Dersh comes around

Just a consultation, you understand, at Mar-a-Lago

[The Throne Room at Mar-a-Lago. Secret service agents skulk the margins. TRUMP has forsaken his Jackie Gleason in Miami Beach look for roomy tennis whites, including a white visor cap. He also has a Diet Coke bubbler and ice chest next to the ascent to the throne, and in fact TRUMP drinks from a logo-identified cap-top travel mug and a WAITER in Mar-a-Lago livery stands by ready to refresh it. At present TRUMP is sitting on the supplicants’ bench at the foot of the throne with ALAN DERSHOWITZ, who is wearing an understated blue-and-white seersucker suit with a dark blue tie and two-tone wingtip Oxfords.]

DERSHOWITZ: As I told you last time, Mr. President, this is a purely informal discussion. I must insist we have that understanding.

TRUMP: Nice you call me Mr. President. People forget that. Not the old gang, they know better, I mean the waiters and the goons. They’re mostly who I talk to now.

DERSHOWITZ: Yes. Be that as it may —

TRUMP: I know you’re loyal, Al. Guys like you and me, we don’t need contracts. Tell you the truth, I don’t think we’ll ever see the inside of a courtroom. Justin Clark’s doing a great job for me.

DERSHOWITZ: I’m sure he is, sir.

TRUMP: You think he’s selling me out?

DERSHOWITZ: Excuse me, sir?

TRUMP: He talked to the feds. Insulate me from Bannon, he says. Guy’s from Connecticut, phony, sell you out in a minute. He could flip. Maybe he did flip. No chance of that with you, is there, Short Eyes?  

[TRUMP drinks deeply. DERSHOWITZ stands up, backs up a little. TRUMP shakes his mug at the WAITER, who refills it.]

DERSHOWITZ: Mr. President, please! I deeply resent these insinuations and I insist –

TRUMP: Relax, Al. Nobody knows nothin’. Long as Ghislaine keeps her mouth shut everything’s hunky dory. Sit down.

[After a beat DERSHOWITZ sits.]

You gotta think about it this way. These people, the committee, Clark, Biden, they’re a bunch of snobs. Like those people in what’s it called, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard. That’s where you hang out, right, with the oysters.

DERSHOWITZ: I spend the summers in the Vineyard.

TRUMP: In the Vineyard. You sound like a regular. You’re a regular there, right?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, I guess you could say —

TRUMP: So you go down the street, people wave, say “Hi, Al, buddy, good to see ya, how’s it goin’” and they slap you on the back?

DERSHOWITZ: They’re not that kind of people.

TRUMP: No? What kind of people are they?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, more formal.

TRUMP: More formal with you, you mean.

DERSHOWITZ: No, this is just — look, I have plenty of friends —

TRUMP: They don’t act like your friends, Al. They act like they don’t wanna know you. I heard that Larry David gave you the brush.

DERSHOWITZ: That’s just a certain crowd —

TRUMP: And all the other people you were talking about to the papers that said you couldn’t come to their parties or talk at their libraries. You know what it sounds like, to me? Sounds like you were cancelcultured.

DERSHOWITZ: That’s right, it is cancel culture! Like I was telling that young man —

TRUMP: You don’t have to tell me. I was the original guy they cancelled.

[TRUMP gets up and walks over to the bubbler.]

I was the first one. Me. They canceled me off Twitter, they canceled me out of the Presidency — I was canceled like nobody else was ever canceled in history. They canceled me like a dog.

[With a sudden violent shove TRUMP starts filling his mug at the bubbler.]

And the people know it, too, and that’s why they’re willing to kill for me. You saw it, Al, you saw it at the Capitol. They hate those bastards for canceling me. They hate ‘em worse than I do, the poor stupid sons of bitches. That’s why they’ll kill for me and I’m gonna let ‘em, because they hate the right people, all these smart guys and cocksucking whores and sons of bitches who think they know better’n me! Shit!

[TRUMP’s mug has overflowed; he wrenches it away from the bubbler and throws it to the ground, smashing it. DERSHOWITZ rises and backs up as TRUMP advances on him, licking the spilled soda off the back of his own hand as he goes.]

You want ‘em to kill for you, too, Al? Stick with me. If I say you’re jake, they’ll kill for you. That’s why all these people, Ronny Jackson, Giuliani, Kayleigh, people everyone else laughs at and spits on, they all stick with me so when the killing starts their enemies are first in line for the treatment. You wanna be on my side, Al. You don’t wanna be on the other side. Whattaya say? You in or out?

DERSHOWITZ: [Terrified, babbling] Mr. President, I defend your principles because they are principles but I, I, I cannot represent you as your lawyer, I have to maintain my independence —

[TRUMP has hit a button on his phone, and a PRE-TEEN GIRL wearing only panties and tennis shoes emerges from a doorway and rushes at DERSHOWITZ.]

GIRL: Hi, Mr. Dershowitz! Don’t you recognize me, Mr. Dershowitz! It’s me, Moira!

[DERSHOWITZ, bug-eyed, tries to flee from the GIRL, ducking behind furniture.]

You met me at a party of Martha’s Vineyard! You said I was pretty like the girls Mr. Epstein used to get for you!

[DERSHOWITZ screams and runs out of the room, the GIRL in pursuit. The WAITER crosses to TRUMP, who is now seated on the bench.]

WAITER: Should I follow him, sir?

TRUMP: He has to come back, we deactivated his card. Go to housekeeping and fix that piece of shit bubbler.

[WAITER leaves. CURTAIN.]