Make Russia Great Again: A Novel Read online

  The first time I saw Katie up close in action was shortly after I got to the White House. Mr. Trump had been displeased by a remark made by visiting German chancellor Angela Merkel, to the effect that “not all immigrants are vermin.” The president later referred to her—humorously, I’m sure—as “an old hag.” He said this in front of fifty or so TV cameras, and his subsequent claim that he’d said “old bag” didn’t convince everyone. (No one, actually.) The media, always quick to criticize Mr. Trump, went into full outrage mode.

  From the West Wing door leapt Katie, like a lioness attacking a herd of water buffalo.

  “The president respects Mrs. Merkel,” she said in her raspy voice. (One commentator described it as “meth-lab Lauren Bacall.”) “He thinks she’s terrific. They have a very warm relationship. And frankly, allegations like this one aren’t helpful. You people in the media are always going on about how important NATO is? Well, trying to drive a wedge between the president and the German leader is unhelpful. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t. No. I’m sorry. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. You should all go home and die.”

  Again, not to gush, but: “You go, girl!” Katie was to Mr. Trump World what Joan of Arc was to whatever part of France she was from. I murmured my admiration to a staffer standing next to me. “Yeah,” he said. “Katie sure tells it like it ain’t.”

  Mr. Trump adored her, to the extent that he was capable of adoration for other people. His affection was evident in his nickname for her: “My blond tarantula.” Katie was flattered, knowing that with Mr. Trump, the more disparaging the nickname, the higher you stood in his estimation. He called Mr. Fangschwaller, his top adviser on immigration, “My German shepherd.” There was no higher compliment.

  Katie’s job was not made any easier by her husband, Jerome “Romy” O’Reilly. Romy was a partner in the prestigious Washington law firm of Baggot, Bain, Bakely, Blaster, and Botz.III When he wasn’t billing a thousand dollars an hour, he was dissing Mr. Trump. His disparagement had become increasingly ad hominem, to use a legal term. He’d even called the president “a head case.” Not much respect for the office there. We at the White House could only wonder what it must be like around the Borgia-O’Reilly dinner table, what with the four little Borgia-O’Reillys sitting there spooning up their porridge. What strange bedfellows Washingtonians make.IV

  Katie had initially signed up with the Trump campaign “as a lark.” No one—Mr. Trump himself included—expected him to win. Back then Romy seemed not to care, though he’d already gone on the record declaring that Mr. Trump was “not recognizably human.” As we say in Washington, “We’ll put you down as undecided, leaning against.”

  Then, the dream became reality. Mr. Trump was elected. Romy was now moaning to the press about Katie’s “transformation from my sweet darling to blond tarantula.” He likened his wife’s championing of Mr. Trump to another bad remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.V It’s not for me to say, but really.

  As Katie’s notoriety as a Trump defender increased, Romy felt compelled, pari passu,VI to provide real-time counterpoint. In the process, he became the president’s numero-uno Twitter tormentor. He denounced him in harshest terms, including the above-mentioned questioning of Mr. Trump’s sanity. Far be it from me to suggest that Jerome O’Reilly, esquire, reveled in all this self-generated publicity. Naturally, the enemies of the people lapped it up. Before long, Romy had accumulated 842,000 Twitter followers and People magazine–level name recognition.

  Out of respect, I never asked poor Katie what it was like at home. Did Romy return home, having spent the day tweeting that the president suffered from “malignant narcissistic personality disorder,” tussle the cowlicks of the four wee Borgia-O’Reillys, sit down to the table, tuck his napkin into his collar, and ask, “And how was your day, dear?” Talk about the proverbial pulling the pin on a hand grenade and tossing it into the tureen.

  * * *

  Mixed political marriages are not uncommon in Washington. James Carville, who helped elect Bill Clinton, was famously married to Mary Matalin, who did what she could to reelect George Herbert Walker Bush. For this quaint, bipartisan connubiality they were feted and lionized by The Swamp. They wrote a best-selling book for a big pile of money and raked in more piles in speaking fees and product endorsements. I often wondered why American Express would run commercials featuring these two. Why on earth the Carville-Matalin ménage should make American Express cardholders want to shop more or upgrade from green to platinum is anyone’s guess. Whatever their charms, James and Mary wouldn’t be confused with, say, George and Amal Clooney. Mr. Carville was always referring to himself as “the product of the love scene in Deliverance.”

  At any rate, there was none of this wink-wink, aren’t we adorable? vibe with Katie and Romy. The only company likely to hire them for its commercials was Ultimate Fighting Championship.

  At the risk of speaking “out of school,” I can’t resist recounting a scene I accidentally witnessed one day.

  I’d gone to see Katie in her closet-sized West Wing office about my notion of forming a special inner donor circle called “Ever Trumpers.”

  I knocked. Katie waved me in and gestured for me to sit in the one chair squeezed into the space. Barely a minute into our conversation her iPhone rang. A blaze of fury came into her eyes as she recognized the caller ID.

  “My husband. I have to take this.”

  I got up to leave, but she firmly motioned me to sit and proceeded to conduct a most intimate conversation on speaker.

  “You cocksucker,” she said.

  “Hi, sweetie,” came Romy’s voice, all sunbeams and sugarplums. “How’s my best girl?”

  “Don’t sweetie me, Jerome O’Reilly,” she seethed. “You did that on purpose, you prick.”

  “This would be in reference to…?”

  “No. No, no, no. Don’t bother with that horseshit. You know perfectly fucking well what it’s in reference to!”

  “Hmmm,” Romy said. “Would it be the tweet in which I expressed concern about the president’s sanity? Or lack thereof?”

  “Yes, Jerome. And it was uncalled for.”

  “Um, afraid I disagree, sweetie. Your boss makes Captain Queeg look sane. Any minute now, he’s going to start ranting that someone’s eaten his strawberries.”

  “Jerome. This has got. To. Stop!”

  “I couldn’t agree more, sweetie. This presidency needs to be stopped. And the sooner the better.”

  “Jerome! You cannot go around calling the president of the United States a mental case!”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s the fucking president!”

  “Umm, there’s a bit of undistributed middle in there, sweetie. Tsk-tsk. And you a Loyola graduate. Did we not attend Logic 101 the day they discussed the fallacy of the undistributed middle?”

  Katie’s face was turning seven shades of red. She’d been educated by the Jesuits of Loyola, Jesuits being the Catholic order of priests from which we get the term “jesuitical.”

  The Washington Post had by this point tallied Mr. Trump’s alleged false statements, prevarications, and outright lies at more than sixteen thousand since taking office. Since Katie had defended practically each one, the Post had dubbed her Mr. Trump’s “vice prevaricator,” and suggested that she title her future memoir The Audacity of Mendacity.VII

  Romy said with what sounded like genuine tenderness: “Sweetie, it’s your mental health, not his, that concerns me more at this point.”

  Well. Katie looked about to unleash her inner dragon and scorch the earth. I actually leaned back in my tiny chair to avoid collateral immolation. But instead she said in a tone of disappointment, “I think that’s sad, Jerome. Sad.”

  “Listen to yourself, sweetie. You’re even starting to talk like him. It really is Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Remember how that turned out?”

  “Jerome!” she said. “Do you realize how fucking insulting that is?”

  “It’s not m
eant as an insult, sweetie. It’s intended as an expression of love.”

  “The only reason anyone pays any attention to your dumb tweets is you’re my husband!”

  “Stipulated. Nolo contendere.VIII And the only reason that I tweet is you’re my wife.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Katie demanded hotly.

  “I’ll tell you. It’s not very nice, but you need to hear it. Years from now, when our children are old enough to learn about Mommy’s role in what historians will probably be calling The Dark Time, they’ll ask, ‘Daddy, what did you do while Mommy was working for the bad man? And I’ll be able to say, ‘I did what I could to salvage the honor of our good family name. I tweeted.’ ”

  Katie shook her head. She, who always had words at the ready, seemed to have run out. Finally she said, “That is just… I don’t even know how to respond to that.”

  There was an excruciatingly awkward—for me, anyway—silence. I averted my eyes, pretending to read a policy paper on her desk about immigrant Mexican rapists.

  After an eternity, Romy said, “So… what time do we have to be at this thing tonight?”

  The “thing,” I learned, was dinner with Trump’s daughter and son-in-law.

  Romy pronounced the president’s son-in-law’s name “Jor-ed.” I wondered, was this a sly taunt suggesting that Mr. Kushner came from the same planet as Superman?

  Katie said icily, “Under the circumstances, Jerome, do you really think your presence would be appropriate? At an intimate dinner with Ivunka and Jored? At their residence, for God’s sake?”

  I may be reading more into Romy’s tone of voice than was actually there, but I could swear I detected a note of joy as he said, “Well… maybe not.” Pause. “Your call, sweetie.”

  A bit of background: presidential daughter Ivunka and son-in-law Jored had been problematic for Katie, as indeed they had been for many, indeed, more or less, the entire nation. Candidly, I cannot say that they made my job any easier. Certainly, they did not make the president’s easier.

  The president began to have second thoughts early on about having his daughter and son-in-law in the White House as “counselors” with vague portfolios. Then there was the kerfuffle over Jored’s security clearance; specifically, the reluctance of the entire US security community to provide him with one.IX

  To be honest, everyone wanted them gone from the White House—chief among them Mr. Trump himself. But, poor man, he could never bring himself to say to them, “Please, just go!” So he tasked his faithful blond tarantula with the role of exterminator. Awkward.

  Katie had gone out of her way to have a good relationship with Ivunka. They called each other “girlfriend” and were always discussing girlfriend-type topics like leg razors, mascara, and such. They were constantly going on about the merits and demerits of the controversial “vaginal lozenges” marketed by Gwyneth Paltrow’s company, Gunk. I had little to offer on that subject.

  After the president tasked Katie with getting his daughter to go away, she tried dropping casual hints along the lines of, “You and Jored must really miss New York, huh? All those fabulous parties!”

  But Ivunka had now become accustomed to an entirely new level of cosseting and deference. She was in no hurry to return to New York, ground zero of glamour.

  Katie changed tactics. Her signaling now took the form of: “Isn’t Washington just the worst, most vicious, horrible town? Do you ever wish you were back in Manhattan? Or anywhere? Even like North Korea? Boy, I do!”

  Alas, again: Ivunka and Jored weren’t going anywhere. Katie confided to me, “It’s like waiting for Brexit.” The golden couple had no thought to depart the odious Swamp. Here they would remain, mixing it up with world leaders who frankly didn’t care about their views on anything, including vaginal lozenges, though they politely nodded and pretended. “Jovunka”—to use the portmanteau—were determined to play their part in making America great again.

  Katie had a fleeting moment of hope when Ivunka’s brand of clothing failed to achieve “synergistic branding potential.” Jor-ed,X meanwhile, had managed to leverage his presidential son-in-law-ness into a fat, greasy wad of sheik money with which to bail out his disastrous purchase of the satanically addressed 666 Fifth Avenue.

  “Maybe it would be better if you didn’t come tonight,” Katie said.

  I now detected a note of ecstasy as Romy said, “Well, sweetie, if you think that would be for the best…”

  Katie sighed.

  “What am I supposed to say to Ivunka? ‘I’m sorry my husband called your father a head case’?”

  “No,” Romy replied in a thoughtful tone. “But you could say, ‘I’m sorry that your father is destroying long-standing norms of decency and civility, and in the process, our country.’ ”

  Katie’s trademark look of ferret defiance returned. Her eyes narrowed. Her lower jaw protruded, as if preparing to fasten onto her opponent’s jugular. (She had a bit of an underbite, Katie.)

  “I’m not going to have this conversation with you right now, Jerome. I’m just not. I’ll make some excuse.”

  “Want me to wait up for you?”

  “No!”

  “Well, I’ve got an early deposition tomorrow. Give Jor-ed and Ivunka my—”

  “I’m hanging up, Jerome.”

  “Bye, sweetie. Love you.” He made a smoochie-smoochie sound.

  Katie threw the phone onto her desk and shook her head.

  “He’s such an asshole. So what’s up?”

  I’d forgotten. I improvised an excuse and made my exit.

  But despite what I’d just inadvertently witnessed, despite Katie’s icy look of contempt as she called the father of her four children an asshole, I sensed that deep down, beneath it all, she still loved her “Romy-Oh.” (Her term for him in happier times.)

  What a complicated organ is the human heart. But the Borgia-O’Reilly marriage had yet to experience its most trying stress test.

  I. So called because of their dietary habits.

  II. I myself thought McCain was a genuine war hero, despite having gotten shot down. As for Mr. Trump’s remark about “grab ’em by the pussy,” Katie’s audacious assertion he was talking about cats never quite gained traction. But one had to admire her creativity and energy.

  III. The alliteration of the firm’s name is, I’m told, accidental.

  IV. I confess that we also wondered what the Borgia-O’Reilly boudoir scene must be like. One staffer said it put her in mind of the poster for that movie Fatal Instinct, with Sharon Stone embracing her partner in joy and brandishing an ice pick behind his back. In reply, another staffer said that Katie did resemble Sharon Stone—“after being run through a car wash a half dozen times.” Rather unkind, though the image does stick in the mind.

  V. Horror movie in which human beings are bodily invaded by unpleasant aliens.

  VI. Latin phrase for something. Used a lot by the late William F. Buckley, Jr.

  VII. Her eventual memoir is in fact titled: Always Wear Pearls Before Swine: Briefing the Press in the Trump Era.

  VIII. Legal Latin for “I shrug” or “Whatever.”

  IX. It didn’t help that Jored was constantly “misplacing” his secure cell phone, and conducting what sounded like real estate deals with people named Achmed and Azbinababdullabab during cabinet meetings. Mr. Trump himself was constantly having to take away his phone, saying, “Gimme that. What are you doing? Sit there and shut up.” Jored would look at his father-in-law with a bland, faintly evil expression, as if to say, “You can’t get rid of me. I married your daughter.”

  X. At this point I will not conceal from the reader that I had formed a disliking for this entitled young man.

  6

  A few days after the Moscow election shocker, I was in my office going over the menu for the state visit by Turkish president Attajurk, triple-checking to make sure there were no pork items or alcohol-based sauces.

  At my direction, the chicken pot pies we
re crescent shaped, which I thought would please our Ottoman guests. Alas, this turned out to be a serious diplomatic faux pas: the “croissant” in fact originated in Vienna in 1683. The owner of a bakery near the city wall heard Ottoman sappers digging a tunnel. He alerted the authorities, who foiled the attack. To commemorate his role in the event, he was given permission to devise a pastry in the shape of the thwarted Turk. Oy.

  NSC director Judd Wootten came into my office.

  “We have a problem.”

  He was always saying this. At times Judd seemed to be a frustrated astronaut who’d seen Apollo 13 twelve too many times. But as he’d recently informed me that a US Cyber Command computer had autonomously declared war on Russia, today’s channeling of Cdr. James Lovell got my attention.

  “Mom stopped by my office after briefing the president.”

  I groaned inwardly. How many times had I asked Judd not to refer to the director of national intelligence by that name? Her nickname might be Mother Jones, but for my taste, “Mom” was too informal by half, never mind the Freudian connotations. Miriam was a highly regarded female professional. I doubt Judd would enjoy being referred to in the corridors of power as “Scooter.”

  “She had some pretty hot stuff for him on Iran and Syria,” Judd said, “but he didn’t want to hear it. All he wants these days is what the fuck happened in Moscow.”

  “Understandably,” I said.

  “So, Herb…”

  “Yes, Judd?”

  “She says our CIA people in Moscow scored something by way of a coup.”

  “I wish you’d use another term, given what’s happened. What kind of coup?”

  “An asset they recruited. Just prior to the election. At the time, it didn’t seem like a big fish. You know, nothing you’d mount over your mantelpiece.”

  “Judd,” I interrupted, “could you please just get on with it?”

  “Right. So the asset is like the number-two or -three guy in the Communist Party.”