President Trump’s Pep Talk

“These are the people I want you to round up.”

Despite being groomed and lacquered, licked and spruced to the last hair, the audience was all attention.¹ They weren’t about to miss one single name that their boss, Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States, was handing them. No sir. The tricky part, they knew, would come later: convincing the public that Trump had not said what he had said or that he had not meant what he had said. In the coming days and weeks, they would remain under pressure to convince the press (who kept on top of these things) that whatever Trump had said — whether bluster or mendacious drivel — was having no effect whatsoever on policy and had nothing to do with the coincidence that they were in fact rounding up the very people he had told them to. If the things Trump said were not so outrageous, utterly wrong, or downright illegal, it would make things so much easier for them. 

The commander-in-chief continued to speak. Drat! They had already missed something. Lucky for them he kept repeating himself. 

“These are the people I want you to round up.”

While it may be a personal misfortune to suffer from paranoia, it is a national one when that misfit has the power to hunt down and silence all perceived offenders.

Lists of names were regularly submitted to Joseph Stalin. He checked the names of those he wanted — not disappeared. Many were already confined in one of the gulags that bestrewed the country. Stalin checked off the names of people he wanted killed. The list was then relayed posthaste to those in a position to implement the directive, and the directive was carried out. Those people were killed. By that time, one, two, three more lists had been submitted to Stalin’s review and returned with more names marked off for dispatch. Was Stalin paranoid? One might wonder the same about Ivan the Terrible. While it may be a personal misfortune to suffer from paranoia, it is a national one when that misfit has the power to hunt down and silence all perceived offenders. Despite his power, Stalin persisted unsatiated in his gruesome crusade until his death in 1953.

“For heavens sakes,” he said. “There’s an error here. It says I said ‘I have red books.’”

Stuart looked at the brief transcript Emily had handed him, puzzled. Emily had called on him at his condo. They had a friendly relationship at work, but coming to his home was not something he would have expected her to do. How did she even know where he lived? he wondered faintly.

“You say this is a transcript?” he asked. “When was it recorded?”

“None of your business!” Emily retorted, flushed with satisfaction for some reason.

Betraying distress, Stuart continued to study the lines, then his face cleared and he breathed relief. “For heavens sakes,” he said, showing the paper to her. “There’s a spelling error here.”

“That,” Emily contradicted sternly, “is an exact transcription.”

“Well, then,” Stuart said, “It’s a transcription error. It says I said ‘I have red books.’”

“Exactly,” Emily responded, vindicated.

Why all the triumph? Stuart wondered.

“I didn’t say I had the color red books,” he spoke more carefully now. Emily was looking quite ferocious. “I said I had read books.” He paused. “You know, read them. As in reading books. Read them.”²

“Prove it!” she ordered.

Completely rattled, Stuart realized he couldn’t. Duty-bound, Emily took him in and got him submitted to the very expensive legal process that results when the president of the United States sues anyone. Because Stuart was a normal and not a rich person, the process bankrupted him, but at least he didn’t talk about red books anymore.

As for herself, Emily could be pleased, in part because she had no idea what happened to Stuart. It was not her job to spy on people. He did seem to sort of disappear, but that was because he was not made of the stuff that kept professionals such as Emily afloat in Trump world. 

With some impudence, she uttered the fatal words: “I follow all the laws.”

Answering an unexpected ring at her door, Emily found a stranger planted squarely in the doorway holding up a very familiar-looking arrest warrant. She went pale. 

“Yes?” she faltered. “Something wrong?”

“Do you recognize this?” The caller handed her a sheet of notebook paper with writing on it. 

She detected triumph in his voice for some reason, but the paper was completely strange to her. As she read the few lines scrawled there, she felt unwell. “This is perhaps . . . a transcript?” she asked lamely.

“An exact transcript!” the stranger snapped. 

Emily hesitated. “When was this . . . uh . . . recorded?”

“None of your business!” he growled.

Emily nodded absently to express acquiescence as she studied the writing. “I see that I told someone I would like to have a pair of pinking shears.”

“You admit it!” came the accusation.

“That’s it?” A pause. “Something wrong with . . . I guess, pinking shears?” she asked weakly. Then with some impudence she uttered the fatal words: “I follow all the laws.”

“And you admit that.”

“But . . . ?” 

“They’ve all been rescinded. Traitors follow the law. Come with me.”

Her knees buckling, Emily grasped the doorframe with one hand. With the other she plucked at her throat, which felt like it was collapsing. She couldn’t breathe, but did not dare say so. The stranger helped her out to the sidewalk, closing her own door firmly for her. There was nothing, he reassured her, that she could bring with her that would help. Absolutely nothing.

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1. And an important audience it was. The entire Department of Justice had assembled for President Donald J. Trump’s pep talk on Friday, March 14, 2025. And from what he had to say, boy, did they need it. ↩︎
2. This is not as fantastical as it sounds. In the U.S.S.R., people were sent to gulags for such unintentional misspellings of “red” for “read.” The misspellings were for Russian words, but the triviality made into a capital offense is comparable. ↩︎