| General Fiction posted March 17, 2025 | Chapters: |
...18 19 -20- 21... 
|
  |
I woke up this mornin' feelin' fine...
A chapter in the book No - Say It Ain't So!
NO! Say It Ain't So! Ch 26-27
by Wayne Fowler
In the last chapter Phil, as President, received the Vice President’s report on the Supreme Court Justices. He received both Thomas and Kavanaugh’s resignations.
Chapter Twenty-six
Phil
(White House)
(White House)
I had Betty prepare two nominating letters, having given her the names.
“Mr. President, there is no hurry on this.”
Oh, what she didn’t know! What if Trump came back tonight? Who might he nominate? Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson? Don Junior and Paté?
I made one in the Vice President’s name using her template.
I asked Betty to send for the Vice President, arguing against waiting until after lunch.
A few minutes later, he was in the Oval Office.
“You remember our conversation about your future?” I asked. Without giving him a chance to respond, I handed him his resignation letter. “Things moved a bit faster than I expected. You heard about the House Judiciary Committee? Well, with Jeffries in there so fast…”
I let the Vice President begin to speak and then cut him off.
“No. It’s not going to take weeks or months.” I handed him a copy of Thomas’s resignation. He didn’t need to know more than that at the moment, Kavanaugh’s would only confuse him, get his wheels turning.
“Before the talking heads over on the networks start in, or anyone starts speculating about what black man should replace him. I want it done. You can be in a robe tomorrow.” I’d never in my life told such a boldfaced lie.
“But the Senate…”
“Is mine. I own the Senate, remember? I already called Thune and McConnell, both. A Senate rules variance, and it’ll be fait accompli today. Boom.” Another lie.
The Vice President gaped at me like I was speaking as someone else. I imagined him trying to decide if I was someone else. I sucked air between my teeth to bolster his confidence that I was me.
“Just remember, the people… they are not going to support you for anything. Not even dog-catcher. Forty-four years old. You’ll have to move to India.” That was cruel, probably not called for, but I think it turned the trick. He signed.
“Who will you replace me with? I know you’ve thought about it.” His tone had an edge to it, like he knew he was talking to someone who was not the old Donald Trump.
“Honestly, I do not have a single name on a single list. I have not thought about anyone at all." It was true. I was not going to name a Vice President. Hakeem Jeffries could be the President tomorrow.
We shook hands, his eyes burrowing holes into mine. I was getting used to it and made certain that I did not blink.
I ordered total distribution of the resignation, including the press.
I had Betty send for the leader of the Senate, John Thune, as well as any of his leadership he’d care to bring.
+++
“Senators,” I said, greeting them. “Amazing turn of events. Startling, really,” I said. I let Thune restate the affairs, checking to see whether he might imply any involvement on my part, not that it would matter.
He probably already had it, but I handed Thune copies of both Justice resignations.
“The Senate Judiciary has names of possible nominees,” Thune said.
I held up my hand. “I’m sure they do. And they should keep that list. But I have already made my choices.”
I saw expressions of horror. They probably expected Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. I handed over my nominating letters, the two names supplied by Jeffries, two centrist appellate court judges.
“Mr. President,” Thune began, “where’d you get these names? Are you sure you…”
“Not who you thought?” I smiled. “Were you expecting a couple Proud Boys?” I couldn’t help myself from playing a little bit. “I'm just thinking about my legacy. I’m not here all that long, and these appointments will outlive me. Besides. If I named extremists, what would the other side do in ’28?”
“A court of thirteen and they would appoint all four,” Majority whip John Barrasso said.
I nodded to him. “I need this expedited. Confirmation this week.”
“Afraid that‘s just not possible,” Senator Tom Cotton said.
“Look, Cotton. Just because you’re taller than me doesn’t make you smarter than me. One more election and you think you can be President. In ’26 you’re up for re-election. I can have you primaried. I can give Sarah your seat. And you know it.
“John Barrasso. How well do you think you’ll do when Wyoming farmers and ranchers lose the subsidies that Elon Musk has planned? We’re going to get the tax cuts one way or another. How about when all your poor people lose their Section 8 and SNAP benefits? You think they might be motivated to vote?
“Now, how impossible is it?”
John Thune spoke up. “Mr. President, we can get these names through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. I’ll declare an emergency session for the members – if you can have them there for a hearing. The full Senate can vote for confirmation on Tuesday. There’ll be hell to pay, but I’ll pay it.”
I nodded. No one seemed interested in discussing the Vice President position.
+++
I told Betty to get the two judges to Senator Thune’s office pronto. Then I told her that I wanted to go to Mar-a-Lago the next day, leaving early. “I’ll…”
“Mr. President.”
She sounded serious. Blow-up serious. “You have to… You have commitments. And Elon Musk has been waiting in the Lincoln room.”
“I thought I…”
“Yes. Mr. President, but he’s not in the West Wing. And the Lincoln room is actually part of the public tour.”
“Which we no longer have. Am I right?”
“Yes, Mr. President., but…”
I started to say something, but Betty overrode me.
“Elon Musk did more than spend the better part of a billion dollars in your campaign. He…”
She had my attention.
“Sir… Elon has certain rights. And bona fide expectations.”
I nodded. “Okay, you sit down with him. Get all his wishes and personnel appointments down. He’ll get his bona fides.” I left the Wing with no clue exactly what I meant.
“Tom? Where’s Tom?”
“Right here, sir,” Tom said, coming out of the lunch area next to the Oval Office.
“Tom! I need you by me. I’ve said that. By me! I want to take a walk. Maybe to the Mall. See where they can place a Donald Trump Monument. Did you know they’re adding me to Mount Rushmore? It’s in the budget. Wonderfine," I finally mouthed.
Tom finally got the message. I could see his jaw relaxing. Up until that moment, he might’ve thought I’d switched, or worse, that the position had gotten to me.
+++
“Have to admit, I was concerned for a minute,” Tom said to my prodding.
We were weaving around the ellipse. The Secret Service detail was nervously anticipating our turns. I kept waving them off. I brought Tom up to speed, repeating some things I’m sure he knew, but had to get them in the air just to keep the sequence in my head. I told him about the House impeachment proceedings, that I’d squelched as soon as I got the two Justices to resign. Then the Vice President’s resignation, then the nominations. And then the Senate schedule changed for the two confirmation hearings.
“And once they’re confirmed, Mr. President?”
“I resign. I make a convincing scene, sufficient that no one wants to talk me out of it.”
“And just walk away from all this power?”
He was joking. I could see it in his eyes, Tom wanted to make me laugh out loud. I could tell it was all he could do not to laugh first. “I could have you in Guantanamo getting your ass waterboarded before supper.”
I won. He laughed first.
Then we got serious. Tom opened it up. “We absolutely have to prevent a switch before the confirmation vote and their being sworn in.”
“I’m going to Mar-a-Lago tomorrow morning.”
“And we hope that’s far enough away.”
“Then we could send Phil to Guantanamo, but not for waterboarding. I’m fond of that guy.” I couldn’t help but grin.
Tom said that he did, too, like the guy. “Tonight, I’ll keep Trump, Phil, awake.”
I nodded. “If you can do that until three. Better make that 3:30. I’ll set my alarm and get up. He can go ahead and sleep when I’m awake. One of us had to be awake, Trump in my body, or me, as the President.”
“Do you want me to go to Mar-a-Lago with you as your butler or be here to tend to Trump, you?”
I thought about it.
“I’m thinking I’d better stay here,” Tom said. “We don’t know what else Schlape has planned. And Trump won’t be hiding in the attic.”
I agreed.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Tom
I called Hakeem to let him in on our progress, Phil’s and mine, and to learn what was being done to protect Phil’s person from Schlape.
Trusted Capitol Police would pick him up tomorrow at noon by ambulance. I advised Hakeem that if they came closer to nine, he would be more likely to be asleep for easier sedation and transport.
At 10:30 PM, as I neared the guard shack of the safe house in a non-descript rental car sans license plates, I blared two Walmart air horns. I drove slowly enough, not figuring to get shot. The noise should make an impact. A stocking cap pulled over my face and a hoody disguised me. About twenty minutes later, I came by from the other direction with an O’Reilly ship foghorn blast, again driving by slowly. That should have rattled Phil’s windows.
If the air horns didn’t cause the guard to call in to his boss, the fog horns probably did. A fifteen-minute drive got me to my water jug, still positioned at the base of the oak. Practicing all the stealth I’d learned in the various movies over the past decades, I made it to the side of the house nearest Phil’s bedroom. I tossed a lit 300-pack of ladyfingers over the wall. Onto the roof, I tossed a lit string of cherry bombs on a fuse that should take at least ten minutes. All told that should provide for an hour of adrenaline rush excitement.
I got out of there, hightailing it back to my car. Using GPS, I managed to get to the safe house road from the opposite direction. By then, it was 12:55. I stopped short of the safe house a couple hundred yards, having coasted the last few without lights to get there. I turned it around as slowly and cautiously as I could. Staying in the trees, I got within range of the house with my Remington 870. I sent a slug into the front picture window that shattered it. Even before hearing glass break, I was sprinting to the car, driving off at breakneck speed, unsure whether Allied might have been sent back up.
I had one more trick. About a quarter mile from the safe house, on the opposite side of the road, I started a fire. It was a pretty good one, a white man’s fire, a fire that no right-thinking Indian would approve – too wasteful of firewood. As soon as it was lit, I scattered it into leaves and downfall. I got in my car and drove past the guard shack at a pretty good clip. There were three vehicles where there’d previously been only one.
I lit another fire a quarter mile or so on the other side of the safe house, again on the opposite side. With a burner phone that would never see the light of day, I called 911, reporting the two fires. I expected that sirens from one direction or the other would keep Trump too nervous to sleep for a while.
At 2:30, I drove up to the safe house in my own car. “Hey, Bud.”
“Hey. My boss called me an hour after I got to sleep.” I made myself sound exasperated. “He said something was going on out here, and I had to come out and check on our boy.” I sighed big.
“Yeah, well, he was right. Been a pretty crazy night. But the place was never breached. Your man’s fine.”
“Well, let me put eyes on him, and I’m gone. Probably no more sleep, though.”
The guard hesitated, reluctant to take any initiative.
“Look, send one of your guys in with me. You can stay on your post. I look at him. Say hi. That’s it. Tell your man to haul my butt out after one minute.”
He agreed.
“You awake?” I shouted as soon as we entered the inner garage door. I didn’t call his name, knowing that he wouldn’t respond to Phil. “Hey man! You all right?”
“I’m President Trump. You have to get me out of here. Take me to the White House. They’ll tell you. Call Paté! I’m the President. Tell them that they’re all trying to kill me!”
“Okay, Mr. President. I will. Just hang tight. They’re on the way. Won’t be long now.” The biggest lies of my life.
My escort gave me a snide look, like he thought it was funny that I toyed with him, Trump. I’d already turned to leave, figuring that oughta keep the President awake until well after three.
Now, if I could make it home, a shower and some shut-eye myself.
+++
By seven, I was up. Phil was supposed to go to Mar-a-Lago, but I figured he hadn’t left yet. I called him. He didn’t pick up, but returned my call ten minutes later. “Sorry, I was on the phone… a real phone with one of my Supreme Court nominees. He thanked me and said he would make me proud of him. I just hope he wasn’t, you know…”
“Overly grateful to you in his decisions?”
“Yeah. How’d your night go?”
“Air horn, fog horn, fireworks, more fireworks, shotgun, and fire trucks, and a personal visit.”
“Geez. And you didn’t get arrested? Remind me not to play with you.”
I laughed. “Our Congressional friend said you would be moved at nine this morning.”
“I was thinking,” Phil said. “He’s seen you or heard your voice a couple times, hasn’t he?”
“Only once outside the White House. And that was last night. He didn’t act like he recognized me.”
“But it’ll probably come to him,” Phil said. “You know what they say…”
“In for a dollar, in for a dime?”
“Something like that. If this works, you and I will be long gone.”
“But he’ll know my name, Tom McQuin. When I suddenly don’t work at the White House anymore. Benjamin will give it up anyway. I just don’t think… with all that’s gone on, Hakeem can keep me around. And I don’t think Benjamin would anyway.”
“And… they already have my name, from Trump having seen my driver’s license.”
“We’re both gonna have to disappear,” I said. I could hear Phil nodding. “So what are you suggesting?”
“Okay, but that’s long term. For tomorrow night…? One of us call our Congressional friend and get you into the new safe house as a minder. We impress our Congressional friend how important it is to prevent the man from sleeping during the night hours. And you are assigned as the First Reader, finish the Hobbit and move on to Frodo if it takes that long – Monday night. We need through Monday night.”
“We just need our friend’s approval and a copy of my photo for me to be admitted,” I answered.
Phil completed the scenario. “You need to know where, is all. And then after keeping him up all night, you can leave for the daytime hours as soon as he gets to sleep.”
“You going to call him, then?”
“Probably ought to. And get a copy of your photo to his office.”
I agreed, and we agreed that Phil should call me, not me him.
photo from FanArtReview: FamousHouse!20 by nikman
Phil Jansen: woke up one day as Donald Trump
Donald Trump: woke up one day as Phil
Tom McQuin: White House butler
Betty Goodman: White House Chief of Staff
Dr. Schweitz: White House doctor
Hakeem Jeffries: as himself, House minority leader
Kirsten: Trump press secretary
Pate': 3rd daughter of the President
Robert Schlape: fixit man for Trump (using his real name, even here in FanStory, could be fatal)
Jeffrey McKnight: Mar-a-Lago member who owns a yacht
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Governor of Arkansas, former Trump press secretary
Tom Cotton: Senator from Arkansas
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. Phil Jansen: woke up one day as Donald Trump
Donald Trump: woke up one day as Phil
Tom McQuin: White House butler
Betty Goodman: White House Chief of Staff
Dr. Schweitz: White House doctor
Hakeem Jeffries: as himself, House minority leader
Kirsten: Trump press secretary
Pate': 3rd daughter of the President
Robert Schlape: fixit man for Trump (using his real name, even here in FanStory, could be fatal)
Jeffrey McKnight: Mar-a-Lago member who owns a yacht
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Governor of Arkansas, former Trump press secretary
Tom Cotton: Senator from Arkansas
Artwork by nikman at FanArtReview.com
You need to login or register to write reviews. It's quick! We only ask four questions to new members.
© Copyright 2025. Wayne Fowler All rights reserved.
Wayne Fowler has granted FanStory.com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
