sexauer, the prisons are going to be so full of Democrats, there will be two for every bunk bed!”
“Sir,” the waitress discreetly interrupted, “please keep your voice down, or the hotel manager will have to ask you to leave. Would you like another drink, Mr. Collins?”
“Lagavulin 21 on the rocks,” I requested.
“And I’ll have another vodka and Red Bull,” Sexauer interjected.
“I didn’t ask you, sir,” she said, and walked away before Blewitt could open his mouth.
“Typical [expletive] feminist [expletive],” Blewitt grumbled. “No sense of humor.”
“Exactly!” Sexauer vouched. “it’s that woke [expletive] that makes women come back at you with lip like that. And DeSantis is going to do something about it! Keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant, like the Good Lord intended! And believe me, that’s what’s gonna play in the 2024 Republican presidential primary election, not some has-been running for office wearing an ankle bracelet who surrendered his passport to a federal judge!”
“Listen, [expletive],” Blewitt slurred, “Trump’s ahead in the polls by double digits and DeSantis eats pudding with his fingers! He can’t even sign an autograph for a World War II veteran without insulting him! Who the [expletive] are you kidding? Two months from now, his ‘War on Woke’ will be the biggest political joke since Gerald Ford’s goddamned WIN buttons! And who the [expletive] knows what the [expletive] ‘woke’ is, anyway? It’s nothing but [expletive] jungle bunny [expletive] gibberish that came out of the basement of some AME church in some bum-[expletive] [expletive] shanty town in the darkie backwoods of Alabama!”
“DeSantis called ‘woke’ cultural Marxism,” Sexauer objected, “and that’s what it is, and everyone knows it, too! Florida is where ‘woke’ goes to die, and what’s more, Florida is where Trump’s campaign is gonna get killed!”
“You know what DeSantis is?” Blewitt demanded. “he’s a [expletive] robot! He’s so socially awkward, he makes Mark Zuckerberg look charismatic! I’ve seen the exit interviews, [expletive], and after five minutes talking to DeSantis, the people in Iowa end up wondering if he’s some kind of ivy-league con man or if there’s bubbles in his think tank! And not only has he run up the lousiest record in history as governor of Florida, he went after Disney! You expect voters to like somebody who attacked Mickey Mouse? Whatta you, nuts?”
“You’re nuts,” Sexauer barked, “if you think, at this point, anybody but a throughly brainwashed MAGA cult member would vote for Donald Trump in a general election! A Trump candidacy will do nothing but complete the utter demise and destruction of the Republican Party!”
“Wait until the governor of California has DeSantis indicted for kidnapping those migrants he shipped over there from Florida!” Blewitt snarled. “Let’s see what that does to his electability, shall we?”
“In your dreams, [expletive],” Sexauer growled. “The governor of California has no jurisdiction over the governor of Florida! And DeSantis can round up as many wetbacks as he wants and dump them anywhere he likes, it says so right there in the Florida State Constitution! Anything DeSantis does, it’s legal and it’s honest!”
“Oh, yeah?” Blewitt challenged. “What’s honest about your campaign running AI deep fakes showing Trump hugging and kissing Anthony Fauci? Smearing Trump with fake AI images is totally unacceptable!”
“Well, well!” Sexauer exclaimed amid cackling laughter. “What’s the matter, oh, great master of dirty tricks? How does a dose of your own medicine taste? No sense of humor? Face it, loser – Ron DeSantis is a master of modern political media!”
“‘A master of modern political media?’” Blewitt laughed back at him manically. “Like your boy’s campaign launch on Twitter? Dropped audio, half an hour of elevator music, audio channel snafus that put the NBC commentator’s feed up front telling his audience how the whole thing is a ‘stain on DeSantis that Trump can leverage,’ and ultimately, everything so fouled up that Elon Musk’s idiot engineers have to start the whole thing all over again? Master of immature, juvenile, kindergarten do-overs is more like it! My man Trump’s parody of the DeSantis launch that went out this Wednesday was ten times more media savvy, and a hundred times better produced!”
“And DeSantis has ten times as much brains and a hundred times more administrative competence!” Sexauer railed.
“Show me a MAGA voter who gives a [expletive] about either one!” Blewitt jabbed. “DeSantis’ problem is, he has absolutely no understanding of populism! That’s why he’s polling in low single digits!”
“Oh, yeah?” Sexauer roared back. “Trump was the only American president in the entire history of political polling who never got an approval rating over forty-nine percent!”
“Who cares?” Blewitt blustered. “Trump won in 2016!”
“And his MAGA candidates lost in 2018, and then he lost the 2020 election,” Sexauer spat, “and the only thing his candidates won in 2020 was a big [expletive]-show in the House of Representatives! A five vote margin! The Speaker elected after fifteen ballots! Where was Trump’s Big Red Wave then, huh?”
“Donald… Trump… won… the 2020 election!” Blewitt stormed. “It was rigged!”
“Hello, hello! Earth to Trump campaign, come in Trump!” Sexauer japed. “2016 was seven years ago! Unlike your guy, Ron DeSantis realizes that the American people in general, and the Republican Party in particular, are tired of living in Trump’s past!”
“Today’s Republican Party will never get tired of living in the past!” Blewitt thundered. “The past is where America was great, the past is where America was better, and the past is where, by God, the Republican Party is going to take America back to again!”
Sexauer leaned across the table. “Your problem, buddy, is that you didn’t listen to what I said.” He poked Blewitt in the chest with his index finger. “I… said… the Republican Party can’t keep living in Donald Trump’s past. Of course Republicans want to live in the past – we’re just tired of living in his past, that’s all! The fact is, the past Ron DeSantis wants us to live in is way better. It’s… just… that… simple,” he concluded, emphasizing each word with a poke.
Blewitt grabbed Sexauer by his handmade Hermès silk tie. “No… it’s… not,” Blewitt murmured in a menacing tone, jerking the tie tighter each time he spoke.
“Your drink, Mr. Collins,” the cocktail waitress pointedly announced, throwing Blewitt and Sexauer a meaningful glare.
“Thanks,” I replied as the entwined pair of passionate politicos both looked in my direction.
“You’ve been mighty quiet,” Blewitt observed as he let go of Sexauer’s tie and leaned back in his chair. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re both right,” I declared.
Sexauer gazed at me quizzically as he straightened his tie and regained his composure. “What do you mean, we’re both right?”
“I think you’re right when you say that Trump can’t win another national presidential election,” I expounded, “and I think Blewitt here is right when he says DeSantis hasn’t got an ice cube’s chance in hell of beating Trump in a Republican primary. So you’re both right about the other guy’s man – there’s no way either of them are ever going to the White House, no way, no how, no doubt about it. Come 2024, they’re both going to be total losers.”
“Well,” Blewitt huffed, “that sure isn’t the kind of answer I get at your office!”
“When you visit my office,” I explained, “I provide you with advice. We’re here at the Round Robin Bar at the moment, however, and you asked for my opinion. That’s the difference. You want my advice instead?”
“Okay,” Sexauer shrugged. “What’s that?”
“Cooperate with those two big, burly, well-dressed gentlemen who are coming over here to this table,” I suggested. “They’re hotel security, and it appears they’re about to ask you fellows to leave.”