Abstract
Recent polls show the Democrats in the ascendancy, and Joe Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate may push their approval ratings higher still. It is making Trump nervous and he has already started grumbling about the freedom to vote by mail.
Many of the rights enshrined in the constitution have come under attack under Trump. The heavy-handed response of the police to largely peaceful protests after the murder of George Floyd brought into question whether Trump believes in the freedom of assembly.
Trump has shown his feelings for Islam over a long period – questioning whether his predecessor was Muslim, suggesting he would consider closing mosques and, in 2017, issuing an executive order that largely targeted Muslims. So much for freedom of religious belief.
But it is the freedom of the press that is perhaps most at risk. US Press Freedom Tracker has reported more than 650 attacks on the press during the Black Lives Matters protests. Some say Trump’s own track record in undermining journalists has cultivated an environment in which people can threaten the media with impunity.
Trump showed in 2016 that he doesn’t necessarily need the traditional press to win, but he will have a harder time in 2020 thanks to his bungled response to Covid-19.
The election is going to be juicy for the media to cover. With Harris on the Democratic ticket, LGBTQ and women’s rights and justice are going to be key issues. But Harris is hot on media freedom, too, and there is likely to be a clear divide between the two campaigns over that. In 2017, Trump tweeted a Gif of a lookalike at a wrestling match flooring someone whose head had been replaced with a CNN logo. The tweet was “liked” half a million times. In response, Harris calmly tweeted: “The First Amendment [of the constitution] and freedom of the press are critical to our democracy. The latest attack from the [White House] undermines our values.”
It highlighted the different approaches by the two politicians to the First Amendment. One considers the freedom of the press to be a challenge to his manhood while the other sees it as a core freedom that helps the USA to flourish.
If his figures get worse, Trump’s media attacks will increase as he blames everyone but himself. It will be a sad day for democracy if it gives his supporters free rein to do the same.
The Duty
by Kaya Genç
I’m a mongrel. I’m in between breeds and existences. I’ve been here a long time. I know how the White House operates. I know where to poo and where to pee-pee. I know where Donald Trump keeps his tax returns (38.8977° N, 77.0365° W, in a tin box labelled ‘PANDORA’S BOX’).
My best friend’s name is Dale. He’s the head groundskeeper. He’s the one who delivered me to Donald Trump. Dale can see ghosts and converse with our lot. I’ve haunted him for months in the White House garden before he invited me back to life.
At the White House, most days begin with Dale. We leave early in the morning to inspect plants. Under his watch I wander among fragrant magnolias, green boxwoods, upright tulips and crab apple blossoms. Our garden is a National Park. I feel awful after pooping behind bushes, fearing staining our history. But history is a subject my master ignores. His face was blank when Dale introduced me to him as “Fido”. I thought every American knew who Fido was. But Donald Trump didn’t know about Abraham Lincoln’s mongrel dog. When I looked to him for a sign of recognition his eyes were hollow.
This morning, Dale talked about Bo and Sunny, “Obama’s dogs”. They didn’t poo much, he claimed.
“They can poo and be cool at the same time,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
Dale gets real emotional when he pronounces the word Obama. “Obama’s Portuguese water dogs had their own media schedules,” he said, his eyes watering, his upper lip trembling.
I wish I had got to know them – Bo had a white chest while Sunny, in Dale’s description, was “all-black”. But black is a colour Donald Trump doesn’t savour.
For my old master, shot in the head by an actor in a Washington theatre, black lives mattered. He’s long gone and buried but Old Abe will live in my heart forever. He was thoughtful and diplomatic; kind, skillful, benevolent. I loved Honest Abe’s sons, Tad and Willie, like my own. I carried parcels for them, rooting for the success of the Republican Party. But politics abounded with two things I couldn’t stand – pomposity and noise. It still does.
After Dale unleashed me, I climbed the stairs to the second floor and jumped into the Lincoln Bedroom to search for my master. He wasn’t there. I headed to the Queen’s Bedroom, sniffing carpets and peeking into the Yellow Oval Room. He wasn’t there either.
I found him sitting, Buddha-like, on the presidential bed in his bedroom. He radiated an orange light, smelled like gum, and produced a batch of incomprehensible sounds.
“Traitor,” his curled lips were saying when I entered. “Dog! Foulmouthed lowlife.” His tongue danced on his pursed lips for a moment; his eyebrows flickered with each message he read. Hunchbacked and fully dressed he fondled a tablet to inspect the latest on the November election.
News, insistently negative, upset him. “Sleepy Joe” led by 10 percentage points. “Quid Pro Joe” had an 11-percent lead. “Sleepy Creepy” had a 12-percentage-point margin. “Wacko John Bolton” became a New York Times bestseller with his Tell-All. I wanted to raise my poor master’s spirits, so I jumped to his feet and was set to lick him.
People say Donald Trump is a “germaphobe”. My experience is different. While his tiny hand patted my soft head, I mouthed his free hand. I licked his fingers first, delighting in his gnawed fingernails and wet knuckles, while the other fingers rested on my skull. My new master isn’t a great caresser. He doesn’t much care for hygiene either. He used the hand I licked to pick his nose later, while the other – unlicked – hand tap-tap-tapped the glossy tablet.
Donald Trump is an early-bird who enjoys taking long-bullshits first thing in the morning, so I wasn’t surprised. As he composed his messages, I crouched next to him and closed my eyes, imagining my curly hair entering Donald Trump’s body, seeds of geraniums and canna lilies circulating in his system and blossoming in his lungs.
Such experiences move me as a highly impressionable dog. This must be why my old master’s spectre abruptly materialised in front of me a minute later. After he was gunned down I’d mourned Old Abe for months before I, too, was murdered by a violent man who couldn’t stand kind souls. Now the Great Emancipator’s spectre eyed me warmly, but his wise face expressed such disdain for the man whose hand I’d been licking that I inadvertently bit it on the wrist. The tablet dropped; the orange man got up to his feet, exposed and terrified. He kicked me in the stomach twice before exiting the bedroom.
There is no justice on this earth: bigots prevail; anti-Semites and kneelers-on-black-bodies flourish; resentment wins the day. I’ll avenge Wise Abe’s death and those heinous kicks.
* * *
I’ve been Donald Trump’s dog for a month now. I don’t recommend it, unless you wear a Make America Great Again hat. It was Jared and Ivanka who advised Donald Trump to get a dog, back in August. Jared claimed it would look good politically. I’d accompany his father-in-law while he took shelter from the “Kung Flu”. There’d be publicity pics on social media to persuade elderly white Democrats into changing their votes. That was the plan.
When Dale brought me in, the Kushners cheered. But after the biting incident, my master began to strike a different chord. He couldn’t handle his iPhone or Coke can the way he used to. “I don’t know,” he mumbled as Ivanka, a real lady, sliced her peppered steak in the Dining Room this afternoon. “I don’t feel good with this dog. He feels a little phoney to me.”
“I’ve been no enemy of dogs, Princess,” he continued, eyeing the sliced meat with disdain. “Chappy, Ivana’s poodle, you remember him, you know we used to sleep and lick cones together. Then Chappy and I had this fight over the chinchilla coat – remember that, Princess? Chappy didn’t want me near Ivana’s closet, fearing I’d steal the chinchilla coat. But I didn’t steal the chinchilla coat. I don’t steal chinchilla coats, Princess. Honestly, I don’t steal!”
He closed his eyes like a meditating Sufi.
“Then Ivana said, ‘It’s me and Chappy, or no one,’ and I knew I couldn’t stand ‘no one’ and would prefer ‘anyone’ and so Chappy stayed but he continued to bark at me territorially.” He added: “I should’ve fired him like a dog.”
Ivanka looked completely nonplussed. I followed her slim legs as they exited the Dining Room and walked downstairs to the ground floor. She seemed a little shaken; her father might soon be voted out of office “like a dog” (his words). I feared they’d put me to sleep “for reciprocity” (his words).
But Ivanka is a kind soul. I followed her as she entered the White House Library. We waited silently, like two virgins in a nunnery. The room was small – just seven square metres. I could feel Ivanka’s frustration and sadness. To console her, I crouched next to her high-heeled shoes.
CREDIT: Eva Bee
Back in the 19th century, Old Abe used this room for laundry. I can still smell the perfume of his trousers. In Dale’s telling, Abigail Fillmore later established a White House Library, which Herbert Hoover transported down here. Hoover, too, was a true Republican. As a conservative dog I miss his breed.
It was three o’clock when Donald Trump joined his daughter and placed his big bum on a mahogany chair by the fireplace. He was facing a lighthouse clock, and I saw the portrait of George Washington eyeing us from above. Much to my surprise, Washington began to wink and spoke in a husky voice that only I could hear. “What’s up, Fido?” he said. “You all right in there, doggy? Careful with that orange man. I have one thing to ask from you, Fido, and that is to save the Republic from the orange man. But no pressure. Just find a media-hand-grenade for the November election. Do it, Fido! It’s your duty.”
He signed off mysteriously: “Old Abe sends his warm regards.”
Not knowing what to do I offered my head to Ivanka. She placed a kiss on it, but her father seemed beyond consoling. His phone, buzzing with likes and retweets, was his life’s sole joy. To give them space I began inspecting book jackets and additions to the collection – works by George Saunders, Toni Morrison and The Heart of a Dog by the Russian writer Bulgakov caught my eye. I also found a volume titled Think Big and Kick Ass, penned by my master.
Just then a roaring sound came from the direction of the fireplace: “BOLTON! That dog!” It was as if a thunder bolt had struck Ivanka’s head; she started running around in panic, her hands raised to the sky, asking gods for a divine intervention. They didn’t.
“Nothing escapes my GAZE,” the orange man roared as he threw that book, authored by a true Republican, into orange flames. I watched it burn to ashes.
Only after that did my master’s attention shift to “Fox and Friends”. To boost his pleasure, he tried opening a can of Coke. “My wrist hurts like hell!” he screamed. “I’ll fire you like a dog! Princess, please open this for me.” Ivanka complied as her father, like a bored child, watched colourful images morphing into each other. Ivanka, a damsel in distress, seemed so sad that I wanted to lick her cheeks to raise her spirits. She said Jared would organise a press briefing the following morning. “You could perform one of your tricks,” she said, as if Donald Trump was a circus dog.
I decided to spend the night in the garden. But I couldn’t sleep. I hallucinated the Great Emancipator guiding me inside the White House to find secret documents while I took short breaks to lick my butt. “Exit the Library, open the fourth door on your left,” said the Ancient One. Around 6am I entered Dale’s room and licked his neck and eyebrows and he promised to place me next to the president during the presser. We were ready.
“Someone from CNN? I love CNN. Objective and unpopular,” my master said, in answer to a well-dressed man’s question.
“Just pass the microphone to the Bruce Lee on the front row. He’s Xi’s man, look how well-behaved he is. That’s how journalists act under dictatorships. Take note!” Still, the CNN reporter refused to hand back the microphone.
“Don’t push my hand here, just don’t push it,” my boss said, his right wrist visibly in pain. “Or I’ll have to kick you out like a dog. You don’t like that, do you? I’m a bit harsher than Lincoln. I’m tougher than Obama. Now leave the room please.”
While “Bruce Lee” began formulating a question I ran after the CNN reporter and threw the wet, much licked ball I’d concealed in my mouth on his Hush Puppies. He thought I was throwing up; on closer inspection the reporter noticed what I’d handed to him – a handwritten note by Dale. It read: “For Access to Orange Man’s Tax Returns, Follow Fido.”
Aided by Dale and a Secret Service agent I dare not name (his name begins with S!) we sneaked onto the ground floor and made our way to the Map Room. The reporter, delirious for the scoop he’d been handed in the form of warm vomit, fainted. I had to paw his crotch to wake him up.
Once reactivated he took the tin box and jumped out of the window and ran so fast he disappeared from our sight in less than 33 seconds. The next morning, I strolled in our National Park and wandered among crab apple blossoms and green boxwoods when a newsboy threw the latest issue of the Washington Post in the bushes where I relieved my bladder each morning. There it was: the Tax Return headline, the portrait of a frustrated president, and the predicted landslide of “Very Slow Sleepy” on 3 November. For a moment I wanted to pee-pee and poo on that historic front page but decided against it. I’m Donald Trump’s dog. I’m a mongrel loyal to two masters. Some think they can fire me like a dog; and as a dog I can fire a master if I feel like it. I mouthed the newspaper, gave it a good lick and headed to the orange man’s bedroom.