OCTOBER 21, 2022 – (Cont.) I also recalled our family’s “rescue dog”—so flawed, crazy, untrainable and destructive, we had to rescue our neighborhood by returning the dog to the rescue center. Perhaps, I thought, in the case of the mad dog now seated in front of me, I could rescue the nation by . . . I caught myself: the mad dog, not the United States of America, was my client. Would hand-cuffs and duct tape be sufficient? But how to get a mad dog under control?
One thing I’d learned in Buffalo, New York when I worked there as a door-to-door salesman one summer during college, was that the most effective way of dealing with a mad dog is to stare it down. Even with fangs bared, the meanest, nastiest dog can be neutralized by an aggressive glare.
As seconds passed, I gave the Don a glare—a penetrating look piercing his retinas and through his empty brain cavity straight to the back of his skull. After my silent count of five, my laser-look worked. He slowly lowered his butt into his chair, nearly missing, which forced an embarrassing adjustment to keep himself off the floor. With iron discipline I stifled a laugh.
I then rose slowly, set down my props—cuffs, duct tape and magic marker—on the desk, planted my fists firmly on the glass top, and continued my laser focus on his weak and soulless eyes. Close up, they were windows into a mind where nobody was home.
“I throw strikes,” I said. “Fast balls, curve balls, knuckle balls—all of ’em, strikes—except when I intentionally want to bean the batter . . . and the ump. But I can throw hard balls only if you, the client—as manager—allow me on the mound. Got it?”
His eyes narrowed, as weakness morphed into contempt; as the black lips of the mad dog lifted spasmodically, revealing dull, yellowed fangs. I jerked my head forward and simultaneously widened my armor-piercing eyes. He blinked. “Got it,” he murmured.
I sat back down in my chair. “The only way this works is if you go dark on Twitter, Truth Social, and elsewhere on the web and not utter or write a word to anyone unless and until I give the all clear.”
“But my people . . .”
“Sir, as in baseball, you’ve got two choices here. Win . . . Or lose. Those are your only possibilities. Do you want to be a winner . . . or are you gonna be satisfied as a loser?”
“I’m a winner!” he said, unconvincingly.
“So far, you’re not winning,” I said. “The only way you win is if you follow me like a MAGA-stickered trailer hooked to an F-450 sporting a big Confederate flag decal on the back window. As long as you follow my recommendations, you’ll stay on the road—lined with millions of your adulating fans; the second you deviate from my directions, we’re done and you’ll be upside down in the ditch, squirming in the black shadow of Ron DeSantis. Your base will drop you faster than you can say, ‘Anthony Scaramucci.’” I waited a beat to let it all sink in. Then, shaking my head slowly and with suggestive emphasis, I said, “That’s not what you want to happen, now, is it, Mr. Trump?”
Hypnotically, the con-Don shook his head in synch with mine. (Cont.)
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
