Nine Horrifying Political Nightmares for the Trump Age

I no longer have a shrink, so you’ll have to analyze my political dreams instead.

(Sketch from real life by the late and wonderful Wes Emmart.)

You want a decent shrink? How old are you? Unless you’re stark raving bonkers enough to get admitted to a mental hospital, you can’t find a decent psychiatrist who takes Medicare. Not in New York, so far as I can determine. So poof! Now you're my head shrinker, and here are nine cranky political dreams for you to analyze. They have me waking up screaming. You’d scream, too.

1. Donald Trump, trying to prove that he didn’t lie when he said he could get away with shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose voters, rides the escalator down to the ground floor of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, with an AR-15 strapped to his shoulder. 

   He steps out onto Fifth Avenue and shoots the first passer-by he sees. The passer-by turns out to be Joe Biden, who is strolling down Fifth Avenue on his way to Grand Central Station for an Acela to Washington, after a luncheon with supporters at the Plaza Hotel, a few blocks away. The last thought that goes through Biden’s head is, “How could that nincompoop have bankrupted such a gorgeous hotel?” 

   Trump immediately gets arrested by the NYPD, but released after Attorney General Barr declares that the President cannot be arrested or indicted for a crime during his time in office. Then Barr tells me to wake up and get a Diet Coke for Trump while he cleans his rifle. I wake up screaming, of course.

2. I’m not sure how this got arranged, but I’m home, wearing a bathrobe, waiting for a well-endowed porno actress to show up at my place. Suddenly, the doorbell rings. I open the door and let in a beautiful woman. She is carrying a handbag and a doggie bag from a restaurant called "Hamberder Heaven." She yanks a magnifying glass out of her handbag and barks an order. “Open your bathrobe and let me make sure you're Donald.” 

    I do so. She becomes enraged and flings her magnifying glass out the window. “You’re not Donald!” she says furiously. Then there’s a loud explosive sound and a puff of smoke. When the air clears, I notice that she has turned into a check for $130,000. And no, it is not signed by Donald Trump or by any lawyer named Cohen. Instead, it bears Donald Rumsfeld’s signature and the printed motto: “You gotta go to blog with the nightmares you got.”

3. I am four years old and running a foot race in Central Park. I come in second. At the finish line, Melania Trump grabs me by the collar and smacks me across the face saying, “I told you to be best, not second best.” Then she puts me in a cage where, fortunately, I meet Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, who tells me she can help me escape if I help her play with her Barbie dolls. 

   AOC has a doll called Congresswoman Barbie, and a Ken Doll. She hands me the Ken doll and it immediately turns into a Donald Trump doll with a string in the back of his neck. I pull the string and the doll says, “Who knew health care is complicated? ” I pull it again and Trump says, “I am a very stable genius.” I pull it a third time and Trump says, “My daughter is a real piece of ass.” 

   I tell the doll, “That’s not a nice thing to say.” With that, Barbie turns into a Melania doll and smacks my face again. I’m angry enough to hit her back, but suddenly Gloria Allred is standing behind Melania. Gloria says, “I wouldn’t even think about that if I were you, Crank.”

4. Donald Trump is speaking at a rally when suddenly his hair falls off. Or maybe it gets blown off by a sudden gust of wind. To tell you the truth, my memory is a little bit fuzzy on this. I mean hey, it's a dream. 

   At any rate, Trump now has a billiard ball head, which is orange, except for the line where the part in his hair used to be, which is white. 

   Suddenly, I have a revelation. For some reason, Trump’s skin turns white when exposed to the sun, but the part of his head that is under his hair, and thus always in darkness, is orange. Which means he must sleep in the sun wearing a full face mask, with only his eyes exposed. This explains the white lines around his eyes. It also explains why he's always awake and tweeting in the middle of the night.            

   I start to write this down because it seems very complicated and I want to make sure that I won’t forget it. But the Secret Service smashes open my door and arrests me for a violation of the Official Secrets Act. I complain that the Official Secrets Act is English law, not American law. “Not any more,” says President Trump, who is suddenly standing over me wearing a baseball cap bearing the slogan, “Brexit Now.” I look at him in amazement, which causes him  to morph into Boris Johnson. I start to wonder if Trump and Johnson were twins separated at birth when, annoyingly, I wake up.

5. HUD Secretary Ben Carson goes on TV, and in a tense hour, separates conjoined housing projects. When asked why there are no people in them he replies, "They've been used to store grain."

6. I have just been thrown into prison for wearing a purple baseball cap that bears the slogan, “Make America Grape Again.” “But why is this a crime?” I ask the judge, who turns out to be Judge Judy. 

   “Ssh! Did I ask you to talk?” she says. 

   This isn’t a question, and if you know Judge Judy you know what I mean. So I stand in silence, waiting for Judge Judy to pronounce a verdict. Unfortunately, we have to cut away for a bunch of television commercials. Halfway through the third commercial, I wake up singing, “Entresto, Entresto, Entresto!”

7. President Trump has been defeated in the election. The new President, Kim Kardashian, has seen to it that Trump is tried for numerous crimes and sentenced to death. Much to my horror, I have been chosen to be the hangman. 

   I protest that I know nothing about hanging people, but nobody will listen to me. Trump gets marched out to the gallows. He stands on top of a trap door. I put a hood over his head and then a rope around his neck. I check my instruction sheet and it says to ask the prisoner if he has any last words. So I ask him, and he responds.   

   “Yeah,” says Trump, “just out of curiosity, how did Kim Kardashian get to be President?” 

   “Beats me,” I tell him. "Things have been weird ever since the second George Bush. Or maybe the first." Then I yank on the lever that’s supposed to open the trap door under Trump’s feet, but it won’t open. 

   I keep yanking, and yanking, and yanking. I wake up, only to discover that I am trying to rip the brass headboard off my bed. Then I realize that waking up is part of the dream, too, because my bed doesn’t have a brass headboard.

8. I’m back on the scaffold with Trump, but now the rope that I need to hang him with is sticking out of the back of his neck. I pull it and Trump yells, “Enemy of the people! Enemy of the people!” I pull it again and he yells, “Fake news! Fake news!” I pull it a third time and he yells, “Crooked Hillary! Failing New York Times! Sleepy Joe! L’il Marco! Pocahontas!” 

   That’s it, I’ve had it! I pull the trap door lever. This time it opens. We both fall into a swimming pool, strategically placed beneath the gallows. Trump yells, “I can’t swim!” and promptly drowns. I am pulled to the safety of the pool steps on the shallow end by a very large Labradoodle that jumps into the water to save me. 

   Later, the dog and I are both seated at a bar by the edge of the pool, drinking whiskey sours. “Tell me, why did you save my life?” I ask the dog. “Because Trump was the only president in modern history who wouldn’t have a dog,” the dog says, bitterly. 

   I am taken aback. “Where did you learn to talk?” I ask the dog. “Where did you learn to drink whiskey sours with dogs?” the dog responds without missing a beat. He seems smugly pleased by his own retort.

9. In the final Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren,  Trump is doing exactly what he did in a debate with Hillary Clinton. He has left his podium and crept up behind Warren, practically breathing down her neck. Warren wheels around and says, "Back off, creep!" 

   Trump sneers. "Try and make me," he says. So she kicks him hard between the legs. He doubles over, falls to the floor, and begins to weep. "This is so unfair!" he cries. "No president has ever been treated worse than me!"

    Two days later, Elizabeth Warren has been elected President. Unfortunately, this is also a dream.