The Very Trump-y Cabinet: A One-Man Show

The ides of March, dear readers, is upon us. The Trumpinator has collected the plurality of the votes cast today. He'll need to win an improbable 60% of the vote going forward to capture the nomination, which does offer a glimmer of hope to those of us who would rather chew glass for breakfast every day for four years than see a Trump presidency. But we've lost all faith in the GOP electorate, so we thought it might behove us to more seriously consider what a Trump presidency would look like. Where better to start than the Cabinet? Below is an excerpt of a dramatised news conference we pray will never take place.

CHARACTERS

TRUMP: a wizened dairy by-product and President-Elect of the United States

SETTING

Trump Tower, Manhattan, New York, New York, U.S.A.

TIME

Early winter, from whenceforth it shall never be Christmas

[TRUMP shuffles behind a makeshift podium set up in a dark corner of his office, his beady eyes casting about like an ageing shark in search of prey. The office is messy, with unread papers strewn about. A crumpled-up photograph of his daughter Ivanka, removed from its frame and stained with... hair gel? peaks out from underneath an untouched GAO report. TRUMP exacted his revenge upon the bald eagle which humiliated him months before during a Time magazine photoshoot; he now wears Uncle Sam as a headdress to cover his thinning hair and crippling self-loathing. He clears his throat, clenches his tiny fists together, and relaxes slightly as the red light comes on. He is in his element, broadcasting live to a captive audience of hundreds of millions, and it is finally time to unveil 'the greatest Cabinet, like, ever'.]

Dr. Philip 'Phil' McGRAW, Psychologist

My 18-month long death march to the White House was often derided 'divisive' and 'abusive'. During the ̶b̶e̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶p̶u̶t̶s̶c̶h convention, I announced Dr. Phil as my running mate, largely as a response to those wholly unfair allegations. He's the rohypnol to my methamphetamine, the crazy cat lady to my drunk uncle. A lot of you said that I should choose somebody who had 'experience' in governing or military matters, as I have none whatsoever myself. I decided to go in another direction. There was a lot of speculation on TMZ and other reputable news sources that I wanted Oprah to be my running mate. Whoever made up that rumour was correct about my fondness for other con artists/television icons, but wildly overestimated how much I care about diversity. Dr. Phil checks lots of boxes at once: less hair than me, less money than me, fewer wives than me, and even less credibility! His nonsensical aphorisms are the cornerstone of all freshmen psychology majors/amateur shrinks, which I think is why he had such broad-based appeal amongst the emotionally-stunted and the feeble-minded. You're only lonely if you're not there for you. We teach people how to treat us. Thank you, America, for teaching me to treat you this way. We can't promise you much, but we do promise you this: some fantastic television to watch.

Herman CAIN, Pizza Magnate & Creep

You thought this jackass was gone? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Sexual harassment allegations are nothing to be ashamed of. Women are such whiners, especially the ugly ones - which is why I'm going to get rid of those pesky laws, but more on that later. One of my biggest takeaways from the general election was that you guys really, really hate Hillary Clinton. And as much as I tried to make the election a referendum on her attractiveness and how little you'd all like to be married to her, I have to imagine that I schlonged her at least partly because of her actual record as Secretary of State. So I went out and searched high and low for someone who would repudiate her term as a thoughtful and knowledgeable diplomat, and I've gotta be honest America, I totally crushed this one. In these dark and dangerous times, we need visionary foreign policy leadership. We need someone who can sort out America's diplomatic priorities and put Uzbekibekibekistan in its rightful place. We need someone who could not, with a gun to his head, find Uzbekistan on a map of the world. In short, we need Herman Cain.

William 'Bill' GROSS, Financier & Bond King

I like to think of Bill Gross as one of the founders of the Insane and Insanely Wealthy White Men Movement. He is absolutely brilliant with other people's money. Like Hyman Roth, he always makes money for his friends. He built one of the largest investment funds in the world out of his living room and credits his success to his former career as a professional blackjack player. Like me, Bill made so much money that people can't afford to ignore him, even when they really want to. 'Repeat after me,' he once intoned to unfriendly reporters at an investor conference, 'Bill Gross is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being you've met in your life,' before comparing himself to Justin Bieber. It's no loyalty pledge, but I think it's a good indicator that after so many years of being called crazy by the ultra-lamestream financial news media, he'll support my revival of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Bill might be the most qualified person in this Cabinet, but make no mistake: he's nuttier than squirrel poo.

Theodore 'Ted' NUGENT, Musician

It was difficult to find someone credible in the defence establishment who shared my pathological, militant hatred of yellow people, brown people, and black people. So difficult, in fact, that I decided to go give up and go with this guy. Hey, it's not like you elected me to make responsible choices. Ted is a veritable prophet of hate. Back when I was giving money to Hillary and leading Fox & Friends on a wild goose chase for a birth certificate, Ted was telling the president to 'suck on his machine gun' and calling him a 'sub-human mongrel'. He also caught some flak for suggesting that he wanted to assassinate the president, and I do agree that he definitely should not have said that on-air. People get awfully worked up about that kind of thing. Let's face it though, Ted was just saying out loud what we'd all been thinking. And mongrel really is a term of endearment - I call Melania a mongrel all the time! But back to the important stuff. Ted doesn't just hate President Obama. He hates all black people, and gay people, and Jewish people, and I have full faith that his hatred extends to those blacks and gays and Jews who proudly serve in our Armed Forces. Like me, he's a welcome face to white supremacists the world over, and I want those people to know that they have the backing of the US military. Ted literally shat his pants to get out of serving his country, and it's that kind of dedication that gives me every confidence that he'll be the greatest Secretary of Defence, ever.

Sen. Rafael Edward 'Ted' CRUZ

Ted is great - not as much of a winner as me, but he did win a heckuva lot of votes in the primary, and I respect that and the people who voted for him. They must have really, really liked him, to vote for a smarmy, melting human candlestick. Talk about a face even a mother couldn't love. He's crazy about the Constitution though, really cares about what it says, and what it doesn't say. He gave me this photo as a gift, him standing with the Constitution, which I guess is supposed to be symbolic. I don't really know what it says, nor do I care. But I do care about dismantling whatever I promised to dismantle on the campaign trail (I've gotta be honest, it's mostly a fever dream of ugly hats and sweaty high school gymnasiums). Anyway, you need lawyers for that, and they wouldn't let me appoint my old lawyer who kept threatening to rip out people's jugulars like a pitbull. He was the best. But Ted is pretty good, and he promises to make it illegal to covet Melania, which is really tough. He's a good guy.

Cliven BUNDY, Cattle Rancher

Cliven is a big hit with the 'end of days' crowd, a demographic I won by 96%, so his appointment is really for them. Hard to figure why, but I'm awfully popular with people who stockpile canned chicken and weapons. I did have to pardon him to appoint him to this position (sorry not sorry, Justice Department), but after surviving an armed standoff with the FBI on federal land, he's uniquely qualified to manage our national parks. It's a bonus that he has a long history of egregiously misappropriating Native American history for his most passionate cause, publicity. We've agreed that after we abolish the Bureau of Land Management, he and his merry bandits will take half of Nevada to test out some exciting neo-libertarian ideas, like anarchy, and I'm going to take the other half of the state via eminent domain to pave a gigantic driveway from Las Vegas to Pebble Beach. He's also gonna help Joni reinstate cotton planting across the American South, and has some fantastic job creation initiatives for minorities in agriculture. Such a team player.

Sen. Joni ERNST

Even my most ardent critics will have to admit that Joni is a pretty reasonable choice for this post. She's a tough cookie who served in the Army and the Army National Guard for decades (we won't let her sit too close to Ted in Cabinet meetings!), and grew up as a real down-home Iowa farm girl. She made a name for herself whilst running for Senate by airing a commercial in which she castrated a pig and promised to make Washington squeal - you can't train that kind of nose for free media. Last year, she laid out the official GOP response to the State of the Union address, in which she described her hardscrabble childhood and lamented the demise of self-sufficient Americans. As a trust fund baby, I admire this sentiment, but I admire her hypocrisy more: she and her family collected nearly $500,000 in wholly unacknowledged farm subsidies over fifteen years. As we say in New York, that takes moxie. I'm proud to have you and the pig testicles you've removed on-board, Joni.

Vincent 'Vince' McMAHON, Owner & CEO of WWE

Everything I've learned about business, I've learned from this man. No, really. I learned about building from my father, but construction hasn't ever really been my business. My brand is my business, which is why it's never mattered that a resourceful seven year old could run a better construction / water / steak / mortgage / airline / magazine / vodka / communications / for-profit university / wine / travel website company. Vince and I have lots in common. Vince built WWE from a network of regional fiefdoms to an international juggernaut on the backs of underpaid, overmedicated wrestlers. I prefer enslaving my children and immigrants, but to each his own. No matter how many times WWE nearly failed, Vince never moved WWE's headquarters abroad, even though he could have saved loads in taxes. We need to build more companies like Vince's, companies that are trapped by the fact that they could never succeed outside of this b-e-a-utiful country.

Kristen 'Kris' KARDASHIAN, Momager

This one might not initially make loads of sense, but I'm a genius, a business genius, and you guys need to trust me more. Kris could easily have seen her fifteen minutes of fame come and go when her husband defended her best friend's murderer. That was admittedly really great TV, I watched the hell out of that trial. But Kris is that special combination of ambitious and sociopathic, and she was able to take her half-dozen talentless, dimwitted children and make them famous off the back/backside of just one of her daughters! Now every kid in America knows these people, knows their spawn, knows what carbs they aren't eating this month. They have perfume, clothing, jewellery, and diet pill businesses, not to mention a very highly rated cable television show. They managed this because Kris never passed up an opportunity for them to seize the spotlight - no product or appearance was ever beneath them, no detail was ever too personal to be shared with and scrutinised by the public. In another life, where Kris was born thirty years later, we might've gotten married. Anyway, she's going to be a brilliant Secretary of Labour, cause she's gonna be everybody's momager. It's gonna hurt, America, I'm not gonna lie to you. The lip injections and liposuction will hurt, and being forced to release your sex tapes will hurt your dignity, but if you want a job in this economy, you can't afford to have dignity. If you want to be rich like us in this economy, you can't afford to have dignity. So it's time to let it go. Let go, let God, and let Ryan Seacrest.

Dr. Benjamin 'Ben' CARSON

This was tough. I was thinking that maybe Ben should be Surgeon General, since he's a neurosurgeon and all. But I gave it some more thought and realised that I want him to be asleep at the wheel in a far more important role: Secretary of Health and Human Services. It's just not enough to get rid of Obamacare. We need to completely start over by destroying our entire healthcare system. If we're going to succeed in tearing down every hospital and free clinic in our fine land, if we're going to cement our place in history as the first country to ever self-destruct from Type II diabetes, we need a highly competent medical professional to oversee the process. Unfortunately, none of them were available or willing to work for me. Ben is willing to work for me, and he's the only person who seems to understand all of the vowel soup that sloshes out of Sarah's mouth.

James 'Jimmy' McMILLAN III, Chairman of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party

A lot of you probably thought that Jimmy's best days as CNN fodder were behind him, but I couldn't disagree more. He's been a tireless fighter in the trenches of New York City headline grabbing for twenty years, This is a man who ran for president four years ago with the expectation that I would be his vice president. This is a man who supported the presidential candidacy of a 15 year-old who registered under the name 'Deez Nuts' in Iowa. This is a man without shame. He is my kind of man. I expect that he will bring the full wealth of his knowledge gleaned as a stripper, postal worker, and private investigator to this position. While some 'high learned' economists might quip that, next to bombing, rent control seems to be the most efficient technique so far known for destroying cities, Jimmy disagrees, and I always go with the shoutiest guy in the room. I admire that he is unburdened by reality or introspection - I'd imagine it's why he endorsed me in the first place.

Gov. Christopher 'Chris' CHRISTIE

God, this human lardbox. I love this guy, I really do. You wouldn't believe how many Krispy Kreme doughnuts he can fit in his mouth at once - ask for a demonstration, but be sure to give him a dollar afterwards, so he doesn't feel cheap. He's like a real life Goodfellas character. Takes me back to my early days in real estate, when I was literally and figuratively greasing up teamsters... Anyway, this goombah was my first and only pick for this post. He has demonstrated extraordinary creativity and initiative in creating gridlock; for New Yorkers to stand up and take notice of traffic is, lemme tell you, really something. I have no doubt that Chris will serve as a useful pawn in seeking revenge against my enemies and competitors by gumming up already-failing infrastructure systems all across our great land.

Gov. Sarah PALIN

From the moment I met this woman, I knew: when armed with a high-powered Bushmaster rifle, she is a leader of men and a top-notch killer of animals. Despite having married two Eastern European women, I've never met anyone who sits more squarely in the nexus of fear and sexual arousal than Sarah. She and Todd took me snowmobiling in Alaska, and after they slashed my tires and threatened to strand me in Denali after dark, we were in complete agreement that she should have a place in my Cabinet. Minding our national energy policy seemed like the most natural fit. She clearly has no idea how oil is made (seriously, ask her about dinosaurs), but she's enthusiastic about getting it out of the ground, which is half the battle. We agree that global warming is a hoax invented by NPR and ugly graduate students who can't get laid by protesting the WTO anymore. Real ugly, folks. Sarah might not be the most intellectually curious, well-informed, or euphonious. But she ain't a 2/10 either, and I think we all know what the greater sin is.

Olivia JORDAN, Miss USA

As I promised on the campaign trail, I'm going to get rid of the Department of Education. Schools are simply not an 'issue area' that should concern the federal government. But I know that it's going to take a while to destroy this monstrosity, so in the meantime, I've decided to appoint Miss USA as Secretary of Education - should give me something nice to look at during those stupid meetings. It'll be a rotating position, so we can get a new one in every year. Trust me, these gals don't age gracefully. This year's model is Olivia, who was, I swear I am not making this up, selected as the winner of the pageant because of the confidence she displayed by stepping on-stage in a hot pink gown. The first order of business will be sending her to schools around America, where children will have the opportunity to teach her how to read.

Rep. Allen WEST

Allen may have lost his seat in Congress, but he hasn't lost his place in our hearts. Allen was qualified for a lot of posts - he knows about the Obama administration's plan to practice biological warfare via respiratory illness against American children, so as to allow more room for undocumented immigrant children. This makes just as much sense as my theory about childhood vaccines causing autism, so I'm not trying to fight it. He also knows that Obama is actually on the side of ISIS, as he's a Muslim sympathiser who wants to create an Islamic Caliphate. Although he was obviously very qualified for the Health and Human Services post, as well as the Homeland Security post, I think Allen is best suited to be the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs. As you all know, veterans are extremely important to me. We don't treat them well. They have bad hospitals and bad healthcare, and these are legitimate problems - but not nearly as serious as the fact that I've become their biggest advocate. You've really gotta feel bad for anyone in that position. But Allen is gonna be great to our vets. This self-proclaimed modern Harriet Tubman is a proud veteran of the US Army himself. He was discharged after torturing an Iraqi detainee for information which turned out to be false, but you can't blame a guy for trying. I think he'll be a truly tireless advocate of himself and his particular brand of insipid, 140 character based vitriol - he might even accidentally help some vets.

Gov. Arnold SCHWARZENEGGER

I had so much admiration for Arnold's term as Governator of California - oops, I meant Cahl-ee-fawrn-ee-ahh. Really, his whole career has been fantastic. He married one of the least inbred-looking Kennedy's and successfully fought crime in a wide-ranging series of documentaries. 'They ah just films, Dahnald,' he's always telling me. I'm not about to tell a man with 22-inch biceps that he's wrong about anything, but I think we all know that he can be a bit... confused. Whether it's the language barrier or the decades of steroid use, I dunno, and it's not my place to say. All's I'm saying is that no matter what he calls himself (Hercules, Conan, the Terminator, John Matrix, John Kimble, etc), Arnold is a real American hero who's been standing up and defending our country for decades. This is all the more impressive when you consider that he wasn't raised in Queens like us real Americans. I'm willing to forgive the Austrian thing, because it's not really his fault, and he's clearly realised the error of his youthful ways. And I can't think of anyone better suited to be Secretary of Homeland Security. When was the last time we had a Secretary of Homeland Security who could single-handedly stop domestic terrorist attacks? That ring alone would be enough to incapacitate your everyday bomb and/or clock-toting Ahmed. Don't be alarmed by the fact that there isn't a single photo of us together. I'm a big fan of the guy, and just want him to have as much time as possible to keep our country safe - no need to waste his time by taking photos of us shaking hands.