THOMAS LARSON

(Written June 2, 2020)

Wait a minute. What is this thing?

Ivanka has just given Barbie, my new press lady, this thing to give to me and said I should stand here and hold it up for camera guy in front of the, what is this, in front of God’s house.

I said it feels like one those classy 365-day calendars, leather-bound edition. Then someone said, no, sir, it’s a book. Of course. I know that. It’s The Art of the Deal.

No, wait.

The Art of the Deal has a picture of me on the back, back when I was knockout New York real estate magnet, and that guy, the author, what’s his name, who had me tell all my secrets about deal-making, then turned on me, and the publisher put that picture of me on the cover leaning over the desk and looking hot and sultry like I just got off the phone telling some butthead investor that he needed to dominate the market in casinos or else he was a jerk and no way was I putting the bank’s money in the casino market with a jerk.

If you look at this cover, you’ll see it’s blank, and blankness is hardly what The Art of the Deal is about. No picture on the cover or the back part of the book, which is called, let’s see, the rear, like a car, you know, a front and a rear.

Which way do I hold it? Hang on.

Touching the leathery cover part feels like my swivel chair at the big house just across the street where my wife said, No way, I’m not going out, Not with the Plague out there, I’m not, but I’m thinking fondly in this august moment (June, actually), oh so fondly of my swivel chair behind that resolute desk, that resolute desk, which is also made of leather, kind of like the hands of that guy, the one who likes them young, Epstein.

So which side is up? No one knows. Some say turn it this way, some say turn it that way, this way or that way, no one really knows.

Wait a minute. There is a longer side on one side and there are three other sides, sweet Jesus, they’re covered in gold.

Gold? So, this is the book of gold, of course, that’s why they gave it to me.

Leather on the outside, gold on the inside—my lucky day. Maybe this is the Constitution.

No, there are two words on this longer side. It says, Holy Bible. Now I get it. This book is Holy Bible. Now I remember.

That faker Chris Matthews way back before the miracle of my own making that got me where I got to who asked me on live TV if I’d read Holy Bible, of course, I said I read it. Who hasn’t read it? It is a disgrace to not have read it.

Well, so what’s your favorite book?

I said, The Art of the Deal.

No, he said. I mean your favorite book in the Bible. Which one?

I thought, wait a minute. There are books in the Bible? That can’t be. There is the Bible, I mean, Holy Bible; it’s important to say Holy and drop the “the.” But for the love of Kanye, how can a book be made up of books.

So, instead, I said, Two Corinthians. There was one Corinthian and another Corinthian. Makes two.

And he said, smirking like that was funny. Two, huh.

And I said hold on. Holy Bible is very special to me, in fact, so special that I can’t talk about it. Let’s move on. How about steaks? Diplomas? Beauty pageants? Something other than a book that’s full of books.

OK, so Barbie is telling me now to hold it up. Barbie, my luck getting a blonde babe like her to tell me what to do all day long, to walk over here and stand in front of God’s house and hold up this book. Someone up there likes me.

Now I’m going to hold it up, let me turn it so, so I’m holding it up like they hold up those Presidential Medallions on the Shopping Channel, there, like so—this is the book that if you look at the internet, if you look at what people are saying, and they’re saying it everywhere, if you look at all the papers, not all the papers, but the New York Post—this is the book that people at my rallies wave over their heads. Holy Bible.

And I thought they were just holding up The Art of the Deal minus the flappy cover thing, which no one knows, they could have been, we’ll have to see, but there are a lot of smart people, a lot of tremendously smart, unbelievably smart people who can, I think, though it hasn’t been checked but they’re going to.

Wait a minute. I remember. Whenever I said something like we’ve got the military and the police and the bikers and your Second Amendment Rights or you better hold those thugs down and beat the crap out of them they cheered and cheered like I was some Roman emperor in Israel and they’d wave Holy Bible like it had everything in it that I told that libtard who wrote The Art of the Deal who turned on me.

Take you pick: ghostwriters or Democrats, there’re bad people on both sides.

OK, Barbie, quit with the hand signs. Is she telling me to put the mask on? No, she’s saying put the book in my hand, as we rehearsed, like it’s a school report I’m carrying back with me to the big house over there, which no one ever thought possible that I’d be living in, a house, by the way, a hundred times bigger than God’s house, there, across the park where a lot of people were screaming at me a little while ago to come out and walk across the street and hold up this book full of books.

Wait a minute. Barbie, before we go, can we get a photo of me holding Holy Bible and you, too, and some of our other golf buddies? Come on, guys, get over here. Stop acting like there’s a riot going on.